"... it's a bleak, dispiriting prospect for sure... in America now it seems one must fall in line with either the god and guns party or the government cures all ills party... in short, you must choose either way an irrational, ideologically driven populism that slavishly serves the intemperate interests of its leaders... I suppose if one wanted to attempt a species of optimism one could imagine a scenario where the democrats fail so spectacularly that it opens the door for a new kind of republican, one who can, say, call Limbaugh the ass that he is and still have a chance of getting elected... but I tend to believe that optimism is just what politicians call willful ignorance..."

Lurking behind Obama's approach or non-approach to the Persia problem is the upcoming presidential election in Iran - apparently A--- is opposed by viable contenders, one of whom may actually have a shot in the runoff election most are predicting, with all regardless considered more moderate than A--- and all accordingly espousing a foreign policy that will differ from A---'s - except, from what I read, that's not really the case: a different tone is being promised, but a different policy? Not so much. Less confrontation with the US over nuke policy, sure, but give up the nukes? Not so fast. In other words, what I'm seeing promises a more nuanced, more subtle foreign policy, but no radical divergence from current goals.

Which brings up key point: how much freedom of movement are Iranian politicians allowed by their theocratic overlords? Depends - government is free to pursue initiatives and the Ayatollah is giving the impression of neutrality in the election - but still, the clerics control key offices of government and nothing major gets done unless the Supreme Council oks it. Possibly the clerics object to varying degrees with A---'s style, but much less likely they reject his policies since he wouldn't be there if they did. And lets not forget The Republican Guard - from what I read their role in the government has dramatically increased and not only has A--- solidified his position with them but, even if he were to lose the election, whoever replaces him will not be able to do anything foreign policy wise without their approval.

So, the appearance seems to be that any talk of a possible rise of a moderating influence in Iran this summer which will substantially alter the dynamics at play now is wishful thinking: if A--- is determined to get the bomb it's because The Guard and the clerics are determined to get it, and they're not up for re-election.

"... oh, here we go again with the bloody gay marriage noise in California... these people do realize that the state is insolvent, on the verge of bankruptcy, right?... and now once again I'm supposed to give a shit about gay marriage?... perfect example of why the subject infuriates, the politics of it is grossly inflated given the merits of the argument and relevance of the issue... I'll say it again, if you wanna legalize gay marriage, fine, but then you must also then hold that there is no logical reason for the state to be involved in marriage... why should it be the state's business who loves whom and how they go about expressing it?... marriage was about the making and raising of babies, and I mean explicitly the chaos of seminal copulation with ovulating females and its discomfiting consequences, consequences which were of vital importance to the state and that's why it protected its stake in marriage... but if you're now saying marriage is about love first with a somewhat artificial theory of children held out as a possible adjunct, well that's an entirely different thing and there's no logical reason why the state should care, at least until these putative children come along, however they come along, and their rights need protecting... my point has always been that the key to a traditional idea of marriage is not the mere presence of children, but the means by which those children got here and there's a huge existential gap between underlying circumstances and methods by which the majority of gays acquire children and the way heterosexuals go about the getting thereof... if you want the laws to simply ignore the fact of that difference, pretend it doesn't exist and more importantly doesn't matter, then go ahead, declare homosexual and heterosexual unions exactly the same by virtue of the shared quality of romantic love... I think you'd be a dishonest fool in denial regarding fundamental truths for claiming such, but who cares what I think... all I'm saying is that once you take that step the next logical step is to ask what's the point then of the state being involved in marriage at all?... to me it would be illogical and absurdly hypocritical to be for gay marriage and yet opposed to government getting out of the marriage game altogether... again, if marriage is not about the potentiality of two college kids imagining themselves in love and spending the night together and then waking up the next morning parents then why the hell should the state care about it?... why should the state care that these two kids may feel the urge to run off and solemnize their love but for the devil that lies waiting in the shadows?..."

Denis Ross, special adviser to Hillary on Mideast, writes in new book that the idea of linkage, the idea that progress to peace in Mideast is directly related to progress on Palestinian issue, is a load of nonsense. Not that that means Hillary shares his view, but I've been saying for a few weeks that I sense disunity in the Obama ranks [Obama has explicitly endorsed linkage] viz Iran/Palestine - a notion rather contemptuously dismissed by the Kool-aid drinkers. We'll see.

