This populist reasoning roused in support of the bank tax and repeated again in the SOTU speech last night is annoying, galling even, no? I don't necessarily disagree with elements of the bank tax or with certain aspects of it that may prove sensible, but this populist bullshit that fat cat bankers should be made to payback the honest taxpayers who bailed them out is nonsense - one, the way Obama is touting the tax suggests its main purpose is to continue an anti-big business scapegoating of bankers and I don't see how that's good for the economy; and two, the money will not be going to pay down in any substantial way some nebulous debt owed the taxpayer but rather is just a shake down of big money that at best puts a small dent in the fiscal profligacy of a liberal agenda, the real culprit here [well, that's to overstate things a bit, but Obama has been spouting anti-big business, anti-rich 'special interests' since he came to office as if the public and the gov't had nothing at all to do with the financial crisis and I think in a deep recession where confidence in the business environment is shot, where major newspapers are running headlines that ask 'is this the end of capitalism?', I think to throw oil on that fire is/was utterly foolish - as well I think that an anti-business, pro-gov't intervention prejudice inspired the muddled incoherence of the stimulus package, a misbegotten bastard child that right from the get go contributed to the perception, among taxpayers and the business community, that the system was coming undone - and then the blind arrogance of throwing a monstrous and monstrously expensive health care reform bill on top of that? - yeah, I don't think it's out of line to say the profligacy of a liberal agenda is much more of a problem here than fat cat bankers - which of course is not to suggest there wasn't a serious breakdown in the business model - I'm just saying the liberal approach to a correction has often done more harm than good].

[update: in keeping with a delusional conceit of mine that imagines myself as being out in front of things in general WSJ publishes op-ed basically making same point as me, that this populist cage rattling over big money is shallow, disingenuous and counter-productive - writer alluding to FDR who she claims tried the same myopic tactic in the 30s only to watch business continue to lie dormant with big money sitting on the sidelines, at least until WWII came along to scare everyone straight - don't know how true that is]

Reasonably good essay in Jerusalem Post regarding Obama's naive approach to foreign policy which got my attention because the writer makes point I tried to make several months ago and which Obama apologists seem to be in utter denial about - namely, that Obama's personality-centric 'outreach' to problem nations seems to want to believe or assume that their objectives and policies are based on feelings that can be swayed and won over rather than interests that exist outside of an emotional/rhetorical context and need to be countered and contained by a forceful resolve:

With nothing to show for his efforts, Obama's continued belief in his ability to pacify adversaries by personal appeal is as delusional as it is dangerous. Nations don't have personal friends; they have interests. And American interests are not advanced by presidential groveling, but by creating the right mix of carrots and sticks to induce desired behavior.

Obama's willingness to sacrifice embattled allies to appease hostile regimes ultimately weakens America. As Bernard Lewis has said: "A nation can make few mistakes worse than this: to be harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend."

Link from Marginal Revolution:

There was a good (not on-line) FT article on this topic yesterday.  It suggested the following:
1. Chinese tend to "roam the web like a huge playground," whereas Americans and Europeans use it more as a giant library.
2. Chinese users are more likely to use the web for entertainment and less for business, relative to Europeans.
3. Chinese users are younger and less educated.
4. Chinese users don't like to type ("Typing is a pain in Chinese") and thus they use the mouse much more for navigation.
5. "Most portals have reacted by filling their pages with hundreds of colourful links competing for attention -- creating a cluttered and disorderly view to the western eye but making life easier for Chinese users."

All these aspects of the Chinese on-line beast are interesting and probably deserve analysis and extrapolation - but what first struck me is that Chinese users don't like to type - this tied in with essay I read recently of English as the lingua franca of the world and how this is unlikely to change given the humble charms, natural utility and pliant ease of the language which allows users both sophisticated and simple from diverse cultures to access it with great effect - whereas something like the Chinese language is so arcane and convoluted and needlessly complex that it was virtually nothing but a clumsy tool for the average citizen that overtly signified status and class until being simplified - imagine a language that needs to be officially simplified by a bureaucracy so that the average citizen can make somewhat coherent use of it! - but apparently not simplified enough to allow for adaptation to something as uncomplicated as QWERTY [this amounts to Western arrogance, no? Possibly - still in essence true though - or true enough?].

