Iran announces construction of 10 new uranium processing facilities - ok - provocation or feint? Or both? Or simply cavalier bravado? Feint - in order to throw smoke across the network of secret facilities like one revealed at Qom - also, since such a ramp up in production would seem to be overkill, new construction likely for dummy facilities whose sole purpose would be to seriously complicate any plans Israel may have concerning a military intervention. Feint/decoy makes sense I suppose.

But what would be the purpose of a provocation? True, a feint in and of itself amounts to a provocation as well - but if provocation is the main motive, to what end? Don't see it - which means it must be the feint/decoy - could it be the more bravado and disdain they show in the face of Western opposition the sweeter will be their victory when Obama eventually backs down? There's something of a logic there if one has concluded that Obama brings nothing to the table worth fearing.

Still, if we agree that it amounts to a provocation regardless of how one parses it, what would that say about the regime and how it views itself, the capabilities of its enemies and the calculations of its friends, either announced or standing coyly off stage? It's hard to come up with an answer to that question that doesn't cause worry.

I'm curious - I don't know if someone has considered this - they must have, it seems so obvious - I just don't recall reading anything addressing my concern or curiosity here - namely, with all this gaming going on between China and the US re climate change policy, emission goals etc etc, doesn't it seem likely or at least suspiciously not unlikely that China is pulling the US into a trap here, a trap that the US can't back away from without looking bad? I mean, why would China be so interested in environmental concerns? Seems a highly counter intuitive initiative on their part to me - hell, it's not an open society or transparent polity, if they say they plan to reduce emissions by 20% or whatever how will it be possible to confirm the truth of their claims? Everyone knows they lie about military expenditures, about real GDP numbers, about the true state of their banks, about public health concerns, about social unrest - we're suddenly just going to take their word on climate initiatives? Especially, when viewed objectively, it's hard to see why they'd be so interested in putting constraints on their industrial output, the very thing driving their economy? Sure, I'm a sceptic by nature and am always prepared to doubt the sincerity of somthing, but I have trouble understanding why a person wouldn't be sceptical about China's intentions here.

Of course, the problem is figuring out how luring the US into a trap that hobbles its economy is to China's benefit [pushing America increasingly towards enervating European style policy positions certainly comes to mind - social welfare, state intrusion everywhere, high taxes, sentimentality - these things are not helpful if you're America] - given short term economic concerns China trying to drag the US into some kind of statist inertia doesn't seem in their best interests - but as regards long term geo-strategic considerations? I could see how they may think that long term advantages outweigh short term disadvantages. I don't understand the parameters of the global economy well enough to figure out how everything would or could play out here - I certainly hope though that the people who do understand the fine print are as fond of scepticism as I am.

"... the question will be how much wiggle room does he leave himself - how many declarations leave themselves open to substantially different interpretations of intent - how much of what is 'promised' is subject to contingencies - already we read in the Times this morning that he'll approximate McChrystal's troops request by relying on an unrealistic expectation of increased numbers from allies - that suggests to me an announcement on Tuesday potentially compromised by significant presence of smoke and mirrors.

But to even speculate with some optimism as you do here Feaver becomes in the end essentially [to conjure evil spectre of Sarah] the putting of lipstick on a pig - Obama took so long with this decision because ultimately he has no faith in it and he has no faith in it because it suggests a world view he cannot comfortably abide - this is a man who sees himself giving grand, idealistic speeches and cavalierly pushing for a Great Society Redux during the worst economic downturn in decades - but war? C'mon.

My guess is that what we'll see on Tuesday will be the result of a lot of arm twisting by Gates and Clinton and Obama thinking that after interminable deliberation he has managed to reason out an appropriate answer - but an intellectual construct that is not supported by belief, by a faith in one's purpose, will not hold up under pressure, will not endure. It won't - and I'm guessing the Taliban knows it - they've taken their measure of our 'Professor in Chief' and they ain't goin' nowhere..."