Lots of back and forth concerning North Korea, what its intentions are, what should the response be etc etc - but to me the skinny is this: North Korea will sign onto and unilaterally walk away from any agreement that does or does not satisfy their very narrow interests, to wit, keep our oppressive dictatorship viable by giving us money and treating us as a power to be reckoned with or deal with the consequences. It's that simple - which as far as I see it leaves us with two options: give them what they want until which point there's a positive change in leadership or China deems the problem not worth the effort and withdraws enabling support; or confront them, force the issue.

The first option is in the short term the safest, but its only merit is it buys you time and does not address North Korea's long term threat to stability and nuclear security - it may be the way to go for now but the upside is very limited - and of course if you give them what they want what does that say to Iran? - very hard to decouple the Iranian and North Korean problems.

The second option of course risks an irrational response and dramatic escalation by NK but offers best pay off by either calling their bluff and forcing them into tempering their behavior or leveraging China into taking greater responsibility for a solution. The problem is any change to the status quo threatens the viability of the regime and it's impossible to know what happens then - a military coup that brings to power an even more dangerous set of circumstances? Consideration of such tempts one towards the sanctuary of the status quo - but to me that's the illusion of an answer that sets the stage for dire pitfalls further down the road - and again, is that the message you want to send to Iran?

I go back to the missile test - shooting it down would have been risky but given the alternatives it may have been the best way to change the dynamics and without a dynamic change I don't see how you solve this problem peacefully.

update: another scenario, from Danger Room blog: it is possible to create an aprox 4 kiloton explosion by setting off enough ammonium nitrate and fuel oil - that would certainly change things - but a nuclear explosion leaves behind atmospheric residue as evidence so it would be rather stupid on NK's part to try and get away with such an easily discoverable fake, would pretty much hollow out their biggest threat asset. Still, we're not dealing with normal people here...

Netanyahu comes out and states flatly that it's up to Israel to stop Iran's nuclear program - I mean, I understand that this may simply be Netanyahu putting pressure on Obama to step up to the plate, but still, I'm sensing a lot of denial in American intellectual circles about what is going on here - maybe Obama has them all duped into thinking that no one would dare do anything bad as long as he's making speeches about how they shouldn't.

Three things strike me here. One, that none or few who comment on the crisis and then dismiss the possibility of an Israeli attack bother to think or at least mention that regardless of it happening keeping an attack on the table makes sense; two, Obama has sent mixed messages on keeping the option alive which leads one to believe there's confusion and disagreement within the administration about how to proceed; and three, none so far that I've noticed recognise that if Israel does not intercede and Iran subsequently acquires the bomb that will represent a big win for Iran and a big loss for Israel with dire consequences to follow, and I don't mean by Iran dropping the big one on Israel - I mean by Iran being highly motivated to exploit that dynamic and Israel equally if not more so motivated to reverse it - in other words, military intervention here by Israel does not represent the only disconcerting scenario, not by a long shot.

Maybe Obama does have them all duped.

update: Ashkenazi now comes out and states that negotiations best way to deal with Iran, but he doubts very much that talks will work - in other words he's stating the obvious: it'd be nice to negotiate a settlement, but only a fool would pin their hopes on it.

my much discussed [?] comment post on Abu Maqawama re what I considered their misreading of Obama's Iran strategy:

Then why did Gate's come out a month or so ago and say basically that there's no way Israel will be bombing Iran? I'd say there's a great deal of uncertainty in US military about how to approach Iran problem, and I'd say that recent comments from Mullen suggest that some in military are not quite 'comfortable' with their commander in chief.

And then just this morning Barak comes out and says Obama's 'negotiation' tactics are necessary for good optics but useless aside from that if your goal is an Iran without nukes. Israel has been clear about it's intentions, whether that clarity is a bluff or not who knows, but their position has made perfect sense no matter; the Obama administration seems to be at odds with itself and unsure of where it's going - my impression is that much like with the economy they want to appear as if they're pursuing the 'enlightened' path but in reality they're just throwing nuanced liberal rhetoric against the wall and hoping it sticks.