Also ties in with a photo essay I saw that profiled a rebellious underground youth music scene in Beijing that was basically recreating the British punk movement of the 70's [yet more Chinese usurpation?] - but what struck me was how the posters advertising these concerts were of course written in Chinese but the names of the bands were all written in English.

Causes me to wonder if in the coming war between China and America, whether it be virtual or real, cold or hot, if what decides it in the end may oddly turn out to be language and all the dynamics and bonds and attributes implied, signified, imported, franchised and sanctioned thereof. [might do well to remember the context in which lingua franca flourished, ie the decline of Rome [meaning what exactly? since we assume America is Rome here] - and how the nature of the Chinese language may or obviously does serve the ends of an authoritarian regime]

Three dovetailing [well, to me they dovetail] China stories: the successful and politically pointed test of an anti-ballistic missile system by China [pointed because it came right after US congress ok'd sale of Patriot missile batteries to Taiwan] even though China [and Russia] have maintained for years that such technology is bad and should not be pursued and have bitched and complained about and lobbied hard against America's attempts to perfect the technology but now, surprise surprise, we see they've obviously been working on the technology themselves all along; Google calling foul on China for cyber attack - which Google seems to be inferring was gov't sponsored - that not only attempted to hack gmail accounts of Chinese dissidents and their sympathizers around the world but also attempted to pilfer protected intellectual property, namely source codes - Google is threatening to pull out of the Chinese market [possibly only as a business tactic] unless China agrees to liberalize censorship restrictions and I'm guessing commit to greater transparency when it comes to following the rule of law viz intellectual property rights etc etc [although one assumes that's more of an issue for the WTO to take up]; and a story on China's attempt to cultivate a commercial jet industry and the failure of their burgeoning industrial might to master the sophisticated manufacturing and engineering skills required to develop such a business and how Boeing and Airbus are reluctant to help out because they don't trust China viz respecting rights regarding proprietary technology - but fears also that China will push ahead anyway and heavily subsidize a domestic airline industry regardless of the planes not being equal to foreign brands and how this may lead to one of two things - a viscous trade war, or Boeing and Airbus waiving their concerns so as not to lose out on the huge Chinese market - ie the West compromising its security by selling off its technological know how because it just can't say no to the profits waiting to be had in China [profits that assume that China just won't play nice until technology firmly in hand and then squeeze Boeing and Airbus out anyway by offering huge incentives for Chinese carriers to buy Chinese built jets no matter if the quality matches or even comes close to matching the foreign competition - the moral of the story being, one of the morals of the story being China having so much confidence in the allure, the siren song of its vast market that it will feel it can bend or abuse or exploit to its own advantage the rules governing fair business practices in the free but benighted West as much as it bloody well wants to and the West will foolishly comply until the point where it's too late and we're in too deep and have no choice but to comply].

So, the Google thing. This from an article in FP by one Jordan Calinoff:

In a country well-known for copying and mass-producing the ideas and products of other countries, from automobiles to movies, a new economic tool has been invented: an insidious, uniquely 21st-century form of protectionism. 

There have been many conflicting opinions regarding Google's China move - Google continues to claim it's all about them taking the high road, they wanted to give China a chance to play nice, they reluctantly but with all good intentions agreed to censor their search engine in hopes of this being a first step towards a more enlightened middle kingdom but China chose to stab them in the back and so they're doing the noble thing and walking away. Seems not a lot of people are buying this. Some wonder if Google actually thinks it can by applying pressure get a better deal in China; some think Google was on its way out anyway and was just looking to mine some excellent PR out of it; some think the hack on the source code was worse than Google is letting on and it caused them to realize they were being played for suckers by the Chinese - the human rights angle is just a nice cover story. The article quoted above falls into the latter opinion but takes it much further - in short, that China is engaged in a concerted and deliberate effort to lure businesses to China, copy or outright steal their intellectual property - in this case software applications, internet utilities and services - and then force the originating companies out of its marketplace so the state can then dominate, not only as a money making machine but also as an organ of control over the population - you enjoy the fruits of the tree of freedom by pilfering the tree - why go to the bother of growing one yourself, especially since they only seem to grow in democratic soil. The author is right, it's insidious, and if true the West is insane to be applauding Google for its noble gesture.