Obama suggests in press conference today that he will announce his Afghan decision next week, adding that he 'intends to finish the job' - which seems to imply that he will either be giving McChrystal roughly what he wants - or redefining what 'getting the job done' means. It's not impossible, with his poll numbers dipping and his presidency in something of a funk, it's not impossible that he could seek to transform the narrative and go with the former - I have a hard time believing it's anything but that latter though. That it was a rehearsed answer to a planted question that tried to imply victory but in ambiguous terms leads me to believe they're trying to aggressively sell the positives of an argument fraught with negatives. Still, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they entirely surprised me here.

[yes, but, c'mon - you'd be shocked if he committed to a robust effort to 'win' the war in a manner that conformed with what the generals thought winning to mean - true, and I don't know how exactly I'll account for it if he does make such a commitment - strike that: it will definitely indicate a backroom victory by Gates and Clinton over the skeptics - I've already speculated that such is the very reason Gates thought it important to stay on as SecDef, and that Clinton has fostered a close relationship with both Gates and Petraeus is common knowledge. Still, regardless, I will definitely be shocked if there's not some significant compromise built into the plan as means to mollify the uber left.

And I maintain that it is wrong to view his unending deliberation over the question as a good thing - there's a front page article in the Post this morning basically lionizing Obama as the 'Professor in Chief' - I think this is a naive and fundamentally flawed interpretation of what has happened here - this is a type of decision and responsibility completely outside of his ideological comfort zone - he tried to subdue it with reason but it is not the type of thing that reason can control - he only gets to where apparently he is with a lot of arm twisting from Gates and Clinton - because the answer to the question is pretty obvious: a 'loss' in Afghanistan will generate serious consequences for years down the road and therefore you have to try and 'win' - now, of course there is much to debate concerning how to go about it and I've certainly expressed much skepticism re COIN - but I don't think that's what he was debating, I think it's much more likely he was looking for some credible way to extricate himself from the mess and that Gates and Clinton eventually convinced him that there wasn't - remember, if six months from now things are going badly and the left is feeling betrayed and loudly expressing it, the lauding in the Post as 'Professor in Chief' will prove cold comfort indeed - reasoning and intellect can only take you so far here and it's utterly naive if not delusional to believe otherwise - if Obama has settled his own fears by imaging he's reasoned out the 'right' answer I would expect to see his confidence in the rightness of that answer to quickly fade and his commitment to the 'Afghan problem' to fade with it should things get ugly. I expect the Taliban is thinking the very same thing - ergo, watch for things to get ugly.

After all - he made very quick decisions on the stimulus plan and health care overhaul, both of which seem poorly constructed with the latter also being unpopular with a majority of voters - no endless deliberation there even though those things will have a much more immediate effect on the population's sense of well being - why? - because the emotional elements are already defined for him - he's on ideological terra firma there - but war requires the marshaling of much intellect because he has no ingrained instinct to rely on with such issues - people who see this as a good thing are fooling themselves because an intellectual commitment requires an emotional commitment to sustain it - without the re-enforcing component of faith in ones purpose the intellectual scaffolding will collapse under pressure]

"... of course, the interesting thing about asymmetric warfare is that it's asymmetric... I mean, it doesn't attempt to match the destructive power of the thing it opposes but rather degrade it on an emotional level... to which I answer, subtend the regressive emotion with a more proactive one and utterly destroy the motherfuckers..."

This decision to conduct civilian trials for a group of the worst offenders from Gitmo, including 9/11 mastermind KSM, is troubling - as in it doesn't seem to make any sense, unless one accepts conservative taking point that this is just a way to put the Bush administration on trial by proxy for the purposes of mollifying the uber left - the argument I guess being that in a civilian trial all the torture and other supposed abuses of due process endorsed by Bush will perforce be put on trial too.

If that's the reason then of all the bad decisions Obama has made so far this may go to the top of the list because from what I've read there seems to be a plethora of downside here and very little if any upside - the rationalization that this somehow sends a good message to the wider world viz American ideals of justice and openness seems ridiculous seeing as how KSM has already been prejudged and the outcome predetermined making it but a show trail which, for my money, would seem to discredit the system, not redeem it - hell, Obama himself went public yesterday with the pledge that KSM would certainly be executed which, as one wag put it, so sullies the jury pool that you'll be able to traverse it by walking on the bloated corpses.