People on this blog may want to contend that at least when it comes to Afghanistan that's not the case but I disagree - Obama embraced a 'new' Afghan policy in the campaign not because he had some clear vision of the way things should be but because he needed to project military 'gravitas' and he couldn't do so viz Iraq for obvious reasons - remember he started talking about Afghanistan before a concrete COIN playbook was in place, before the surge - ie, he had no idea what he was getting into in Afghanistan, it was just rhetoric - and now he's chosen a sort of half in, half out approach that is not likely to get you where you wanna be.

I see the same MO at work re Iran - he spills a bunch of liberal rhetoric about 'talking with the enemy' but reality proves, will prove to be a bit more unpleasant than that.

Well, North Korea tests another nuke - a small one, but still a nuke - and so? A month ago when they tested the long range missile I said it made sense to shoot it down because not shooting it down left you with one of two unsatisfactory outcomes: Kim [or whatever strongman surrogate is in charge now] escalates, which he's done, or you give him what he wants, which may now happen, and perpetuate this useless cycle of taunts: you shoot down the missile you've created a third option with more potential upside, not only as concerns North Korea, but as concerns all proliferators - of course, there's more potential downside too, or at least there's the appearance of more downside - but let's face it, North Korea is gradually becoming the existential threat [mainly in its role as rogue proliferator] that the safe approach is supposed to be putting a stop to so how real in fact is that downside in comparison?

Ah, this good: Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, comes out and says if Iran gets the bomb it will be 'calamitous', 'disastrous' etc etc - and yet of course maintains that America will not be involving itself militarily. You can read between the lines here, right? If the results of a nuclear Iran would be as profoundly negative as he suggests then it would be illogical to rule out US military action to intercede - and yet he rules it out regardless. You don't sense a collision brewing here between Obama and the military?

Right now among the most worrisome of threats I see coming from this president is that given his predilections his main concerns will be with domestic policy, meaning the much more convoluted [and dangerous] gyrations of foreign policy will get short shrift - ie a parade of phony initiatives that give the impression that 'something' is being done when in reality everything's just being pushed back into a corner - and then what's in the corner jumps out and chews your fucking balls off. That's my big fear with Obama. That and the fact his domestic policy sucks wind as well...

Possibly one sees a reflection of this in the pseudo debate between Obama and Cheney of yesterday - as usual and to my great annoyance those leaning left perceived Obama to be the winner and those leaning right of course champion Cheney - I continue to not see the point of holding an opinion if that opinion is to be forever constrained by religiosity of an ideology - but, be that as it may, my concern was not so much on what they said but how what they said framed the differing approaches - ie, Cheney equals action, Obama inaction. My concern with Obama has always been that the daunting nastiness of foreign policy, so resistant to charm and rhetoric and so unforgiving to one's ego, will not suit his ambitions and will result in him therefore trying to quell the beast through endless debate and ostensibly high minded ministrations - like professors arguing a point in the faculty lounge and then going on their little ways feeling content that 'something' had been accomplished.

Did I just see a graph on Mankiw's blog which shows that the economy is right where Obama said it would be if we didn't pass the stimulus bill? Yes, I did. Shocking. Fucking lot of charlatans.

A somewhat different take on Iran problem: the alternative to a negotiated settlement that precludes or wistfully abides a nuclear Iran is not necessarily a military conflict as people are imagining it - Tehran may have calculated "if the enfeebled West allows us the bomb, great; if not it will be because Israel attacked us and that can serve our interests just as well if not better". It's not at all a given that if Israel strikes what will immediately follow is a calamitous military adventure - a moderate but insidious response by Iran, including naturally actions by Hezbollah and Hamas, would make much more sense and still allow them to continue pursuit of nuclear ambitions. Iran will have gambled that the US will not be willing to intercede in an authoritative and defining way, from which we can infer that Iran views an American military intervention as the worst scenario as far as their interests are concerned. Seen in this light the best option - it will never happen of course, especially with Obama as president - but the best option is for the US to apply extreme pressure in form of sanctions etc with clear ultimatum that if Iran refuses to relent the US - not Israel - will take out its nuclear facilities, the logic being that all scenarios end with violent upheaval therefore best that US takes the lead in hopes of controlling outcome. There will of course be a 'cry havoc, unleash dogs of war' moment but it's very important for us - meaning The West I think- to understand that there are no good options here making it crucial we pick the best of those available. Unfortunately, as I've said, with Obama as president our best option may not even be considered.