Given that, and it's how I essentially see it - China got what they wanted out of Google and are happy to see them go and will not fret the bad press - Google got played and is milking 'human rights' in order to get something positive out of their gamble - given that, needs no explanation then to see how the commercial jet industry story dovetails with this, maybe spice it up with some national security concerns tossed in - and of course will be interesting to see if stories like these feed a growing or impending or nascent backlash against China's unfair practices by multi-national corporations who may start to fear just what kind of beast is being created in China with their help - the potential profits are seductive, but what are the odds China will overplay its hand or make some other consequential miscalculation? - and let's not forget a popular uprising by voters in the West whose angst politicos will have no choice but to attend to.

As for the BMD test, well... sauce for the goose, as they say - although let me add that it relates well to two points I'm fond of making: one, that those who clamour for a dramatic reduction or outright abolition of nuclear arms are insane - you will never be able to trust your opponents enough to make such a thing possible - never - and there will never be any technology that can guarantee compliance and compliance would absolutely need to be guaranteed - so Obama and his no nukes cohorts really need to shut up on that issue - nukes will only decline or disappear when they are made irrelevant or ineffective by some other development in military or defense technology - and so; two, for those who contend nukes make large scale war, especially between great powers, obsolete - you guys are making way too broad of an assumption - given the history of the species it's much more likely that we will develop a workable and efficient defense or counter measure against nukes that will make them largely ineffectual or at least relatively so than that competing powers will no longer feel compelled to go to war.Which is not to suggest that such wars are inevitable but rather to say that it's a grave error to make sweeping predictions regarding some future state of affairs. The example of the long bow is often used: competing powers could not predict its rise, predict the dramatic effect it would have, predict that efforts to ban it would prove delusional nor predict that all predictions would be rendered meaningless anyway by the advent of gunpowder and finely bored iron and steel. The nuclear bomb is not the last float in the parade - unless of course it does turn out to be the means by which we destroy ourselves, so...

Sparked by a recent Krugman article comparing Europe and America to the latter's detriment a lot of counter arguments have sprung up mainly focused on how Krugman cherry picked economic data to make his point - hardly a surprise an uber liberal like himself is more interested in polemics than objective analysis - but I'm thinking it's simpler than that, because what he's really suggesting, the two obvious conclusions to draw from his argument are that American culture must be radically changed, since the European economy is the direct consequence of its culture and a specific mindset and so if you want America to mimic Europe your gonna have to send out the liberal thought police to enforce the necessary standards - but also, and unbelievably more shocking I think, is that what he's suggesting, or the unavoidable consequence to what he's suggesting is that the West should unilaterally divest itself of military power since America is that power and if you're gonna change it into Europe the Younger you can say goodbye to that power. No doubt he harbours some fantasy that Europe's de facto pacifism is solely the result of its bloody history and not a symptom of the need to indulge its citizens with 35 hour work weeks and generous pension payouts and ostensibly free health care etc etc and hence there's no reason to fret that American military power would be neutered if it went down the same socially enlightened rabbit hole - but, like I said, that's a convenient fantasy.

Sorry, it's insane, delusional thinking - at least to someone who's not a new age socialist like Krugman. You wanna play a 'what if' game and fool around with various scenarios and speculations for the purposes of looking at things in a different and possibly revealing way, sure, go ahead, have your fun - but Krugman's actually suggesting this as something that should happen, which means he's basically saying that if the opportunity should present itself he'd be okay with a revolution led by a liberal elite to remake America into a polity they deem acceptable. After all, imagine how lauded a man such as himself would be in this utopia. It's utterly astounding. I don't think conservative voices rising up to ridicule the article are quite catching just how preposterous, if pursued to its logical conclusions, the idea is.