Throw in not only the security concerns for New York, but the very real national security concerns since, if KSM chooses to act as his own attorney, he has the right to see all the evidence against him - the fact you're giving a soap box to the guy which, if he's as clever as I imagine he is, he'll be able to manipulate to his heart's content - the truly vexing problem of blurring the line between civilian and military forms of justice to the detriment of the latter - if OBL is captured tomorrow, will he have to be read his Miranda rights? will he have constitutionally protected right to remain silent? will a chain of evidence need to be secured? if we deny him a civilian trail, how can that now be legitimately justified? Lindsey Graham, in questioning the AG yesterday, brought to light two troubling realities: one, breaking down the barrier between military and civilian justice creates real problems on the battle field when it comes to dealing with illegal combatants; and two, the AG had no good answers for the senator - which says to me they haven't really thought this through - which seems to lend credence to the idea that their motivation is strictly ideological, placate the uber left.

I'm hardly an expert on jurisprudence [well, I'm hardly an expert on anything, truth be told] - but I've read nothing that convincingly suggests this is anything other than a reckless and utterly misguided act of blind partisanship that plays fast and loose with real issues regarding national security. 

... you're playing at semantics, being way too delicate - Obama owned this war the moment he decided to run for president - hell, the moment he decided to juice up his political ambitions by opposing the Iraq war he owned it because at that moment he was letting it be known that he understood 'the big questions' and was willing and able to make the big decisions thereof - he compounded this avowal and commitment and responsibility by embracing the war in Afghanistan during the election - if he didn't understand the nature of that responsibility or didn't care to examine it too closely for fear such an examination might undermine the political utility of looking like a guy who could make 'the big decisions', well, who's to blame for that?

The great unknown about Obama [although personally I thought the answer quite obvious] was what would happen when he had to make a difficult decision that fell outside of his ideological comfort zone. Pass a leviathan of a stimulus package, easy! Pursue massive health care reform - can make that choice over breakfast - those things all nicely comply with his ideological imperatives. But war? The cold hard realities of foreign policy? The brutal, visceral cunning of power, of force against force?

Obama's apologists would have that this endless debate is a good thing but I say it's a manifestation of fear - there's no safe refuge of ideological purity here, no quick satisfaction of acting in accordance with a naive world view that has served him well til now but is a template that no longer fits the harsh realities on the ground. He's afraid and wants to believe that an endless appeal to reason or the vanities of an intellectual inertia will subdue the demons waiting in the shadows, will free him from the curse of action.

Obama can deal with health care reform not going as he may have planned because the ideological satisfaction will still be there to sustain him. But a war decision that doesn't go as he would hope? Or a complication or confrontation on the global stage that resists his charms and insists in acting against his wishes? We've seen his response: every foreign policy gesture he has made since taking office has telegraphed a preference for compromise and accommodation - has telegraphed weakness. He did try to play tough with Israel but even backed down from that - wisely, as far as I'm concerned, but still.

His apologists will loudly declaim against such a portrayal, and obviously the man could still prove me wrong - but until facts emerge that suggest otherwise I'll maintain that America has not elected another Jimmy Carter, they've elected someone worse.

My catty response to Walt, a real lefty foreign policy guy, who wrote a critique of COIN [which I myself have certainly done] based on assumptions that were absurdly simplistic. I guess this is his way of saying that Obama wouldn't be making such a mess of his erstwhile commitment to the Afghan effort if there were no Afghan effort to make a mess of - ie if he's making mistakes that's only because Bush created an environment where those mistakes could be made, therefore, in a sense, the mistakes don't really exist. I can't wait to tell my ex-wife that I don't owe her alimony because if we had never been married I could never have cheated on her.

A remarkably fatuous argument. Surely it was constructed as part of an ironical lampoon of the FP analysis community, yes?

So, if I follow the logic of your thinking, if we hadn't foolishly invaded Iraq in 2003, but, given Saddam's predilections and the endemic complications of the region, we had been required to do so a few years latter, of course only in accordance with principles you judged legitimate, that that war, because it wasn't conceived by fools, would have gone swimmingly and no insurgency would have dared arise. In other words, insurgencies only happen to bad people.