"... is Obama naive? I doubt it... naiveté seems to be a function of ignorance and I highly doubt he's that... more likely he's predisposed to approach certain problems in much the same way a naive person would... think how an otherwise intelligent man may still believe that falling to his knees and clasping his hands together grants him the right to speak with a God... wouldn't necessarily call that naive..."

This funny - Obama and Netanyahu have their big meeting yesterday, Obama goes on about how 'peace' is the key to solving the Iran problem - and then today head of Shin Bet comes out and declares peace impossible as long as Hamas is around. I assume that was planned. Iran supports Hezbollah, Hezbollah supports Hamas - and Obama wants to claim that the key to solving the Iran problem is peace with Palestinians? This is absurd. A workable peace was undoable when conditions were favourable, like at the end of Clinton's run - now you have the near intractable nexus of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas and you're talking peace is the key to everything? Sounds so crazy you almost have to believe that either Obama is delusional or his people are so convinced that his charisma is such a game changer that Netanyahu will have no choice but to make concessions - but then what?! You still have the nexus, you still have the Fatah/Hamas split which, even if some fantasy agreement were to be reached, would fester for god knows how long afterwards - I mean this 'peace first, then Iran' talk sounds absolutely nuts to me.

CSIS has written a thorough review of Israel's options regarding military strike on Iran - I've only read the point form version of it but conclusions were pretty much what you'd expect: possible but fraught with difficulties and dangers; would require about 50 planes, and all of Israel's refueling tankers - would be largest operation ever conducted by Israeli airforce; would almost certainly have to occur before installation of new Russian air defense system; best option coming in through northern Iraq; rules out extensive use of cruise missiles since they lack bunker busting capability - so would seem to rule out any options not requiring US approval re Iraqi airspace or Israeli violation thereof; attack on actual reactor seems unlikely since, according to authors, could result in thousands of civilian deaths from exposure to air dispersed radioactive particles; Israel would have to be willing to accept a partial success since complete success a virtual impossibility given size and complexity of Iranian operations.

So - don't think this changes much concerning my take on subject. Believe Israel has known all along that best they can probably hope for is limited success and they can live with that if they feel they have to, that a partial success is still better than no success at all. CSIS tries to make point that a partial success will result in a mere delay that stokes Iran's ambitions - I'm not sure that makes any sense: if you've decided to risk attack that means you've decided that a nuclear armed Iran is the worst possible outcome and negotiations are a dead end which would mean Iran is committed regardless of international pressure or any other inhibitors thown in its way - so how would an attack that was only partially successful substantially change that dynamic? CSIS also tries to make the point that a nuclear Iran can be contained with missile defense systems and US will try and sway Israel with that argument - but again that argument seems to miss the nuance: Iran wants to use the bomb to leverage its power in the region, a scaled down redux of what USSR did in eastern Europe - only a near foolproof missile defense would counter that. CSIS does not at all seem interested in the rhetorical value of having the bomb, the boom or bust to perceptions of strength that come with it: Iran has already made it a matter of national pride, Israel a matter vital to national security - neither can back away now from the stances they've taken without suffering consequences.

Possibility could still exist that Israel was bluffing all along - but if that were the case the US would have to be in on it and nothing Obama has said or done has been in service of making an attack look viable - Gates came out and essentially ridiculed the idea of an attack just a few weeks ago - guess you could say that's all part of the con, but seems unlikely - guess Gates' statement could mean US knows an attack is not going to happen, but confounds me why you'd wanna make that public - I remain astounded that few seem to recognize that it's in US and Israeli interests to keep attack a viable option, both as concerns negotiations with Iran but also with each other - it'd be foolish to dismiss attack out of hand even if both sides believe it's not a workable option, and yet regularly hear some politician or analyst doing so. Certainly, Israel at least seems serious about keeping the possibility on the table: they just borrowed a few MIG-29s to practice combat tactics against - Iran flies MIG-29s.