Release of new book on 2008 campaign not kind to Clintons, not kind to a lot of people, other than the Obama who comes off unscathed [meaning we should view the book's sourcing and motives as unreliable?] - but as article today in Politico points out Clintons really get a rough ride, especially Hillary, who is portrayed as petty, self centered, intolerant of criticism, rabidly ambitious, condescending, given to irrational temperamental outbreaks - well, one gets the point: not fit apparently for higher office, at least that seems to be the obvious though not explicitly stated subtext to the portrayal. But this creates or exposes or begs a fairly glaring problem and query that Politico only touches on lightly at end of article: if she's so flawed, so unfit for command, why did Obama make her Secretary of State, and do so with avowals of high privately expressed praise raised over the objections of his inner circle? If the portrayal is to be believed she does not seem a good candidate for a post that requires delicate diplomacy and at times humility - so what gives? and why did Politico not bother to ask that question? Because the awkward conclusions one is left to draw are legion: the book's portrayal is not accurate, making it difficult to write an article that acts as if it is; Obama is a bad judge of character; Obama is out of touch with, or kept sequestered from by handlers, certain details that he probably should be aware of; Obama was willing to risk the viability of an important cabinet position in order to score political points; Obama feared an embittered Hillary and was practicing old adage 'friends close, enemies closer' and again doing so at risk of undermining the effectiveness of State; the decision is a reflection of Obama's lack of interest in or facile understanding of or naive approach to foreign policy - the point being the harsh portrayal forces one to ask several difficult questions none of which Politico saw fit to ask. Why? All we're left with at the end of the article is the presumption that it was a deft move by Obama to put a woman who apparently has some significant personality issues in charge of State. I mean, the book quotes one insider as expressing a deep concern that someone as unstable as Hillary could become president! And yet we're just supposed to accept that it was a cunning move by Obama to make her Secretary of State. Doesn't add up.  

For my part as a former Hillary supporter the portrayal seems to suggest I was a wee bit misguided in my endorsement - or maybe not - after all, great leaders of the past have often been somewhat complicated - one could even argue that you don't or can't rise to such a level without having some serious personality disorders - the average citizen wants to believe it isn't so because we need order and fear disorder, but reality doesn't work that way - so I'm not necessarily going to think her a bad choice on my part because of an unsavory portrayal [but wouldn't that mean it was a savvy move by Obama? Possibly, but I'm reluctant to think so, as judged by the terms of the portrayal you understand, which left one thinking the job she's best suited for is mob boss] - besides, it's a conceit that fits with my belief that the image of Obama as the cool, calm, highly rational operator is false or misleading and that those who seem to fancy that hyper-intellectualism is a great trait for a leader to have are naive.

On positive side we now know that Hillary likes to say 'fuck' a lot when she's mad - that's a point in her favour.

"... what a surprise - Stewart constructs an argument defending Obama in Afghanistan - analog: Aquinas was brilliant, but I know that if I could travel back in time armed with my Hume and sit down for a chat with him no matter how many times I raised doubts concerning  the existence of a God and the rational foundations of any faith in such he would always be constructing arguments to prove me wrong - and that's because the first premise in any argument Aquinas would make is that there must be a God and therefore faith and the universe must be rational. So to with the Obamaphiles: they start out with an unshakable conviction concerning the truth of their beliefs and then construct an argument to demonstrate how it all makes sense. Open with a gambling conceit! Prejudice your audience with false premises - because of course no one really wins at gambling, any stolen victory is transitory, an illusion -  and therefore a truly rational and enlightened man, if forced to engage is such an evil game, would play it safe - presto! - exactly what Obama, brilliant man that he is, has chosen to do in Afghanistan. QED. Our devotions are defended and our faith preserved.  Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium..."

Again Ricks annoys me so much that I feel compelled to respond:

There are several reasonable answers to your question of 'if Obama's a progressive why are they angry with him?' - one would be he isn't really one of them but rather simply exploiting his general sympathy for their cause and milking how well the phony transcendence of his 'post racial identity' fits into the naive idealism of that cause - ie the idea of being a celebrity president appealed to him and he was willing to aggressively pursue that by whatever means; the ordeal and burden and ugly complications of actually leading one of the greatest powers to ever roam the earth, not so appealing after all. In other words, he's a progressive as long as it doesn't get in the way of what really matters to him.

It was obvious to any unbiased observer as far back as the 2004 keynote address that Obama represented the final victory of style over substance in American politics, a victory that the advent of TV and new media seemed to be promising for some time now - what little substance could be gleaned from his performances was based on a trumped up idealist narrative that initially fed the delusions of people who desperately wanted to believe a new age was at hand and then later the delusions of those who were simply sick of Bush.