Likewise, again, if I grasp your line of reasoning here, if we hadn't screwed the pooch in Tora Bora but rather had delivered unto OBL on those windswept rocks the full reckoning he deserved, then Islamic radicalism and its necessary dependency on asymmetric warfare and adjunct affiliation with Taliban-like fundamentalism would have vanished with him. In other words, jihad and its appurtenances only happen to bad people.

I now understand your enthusiastic embrace of Obama: the comfort of history and human nature re-imagined not to express the things that are but rather the things we wish had been. It's all so simple.

In response to Niall Ferguson essay on how the current economic crisis will perforce cause a change in the rules governing relations between China and US viz dollar valuations and trade and competition etc I ask, possibly in the manner of 'what I know simply, I simply don't know' - is it true that if China stops pegging its dollar, allowing it to rise against US currency and thusly supposedly mitigating trade imbalance between the two countries - won't Chinese consumers then be required to purchase American products and services which in turn will require a lifting of restrictions on the citizenry and engender a need for an embrace of Western values concerning individual rights and freedoms etc etc much in the manner of post war Japan? Since China has benefited a great deal from an artificially valued currency and fears the consequences of liberalization, doesn't that indicate a conflict is brewing here? Simply can't know limited as I am to only knowing it simply - seems like a problem to me though. I imagine there are several reasons why post war Japan was willing to adopt western values - but certainly one of them was that their past had been significantly discredited - can we really expect any significant liberalization in China without a similar discrediting?

Obama bows to Japan's emperor - really bows, gets way down there, practically prostrates self - the optics of it are certainly ugly, and if I had a relative who died on Iwo Jima or Okinawa et al trying to root out a fanaticism embodied by the emperor I'd certainly have trouble keeping the breakfast down waking up to that photo - but aside from the embarrassing optics, is it right to infer a darker more disturbing presence behind the gesture? Can it be seen as emblematic of Obama's view of America and its place in the world? Does it demonstrate an ingratiating naiveté about what it means to be a global power in a dangerous world and the bedrock upon which democratic principles and Western values rest?

Conservatives obviously think so - livid, shamed, repulsed pretty much sums up what I'm hearing from the right regarding the photo - and one cannot deny that since taking office the message Obama has sent out to the world, either explicitly in the Muslim apology speech, or implicitly in various other speeches and actions [Afghanistan, Iran, missile defense, the F-22 etc etc] that telegraphed a chastened America, a humbled America, an America in retreat, an America no longer exceptional or fit to unilaterally lead like-minded nations - the message he has sent out is that America under him will be governed by ideals and priorities possibly not in keeping with or commensurate to its status and role as a great and paramount power.

That may be to put it too harshly - but essentially accurate all the same I think. Still, that being said, I'm not so sure the photo can be taken as a definite expression of this new American persona under Obama - it could just be him trying to impress the Japanese in a way that his handlers thought astute - in which case I'd say their motive may have been reasonable but the way they pursued it was entirely misguided. It's an ugly photo that verges on disturbing.

[it's not possible, is it - is it? - that they stage these things on purpose in order to rile up the right wing base knowing full well that the more animated and vexed the republican extremes are the easier it will be to pass Obama off as a moderate?]

My immediate reaction to Obama administration announcing it is now going to adopt an attitude of budgetary discipline after indulging in a near Bacchanalia of spending? I'd say that operatives are so convinced of the efficacy of Obama's putative charms that they have come to believe that good policy is merely the result of effective stagecraft - that no matter how stupid, wrong-headed, ill-advised, ill-considered, ideologically tendentious, shamefully superficial, cynically preened, pandering, driven by a shallow concern for optics something they may do may be they don't care - they obviously believe that as long as they can get Obama up in front of a camera to declare solemnly that whatever he chooses to do must be right and good and beyond reproach then enough suckers will buy into it to indeed make it appear to be exactly that.