Question: all these voices coming out trying to suggest some universal peace 'tween Muslims and Jews is in the offing - a lot of it coming from Jordan, but whispers all over - how much of this is really about haters of Israel sensing that the 'popularity' of Obama puts Netanyahu betwixt rock and hard place? How much of this is about those interested parties ratcheting up the pressure on Israel to make concessions or else look unredeemable? And how much of this leveraging is coming from the Obama camp?

You see why I say this could lead to disaster - if the real problem is Iran, if the real problem is that there is no poltical solution to the politics of the region, and you force Israel to make nice and accept a sham of an agreement because Obama will have extended himself so much that to not accept would rupture the US/Israeli union and unleash god knows what - well, what you're left with is either Israel violently rejecting this emasculation and taking matters into its own hands - or an empowered Iran emerging armed with nuclear weapons eyeing greedily an enfeebled Israel and an unstable Mideast still rife with age old hatreds and ripe for manipulation.

What I think I'm saying is: if you make Israel pay the price for what will amount to an appeasment of Iran you'll end up with something worse than if you had just confronted Iran in the first place.

[the question does get begged here: why not just dump Israel? Is it really worth the bother? Isn't the smart move to get on board with a nuclear Iran and let Israel dangle? Ah - there's an appealing simplicity to that - of course the US is never going to abandon Israel - but it could start drawing back which would result in a humble and therefore attenuated Israel - what's wrong with that? Well, extremists don't need the US to abandon Israel to exploit a perceived weakness; Israel ain't gonna go quietly into that good night; it's foolish to think that if you give Iran a strategic victory - and nukes combined with a weakened Israel would be a victory - it's foolish to think you'd then be able to form some mutually beneficial partnership with Iran - more likely, armed with such a strategic victory, the extremists in Iran would be raised up and the moderates pushed down, resulting in Iran forming enhanced therefore increasingly volatile relations with unsavory players such as Syria, radicals in Egypt, Shiite extremists in Iraq, Hezbolah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza - not to mention closer ties with Russia and China - in short, an appeasement of Iran likely to lead to increased instability in the Mideast and the fomenting of relations with countries that oppose American power. So, tempting as it may be to consider a post Israel future where all this ugliness is resolved, what you'd get instead I believe is a chain of events that leads to disaster - that's if you value American power and Western ideals - if you hate America and have no interest in the survival of Western civilization, then an Obama foreign policy may be just what you've been waiting for]

I find the appointment of a new CO for Afghanistan interesting - in that his expertise, his career path was defined by special operations, particularly the HVT campaign in Iraq - interesting because that outfit has been accused of using some unsavory tactics to elicit info from insurgents: how does that sit with liberals? They just sort of look the other way? Obama goes on and on about how the Bush administration was corrupted by torture and shamed America - and then promotes a general to run his war in Ahganistan who may have engaged in something resembling torture? But forget that, those allegations have not been proven - how about the tribal leaders and associated operatives that the HVT program relied on for intel and almost certainly engaged in some bad behaviour - what about that, liberals? Don't see any complicity there? no contradictions, no hypocrisy? Need more jokes from Jon Stewart about evil Darth Cheney. Assholes.

[why are you defending torture? I'm not defending torture - I'm defending the defense of torture against a naive leftist agenda - big difference. Point of fact, I'm highly skeptical re the use of extreme persuasion during interrogations - mainly for reasons that I doubt the efficacy of such, partially because I'm sympathetic to the argument but not convinced by it that we need to maintain the 'high moral ground': If truth is the first victim in war precise notions of right and wrong are next: our enemies draw strength from their brutality and are encouraged that in comparison we seem weak - which is not to argue that we must match their brutality but rather to point out that perceptions matter, not only theirs of us but ours of ourselves. Innocent people die in war but, to speak hypothetically, we don't allow anti-war types, who are motivated by a shallow sort of empathy with 'victims', a seat at the table every time a military decision is made and that is because we might as well disband the army right now if we're going to allow every necessary misfortune to be debated - in other words, if we're going to allow perceptions to be compromised to an untenable degree. So, does Obama talk torture because we are a nation of laws and must draw our strength from that? Or does he do it to satisfy a pacifist liberal agenda? To me it's quite clearly the latter - and thus why I defend the defense of torture - rather, extreme persuasion - as I've said before what Cheney sanctioned devolved into something that was demeaning, unwise, impractical and at some point verged on cruel - but was not torture]

[and for a case point in why we should fear a pacifist liberal agenda look how Obama fucked up the Gitmo question: made some hasty decisions to satisfy the lefties and now has had to reverse himself because reality stepped in and said stop being stupid - he's fucked up the torture issue in exact same way - although it's nice seeing uber lefty Pelosi wriggling on that hook - yet another example of why democrats playing lefty poltics with national security issues holds such hazards]

Ricks pisses me off again and I am compelled to respond:

Torture has two victims? Please. I suppose then one could say the fire bombing of Dresden was for all practical purposes an attempt to torture an entire population into 'giving something up' and therefore in a sense the crews of those planes and the officers who ordered the tactics were war criminals whose souls were lost to evil. If I don't believe what I'm doing is wrong then how am I to be corrupted by it? Of course I can be, that's obvious, but I won't necessarily be. I can kick in a door in Ramadi in the middle of the night and see a flash of metal in the shadows and fire instinctively and then when the lights are turned on find I've killed a harmless old woman - am I evil? I tell myself that war is an imperfect violence focused for the purposes of getting someone to do something they don't want to do and therefore I'm not evil - and essentially I'd be right. The torture question is full of flawed logic and definitions and motives on both sides.

Laws give the illusion that actions are understood, and it's a necessary illusion - but I think Kafka demonstrated just how absurd an illusion it can be. We want things to be black and white because that simplifies our choices - but the reality is the world is full of grey. As a somewhat free and open society that tends to respect the rights of individuals we have a fairly good notion of what torture is, but less so of what it isn't and it would be helpful to the debate if people would stop declaiming as if that weren't the case. Drawing and quartering? I think we can all agree that's torture - a real threat of death and disfigurement, pretty sure that's torture. Sleep deprivation? Throwing someone up against a wall? You can really sit there and say that a well meaning person who argues a difference between harsh interrogation and torture has been corrupted to evil?

The good Lt Colonel intimates a clash between Kant and Hume but doesn't pursue it - and for good reason: Hume wins. We want to believe in absolutes but reality is far too bitter a thing for that - and the reality is whoever was in charge of the White House on 9/11 - I think we can all accept at this point it was Cheney - sensed an existential threat to the very idea of America and that any show of weakness could prove fatal and from that animus you get enhanced interrogation techniques. It wasn't evil incarnate - it was a perfectly reasonable response. Flawed? Yes, of course - just as the reasoning that is repelled by it is flawed as well.

King Abdullah quoted today as saying Obama administration planning roll out of hugely ambitious Mideast peace initiative, which he claims a central role in and will involve all Muslim nations accepting the existence of Israel - and then states that if this plan fails war will be unavoidable. What? This sounds like pure, absolute insanity to me. One, Muslims are not going to come together and agree about anything - they can barely run an oil cartel for god sake - scratch that, they do seem to agree with some uniformity that Jews are evil and Americans are to blame for everything bad that happens in their fiefdoms; two, I assume Israel would view, as I do, any such monstrosity to be a set up if not actually designed to force them into a corner then regardless still resulting in such - in fact on the surface of it from what Abdullah is hinting at this looks intended to put maximum pressure on Israel to make concessions, big concessions or face ugly consequences - it smells like a trap; and three, absolutely nothing of this sort can happen as long as Iran is an outlier - hell, as long as Syria merely believes there's a chance Iran is going to go nuclear they will never agree to something like this - at least, make no good faith agreement.

I'm basing my opinions on a few random thoughts expressed by Abdullah, so - and realize he has a vested interest in glossing it a certain way - so who knows [although it would be logical to assume him making statements now is possibly part of coordinated attempt to put pressure on Israel ahead of Bibi's visit]. But if this actually comes about I will surrender up my little corner of the universe here and fully admit that apparently I know absolutely nothing about people and the dirty little ways of the world.

I do agree with Abdullah on one thing though - if such a Pax Obama is attempted and fails it will lead to war - of course I also believe that just the attempt will lead to war, no matter the results. This has very bad idea written all over it. [I thought you were in favour of war though? I'm not in favour of war - I maintain that wars are inevitable and carry an implied value and that it is foolishly naive to judge that value as consistently and irrevocably negative - there are good wars and bad wars and bad wars that turn good and good ones that turn bad - and there's a lot of dangerous nonsense in between - the fact remains that a conflict that results in Iran having nuclear weapons and Israel feeling backed into a corner will fall on the bad side of spectrum with an opposite result landing somewhere in the good].