"... personally, he's lauded for having masterful political skills but what I see comes across as superficial and vain... though I'm entirely aware that the two states need not be mutually exclusive... but I just don't think the man gives a good speech... the delivery is too studied, the language over wrought, the aesthetics too self conscious... it's as if Pericles, following the success of the funeral oration, had tailored every subsequent speech after it to the effect that his style became cloying and mawkish, with the original as consequence being demeaned and drained of value... thankfully, Thucydides was a better writer than that..."

Former General who was once in charge of Afghanistan and presently is US ambassador to that wretched place has come forward - rather, it has been made known that he has strongly advised Obama that he thinks an upping of troops to be a bad idea. A resource I trust says, and I guess it makes sense, that the secret counsel was leaked by someone in the White House - not likely a military operative loyal to McChrystal and Petraeus out to get Eikenberry [the general] for opposing their plan - Eikenberry's position as ambassador now probably untenable since in leaked cables he shat all over Karzai in particular and the whole Afghan gov't in general - no, the suspicion is it was leaked by someone opposed to an Afghan surge who either wanted to put pressure on Obama or, more likely as far as I'm concerned, did so as means of preparing the ground of public opinion for a rejection of McChrystal and Petraeus by Obama. Regardless, the consensus seems to be that the leak will serve only to make a bad situation worse.

There's an alternative theory that Eikenberry leaked the material himself in order to short dick McChrystal - apparently they have a jaundiced relationship - and promote a plan of his own that accentuates more non-military aid to Afghanistan - in which case I guess he would be the one trying to sway Obama's position with public pressure, not some insider [I was thinking Rahm baby]. Remember, McChrystal, or someone close to him, leaked his recommendations in a similar attempt one assumes to pressure Obama - it appears someone figured turn around was fair play - but to what end and with what consequences?

If Obama himself is the source of this end around in attempt to curry favour with a public that may be troubled by a break with the generals - and if indeed the end result of the ploy is a bad situation has been sorely aggravated - well, then my prediction that Obama and the military could be on a collision course starts to look plausible. If, on the the other hand, Obama had nothing to do with it, that it was Eikenbarry acting alone or someone close to Obama [like Emanuel] who went rogue thinking it was a clever maneuver - does that then mean Obama has lost control of the process? I once hypothesized that I could see an over matched Obama bringing an academic-like inertia to difficult policy decisions, that when action and cold calculation were required regarding a decision fraught with peril and representing a threat to his ideological purity and the well crafted persona thereof, I speculated that faced with such a dilemma he would seek refuge in trying to reason away the unpleasantness, burying the uncompromising facts in endless debate until ambitious underlings stepped forward and settled the issue for him - could that be what's happening here?

Of course it's impossible to know if what's happening is part of a deliberate strategy or the result of a dysfunctional process - but reagrdless I think it's safe to say that increasingly eyes are narrowing and brows are furrowing on the military side of things.

Max Boot over at Contentions shares my bewilderment cum despair [rather more appropriately since he's someone and I'm not - I share his]:

One would think that the merits of this position would have been hashed out long ago (like, say, back in March, when the results of the last Afghan policy review were announced) and that President Obama would have concluded by now that we can’t simply write off Afghanistan because of the “corruption and ineffectiveness” of its government. But, no, Eikenberry’s cables seem to have landed with the impact of a mortar round in the White House and, if leaks are to believed, they have further reinforced the president’s tendency toward hesitation and doubt.
It does not exactly inspire confidence to read this account of the latest NSC meeting, from the New York Times:

A central focus of Mr. Obama’s questions, officials said, was how long it would take to see results and be able to withdraw.
“He wants to know where the off-ramps are,” one official said.

So the president is already looking to leave Afghanistan before he has even committed more forces? He’s more interested in an exit strategy than a strategy for success? What a terrible message to send to our troops and what a heartening message to send to our enemies.

It’s hard to know, of course, if this is an accurate reflection of what the man in the Oval Office is thinking — or simply a reflection of what the aides who are providing all these quotes for the media are thinking. Whatever the case, this bespeaks an extraordinarily chaotic and undisciplined White House decision-making process, with the president’s most senior advisers playing out their disagreements in public even after Gen. Stanley McChrystal had been chastised for making his own views known.