"... my opinion of Obama is that he's a modicum of intelligence blended with an abundance of charm wrapped in a multi-racial aura that flatters the inanely myopic sympathies and fond wishes for the future of a generalized sampling of generally fatuous people... qualities that made him a very well liked professor of law who strangely seemed to have nothing of real interest to say about law... qualities that have brought him to the most powerful seat in the world and yet leave him entirely unfit to occupy it... and now, apparently, because the last occupant did such a poor job of filling it, with no one seeming to notice just how unfit he is... what, him being so charming and all..."

By way of fancifully odd interlude, interstitial conning of cold moon [a verily artificial sop would invoke Diana], Diana's waxed wane over the rough business of men:

"Can I say of her face — altered as I have reason to remember it, perished as I know it is — that it is gone, when here it comes before me at this instant, as distinct as any face that I may choose to look on in a crowded street? Can I say of her innocent and girlish beauty, that it faded, and was no more, when its breath falls on my cheek now, as it fell that night? Can I say she ever changed, when my remembrance brings her back to life, thus only; and, truer to its loving youth than I have been, or man ever is, still holds fast what it cherished then?"

Dickens at his sentimental worst or sentimental best? Both, I'd say, as it no doubt should be with such things.

"... in one sense all wars are wars of choice - only when enjoined with a subjective need do they become wars of necessity - and they always become so enjoined: America could invade Canada tomorrow for causes it deemed just and Canada would have a choice to retaliate, which, if it did, the war would then become necessary - and short. The line is so blurred it's virtually meaningless. Agincourt was a battle invoking both choice and necessity that symbolized a war that invoked both choice and necessity as one in the same thing - the whole idea of a 'just' war comes from a time when wars were a highly ritualized tool of conflict resolution the utility of which was entirely understood and accepted by both [or more] parties - choice or necessity? Just or unjust?... for great powers, all wars are wars of necessity and that necessity is a choice: in other words, to put it more crudely, use it or lose it. The second Iraq war was therefore entirely justifiable if only because we're facing a new enemy we don't know how to fight: we have to learn how to fight it. That is the albeit brutal yet logical imperative of great powers. Of course a rational people want to 'regulate' war, to give it a coherent legal framework and that 'civilizing' need is fundamental - but the fact remains, war is a beast that ultimately exists outside of such niceties and once a great power loses sight of that reality, it is doomed..."

Viewed in historical perspective, the idea that covert operations and selective bombing would force the enemy to “desist” was a fantasy. But it was a necessary fantasy if the president was to escape making what he feared would be unpopular decisions.

Said by McMaster about LBJ and failed approach to the problem of Vietnam - is it my contention that Obama will travel down the same road? Gates is no McNamara and... well, don't know who might play McGeorge Bundy here... still, I think it is my contention... although more of a notion than a soundly reasoned idea... a contributing factor to LBJ's flawed approach was a desire not to have a costly war sidetrack the big money, big government agenda of The Great Society... certainly echoes of Obama there... increasingly one does hear talk of Pakistan devolving into a Vietnam, and at a glance the similarities are a bit disturbing... with the added fun of a nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of Islamist fanatics...

"... you cry and wail and whinge about torture, bemoan America's decline into the dark, immoral abyss of treating bad people poorly, and then when a Predator drops a few tons of ordinance on cowering Afghan civilians, an action sanctioned and promoted by your precious Obama, you do cartwheels trying to rationalize, and then, awash in tears, apoloigise for it... you really need reminding that power is full of dangers and wars are ugly and consequent brutalities are the direct and indirect provenance of the prosecuting agent?... your morality is the cowardice of easy answers... at least, that's what Nietzsche might say were he alive today, in the throes of a syphilitic mind-rut and asked to comment on the controversy regarding American policy towards illegal combatants... "

Bank stress tests - what am I missing? Whole lot I imagine - not an easy subject for the unwashed, unmatriculated, uninitiated to grasp. It's clear that Obama intends to kick the banking crisis down the road with hope that improving conditions will save the day - from the people I read I gather that this is a vain hope that runs the very real risk of creating and ennabling zombie banks and thus replicating the reviled Japanese economic stagnation of the last decade. The stress tests it would seem are not going to declare any of the banks insolvent even though the IMF states that banks have about 5 trillion dollars of bad assets buried in their books - ie, they're insolvent. Instead, it looks like the stress tests are going to contend that some of the banks need several billions more in captial which will come from the gov't through various less than transparent accounting tricks like conversion of stocks etc etc and then everything will be fine - ie what we end up with are gov't controlled zombie banks. As far as I understood it the whole challenge of the banking crisis was to avoid such a thing.