Although there is clearly a liberal bias in the media, and an adjunct adoration of the Obama child following close behind - indeed, each is fuel to the other's flame - although this is clear, I tend to avoid commenting on it because such seems a bit petty - a lot of the vitriol on the right regarding it comes off sounding like small minded excuse mongering - I tend to want to believe the bias is beside the point and not worthy of scorn, even though one could easily imagine scenarios where that decidedly would not be true.

But then an example so brazen jumps out at you and starts you thinking maybe you've entirely underestimated the insidious nature of it - case in point: Anita Dunn resigns as White House communications director, the same Anita Dunn who in a summer speech extolled the virtues of Mao's teachings and then tried to pass this praise off as a bad joke gone awry - I read about her resignation on CNN's website - they chose not to mention in any way whatsoever why she's gone, instead simply quoting her as saying 'it was never my intention to stay long'. That's a pretty blatant tailoring of the news to suit a political agenda - or is it simply a business agenda spilling over into a political one?

CNN has fallen to the bottom of the news ratings pile and consequently have increasingly slanted leftward in an attempt to gain market share - it's embarrassing, unseemly, possibly insidious - but is it dangerous? And at what point can one distinguish a business imperative from a politically biased one?  [is there a consoling irony in a private media company selling its soul for market share by suppressing truth re socialist Obama's Mao loving operative in order to gain favour with Dear Leader partisans in hopes they'll grease wheels of capitalism by choosing Coke over Pepsi? Ah, there's a twisted something in there - don't know about salubrious effects of irony]

Ricks, and many of his readers, parried my thrust and thusly went my riposte:

Well, Mr Ricks, I entirely disagree. I read you often at the Post and read your books as well because, even though one could sense a bias influencing your writing, it was sufficiently hidden away, which allowed me to suspend judgment long enough to give you the benefit of the doubt and properly consider your point of view. I don't read you much anymore because your prevailing 'sentiments', as Zathras would have it, are too forward and consequently get in the way - but I suppose if you're only writing to please the people already predisposed to share your opinion then a gauze of sentiment is not an issue - in fact, for the Zathras-like out there in the mawkish blogsphere, it's no doubt a necessity.

Personally, if I read Descartes, I accept he's highly motivated to prove the existence of a God, but as an agnostic I'm not going to give his Meditations the time of day if he can't win my trust that his arguments will be fair and evenhanded. I understand you Obamaphiles are anxious to demonstrate the godliness of Dear Leader, but still I wonder how it is you expect your devotion to be taken seriously by nonbelievers when you can't even proffer a simple but legitimate criticism of the man without at the same time feeling the need to apologize for it as if you feared a fall from grace.

Yet another rebuke of Ricks - don't know why this guy bothers me so much, seems he's come to symbolise for me the unhealthy nexus of Obama hagiography and press bias - suppose because I used to read him a lot in early days of wars when he was at the Post - latest offense: tries to upbraid Obama for endless debate of Afghanistan policy but can't bring himself to do so without offering salve of "but I still love you!" Unseemly shit. 

Still an Obama fan? One can argue he has failed in all his first five foreign policy tests: bungled response to putative coup in Honduras; naive approach to Iran; mishandling of missile defense in Poland; confusion and mixed signals viz Israel; a credibility undermining farce with Afghanistan [has anyone in the Oval Office read Galula on the importance of not showing a weakness that may cause a target population to question your commitment if you want a COIN strategy to work?].

But I'm not going to dwell on Obama's many failings. My beef with you Ricks is why do you feel the need or think it's legitimate to make known your political bias and declare which insufferable pol you're a 'fan' of? Ostensibly, you're an analyst, you're supposed to be objective - if your opinion is to have any value whatsoever one has to be able to believe it's not vitiated by a bias! What is wrong with you people?

One is either a well reasoned commentator or a political hack, you can't be both. Of course people have their sympathies, but you wanna be taken seriously as a critic of something you better make an effort to keep yours stifled - you certainly don't proudly proclaim like a giddy school girl what a fan you are of the Obama - you should be bloody well embarrassed for saying something like that.

I remember thinking when the BBC welcomed that anti-immigration racial extremist on their most popular political talk show that it's too bad the guy's a bit of a nut job cause not everything he's saying is nuts - and then I remember thinking but of course you have to be an extremist nut job to say these things because no mainstream politician would dare say these things - and then I remember thinking that that's the real problem here, isn't it? Not the nut job per se but the fact that everyone's too busy being outraged to consider the possibility that maybe the guy is making some good points?

Well, sure enough, polls show that a significant portion of the British electorate weren't too busy acting outraged to listen since many seemed to agree with him, in part at least - meaning, yes, the real news was being missed by politically correct pundits and politicians: a significant number of non-nut job native born Englanders are not happy with immigration policy.

And of course not soon after the poll release you then get the Labour Immigration minister admitting that mistakes have been made - but, and this is interesting, only by referencing unemployment problems - in other words, decidedly avoiding the 'clash of cultures' question - in other words, out of fear or political correctness or under the influence of a blinding liberal ideology, they chose to interpret the poll results in a way that explicitly attempted to avoid what may be the most pressing and significant question raised by the poll: does England, and all of western Europe for that matter, have a Muslim problem?

I don't know the answer to that question - I do know that it is a legitimate question and that it's curious if not telling how anxious some are to avoid asking it.

Do I have a point other than finding it 'curious'? Well... probably that we're being told that in order to get along with foreign cultures you need to respect them, but isn't that putting the cart before the horse? Isn't that to falsely acclaim an idealised notion of the nature of open societies, of liberal democracies, over a more reality based notion of such? ie isn't it the foreign culture's responsibility to accept, to adopt, to respect the tenets guiding our way of life before they can hope for respect in return? And when a foreign culture is governed by an ideology that resists change, rejects such an acceptance, don't you have a problem? There are no Athens in Islam, no Romes, no Magna Cartas, no revolutions Glorious, French or American - when Islam moves it steps backwards, not forwards. Of course, on a pragmatic level, it's all about numbers and a problem only becomes a problem when the numbers become too big to ignore - but isn't it naive to think that there's nothing wrong with a Western Europe that will be 20% Muslim by 2050? [possibly the tactful, more respectable way to put this is to ask: if you have a large Muslim population and a significant portion of that population is frustrated by their lives in the West and come to blame the West for that frustration and as a consequence openly oppose integration according to Western norms while adhering to a religion that not only endorses and validates such an opposition but is apt to preach that only the violent overthrow of the offending infidels can effectively ease the pain of association with them - well, then, isn't that a problem? Seems like a problem]

What I find curious is how Western Civilization [to speak in general terms] seems to want to act as if it's ashamed of itself, as if there's something wrong or inappropriate with thinking that there is no parallel offered by the species to match that line traced in history from Athens to Washington. Are we doomed now to belittled ourselves by jumping back and forth between arrogance and acquiescence until energy and motive are lost and we fade away? Extremes on the right were outraged by Obama's Muslim 'apology tour' of the Mideast while extremes on the left cheered it as if on the cusp of a new age - the great mass in the middle sat on hands, shrugged shoulders, smiled weakly, mouthed platitudes, watched TV, fell asleep. Must mean something - or does it? An alarmist then, am I? I want there to be a ghost in the cellarage, calling out crimes unseen. Hamlet, I am thy father's spirit, doomed for a certain time to walk the night.

Ozymandias complex - fear the lone and level sands stretching far away...

Given poor election results which seem to indicate independents moving away from democrats in droves, if Obama wanted to moderate, migrate to a definitive centre a la Clinton, could he? His election was a mirage, a fantasy narrative based on illusion and hyperbole, the result of a gullible and profoundly ill informed electorate suffering from Bush fatigue and reaching out into the darkness for relief, for something new. He moves to the centre, a place that I believe is not at all amenable or propitious viz his rather superficial talents, that may mollify independents but then I think the founding illusion of his presidency is undone or at least marginalized thus exposing a central weakness since a move right will leave his base feeling betrayed, disheartened and potentially hostile: if the founding illusion is sullied and his base abandons him what's left? Clinton could move to the middle because that essentially is where he came from - he didn't owe his political fortunes to the uber left, he won the election running on bread and butter issues, and as a democratic white governor of a southern state the pragmatism of moderation was pretty much in his political DNA. Obama is about as far removed from those conditions as you can get: given his predilections and sympathies I don't see how the fanciful narrative that sustained his presidential run could survive a move to the middle.