I'm missing something - or they're missing something - much more disturbing thought. I suppose should certain conditions prevail that what they're doing could prove the most reasonable course, allowing banks to earn their way back from the brink of insolvency - but on the surface it looks like Obama style politics at its very worst.

update: banks are not carrying 5 trillion in bad debt - worldwide IMF estimates banks carrying about 4 trillion, but as for American banks? No one really knows - except that significantly worse than stress tests are suggesting [that banks are about 80 billion shy of adequate capitalization]. Bad enough to render tests a sham? Unknown.

Again, lots of reporting on how the Obama administration, unlike Bush, is going to be tough on Israel, is essentially going to force Israel to make concessions to accommodate a Palestinian solution etc etc - even if this is possible, and I don't think it is, but even if you manage to pressure Israel to do or agree to something that it would rather not do or agree to, I'm shocked that no one is paying attention to what the consequences would be: Israel believes without reservation that it must be strong and be seen as strong in order to survive; Iran believes there is and will increasingly continue to be a direct correlation between a decline in Israel's real and perceived strength and a rise in its own. If Israel is perceived as having been pushed in a certain direction against its will and a native understanding of its best interests to the detriment of its aggregate strength - well, say hello to my little friend - I refer to of course Newton's third law of motion.

You get 'tough' with Israel, you 'force' it to make compromises in order to suit the dubious agenda of the international community - and very likely you end up with a situation that's as bad or worse then the one you think you're avoiding. [can't you say the same thing about getting 'tough' with Iran? Yes, you can make a case - but I'm not pretending that confronting Iran comes without potential dire consequences - I'm arguing that it's idiocy to think that a chastened Israel and an appeased Iran - and Iran will look and act the winner if Israel appears to be the loser - I'm saying how the fuck can you be stupid enough to think that adds up to a happy ending? If you have two options and they both potentially lead to bad things the best of those two is the one not encumbered by delusions and wishful thinking - it would seem trite and tired to bring up 'peace in our time' incriminations - sure - but I see a cold front of Israeli realism running into a warm front of Obama 'new world' rhetoric resulting in a shit load of bad weather - this is the guy who ran off and did a celebrity tour of Europe - having accomplish precisely squat as president - was lauded like the Christ child and left having achieved nothing but that insufferable lauding - no help with Afghanistan, no agreement on finiancial crisis - a votive promise to rid the world of nuclear armaments that was substantially revised, rebuked, repudiated, ridiculed by anyone who knows anything about the subject in the weeks following - yeah, a lot of bad weather coming this way].

Two things: poll in Israel says 66% favour military action against Iran should the need arise; Rahm Emanuel states or insinuates that Obama will insist that progress on Iranian threat dependent on progress re Palestinians - as I've said before I would be shocked if Israel agreed to what Emanuel is suggesting - in fact, if I'm right on the dynamics here, even if it were possible Iran will never allow such a thing to happen - their ambitions require the leverage of a Palestinian problem - I mean, they will move towards nuclear status regardless, but unrest in the Mideast, whether in the form of Islamic militancy or a vulnerable and therefore aggresive Israel, suits their wider goals. If Israel is forced to back down viz Iran then the compensation they will demand is freedom to settle the Palestinian problem as they see fit; likewise, if Israel is compelled to move against Iran, the price they will pay is making concessions on Palestinian issue - I don't see anyway around this reasoning, Iran is the crux and I'm convinced this is exactly how Israel sees it - and yet Obama seems to want his cake and the eating thereof too. This is doomed to get ugly - and likely to demonstrate once again the historical certainty that you cannot conduct a viable foreign policy from a position of weakness.