Not that Obama is doomed, no, many turns left in the road - but I fixated rather early on the central problem for him: the enthusiasms that carried him into the office were either fed by the vain and illusory hopes of the ultra left or governed by a wishful thinking amongst the electorate in general - what would happen when reality came crashing down on those enthusiasms? We don't have a clear answer to that question yet, but his highly partisan and doctrinaire pursuit of health care reform, his almost flippant willingness to spend money and raise taxes and his dilatory and as far as I'm concerned misguided if not indeed incoherent approach to the twin evils of Iran and Afghanistan and the whole Mideast problem in general seem to be suggesting that the scepticism of non believers like myself was not entirely misplaced.

Studies show that over the last 20 years the number of Americans willing or interested in or not entirely opposed to the idea of serving in the military has fallen sharply - also shown is that of that dwindling pool of candidates the number who are in fact eligible or capable of serving has also fallen sharply - listed causes for disqualification: poor education, outright stupidity, drug use, criminal records - and most damning of all, obesity - the obesity rate among the most desirable age demographic for military service has risen from 12% twenty years ago to 23% today - from report I read a recruitment officer is quoted as being shocked by the number of candidates coming in to enlist who can't even manage one push-up.

Distressing information - I wonder how long before America needs to institute a peace time draft in order to ensure the most powerful military in the world stays the most powerful military in the world? If the culture keeps spitting out a combination of effete, America-hating Europhile liberals, sloven fatties and drugged up high school dropouts can a crisis really be that far removed?

Sidebar - someone must have looked into why people enlist - unemployment, lack of opportunities in hometowns, to pay for education no doubt remain near top of the list - but someone must have looked into contributing cultural incentives - God, love of country, a yearning for adventure that is unique - and likewise culturally induced disincentives - laziness and physical degradation, sure, but also contempt for authority, a growing discomfort with the ideas of force and power and military necessity, a disregard for values commonly associated with patriotism, a splintering of social cohesion and the sense of a unifying national identity - things of this nature. Someone must have done a study like this - I'd be curious what such a study indicated - and be curious to know how political ideology or bias factored in.

Of course it's now taken as a received truth to equate the democrats with a weakening of the military imperative - and possibly for good reason [a recent bipartisan report suggesting Obama's national security team is a mess - that the president has given no guidance to national security matters and the administration seems to be at a loss doesn't help the perception that they lack military bona fides] - but what I'm thinking specifically here is how the foreign policy gestures Obama has made since taking office - apologizing to Muslims for the supposed sins of American hubris, telling the Europeans that there's no such thing as American exceptionalism, shying away from a show of strength in Afghanistan and replacing it with an enervating intellectualism - even, I might add, cavalierly laying all blame for current economic crisis on Wall Street and big business and therefore by inference indicting capitalsim and the American way even though that does not paint an accurate picture of all the contributing factors - I'm wondering how this general ambivalence to the ideal of America and the utility of the projection of American power in the world trickles down and impacts not only the willingness of able candidates to serve. to bear that burden, but also, with possibly more cancerous consequences, impacts the willingness of the abiding society to honour and laud the principles upon which the military stands?

In short I guess what I'm wondering is how do you maintain the greatest military in the world if the population increasingly is of the opinion that the country and the ideals that ostensibly motivate it are no longer great or of especial importance? This is no doubt to put it too simply if not crudely but if China increasingly believes it is and deserves to be a super power, an elite nation, special - and America increasingly believes that such formulations are meaningless and not conducive to leading a happy and contented life - in other words, is increasingly sympathetic of a European view of reality - then China wins, no?

"... sure, there's an arrogance to wealth and power, an accompanying hubris... but there's also a hubris nestled in weakness, the self regard of victim-hood... one's idealogical bias is often a reflection of this search for the 'perfect' self and thusly the exercise of skepticism towards all claims and pleas is strongly advised... but if forced to choose I'll almost always take the arrogant conservative over the aggrieved liberal..."