Now I'm sure if he could give a bunch of nice speeches and by such artifice implement or call into being without discord or anger or upheaval a 'true' progressive agenda he would most happily do it - but the zeal of a true ideologue is founded on the absolutism of their beliefs - the only thing Obama absolutely believed in was himself as the first black president - that's done, time to get out there on the celebrity lecture/noble cause tour where he'll no doubt make Bill Clinton look like an amateur [in fact he may be so frustrated by the constraints of high office at this point that he has come to believe that he can now serve the world best by being defeated in 2012, blaming it on backward thinking types that 'just don't get it' and then running round the globe delivering his transcendent message to the quivering masses].

Personally I believe the above scenario is largely correct, it's how I tend to read the man [although his approach to domestic policy only may read somewhat differently] - but there are alternatives - Obama is indeed a radical but either just not very good at it or suffering from having over estimated his ability to deliver - or he is very good at it but has come to believe that real change will require a generational process of incremental steps under cover of well crafted lies [watch Obama now pretend he's a deficit hawk], which frustrates true believers who, as I've said, draw their energy from an unrealistic absolutism - the point being that Ajami's criticism, although possibly not well argued or too narrowly argued, can be defended - of course one would have to not be in denial regarding their disappointed or ill-conceived love for the Obama to see that.

update: I'm attacked by Ricks' supporters who claim my view way too speculative - I'm writing as if privy to Obama's secret thoughts! One nerd cracks joke about my 'spidey sense' viz Obama which is just embarrassing. This is classic dismissal of a criticism by claiming something claimed by it that hasn't been claimed - you think you know what he's thinking. The mere act of voting for Obama a year ago was an act of wild speculation given the man's thin resume - so being accused of taking too many speculative liberties by these people is a bit rich. But of course I am engaging in a subjective interpretation of his words and deeds and don't deny it - my original sense of the man was that he's a charlatan whose pleasing optics, smooth style and visceral appeal to ultra liberal sensibilities could prove dangerous, especially in the wake of the vilification of Bush and the consequent hit to the repute of conservative ideals - every opinion I've formed since has been influenced by that original feeling - and I suppose it's not necessarily unfair to suggest there may be something illegitimate about that - not clinically sound, as it were. Then again, is there an opinion anywhere that isn't somewhat compromised in such a way? All political opinions, as opposed to political reporting, are more or less speculative, are judgment calls - what matters is if there seems to be a logic to what you're saying and evidence to suggest maybe you're right - and the fact that I pretty much nailed him on Afghanistan, had a solid sense of how wrong his approach to Iran and Israel would prove - predicted that he would seem to want to try and set policy through words and avoid the messy consequences of action and that his various 'initiatives' might tend to come across as confused and incoherent [witness his recent mishandling of the Christmas terror attempt] because the drudgery of governing would be of little interest to him, predicted or at least intimated that he'd tend to view accommodation as the more enlightened foreign policy approach and like to imagine I was the first to see a possible Carter redux with the coming of the Obama, a line of conjecture which is the cover story this week of the very magazine Ricks writes for - well, not bad sooth saying all in all I think, given my amateur status.

[then again, maybe I'm completely wrong - well, not completely wrong but underestimating how Obama's self-promotion can still be tied to a motivated idealist, or progressive if you prefer, agenda - that the two things don't need to be mutually exclusive - although I'm not sure the above necessarily suggests they are - this from conservative stalwart Robert Kagan:

For a United States bent on “problem solving” with Russia and China, the easiest solution may be to accede to their desires, compelling those in their presumed spheres of influence to accede as well. This cannot help but alter America’s relations with its allies.

As it happens, the vast majority of those allies happen to be democracies, while the great powers being accommodated happen to be autocracies. The Obama administration’s apparent eschewing of the democracy agenda is not just a matter of abandoning the allegedly idealistic notion of democracy promotion in failed or transition states. It is not choosing not to promote democracy in Egypt or Pakistan or Afghanistan. And it is not just about whether to continue to press Russia and China for reform—which was part of the old post–World War II strategy, continued under post–Cold War administrations. The Obama administration’s new approach raises the question of whether the United States will continue to favor democracies, including allied democracies, in their disputes with the great-power autocracies, or whether the United States will now begin to adopt a more neutral posture in an effort to get to “yes” with the great autocratic powers. In this new mode, the United States may be unhinging itself from the alliance structures it had erected in the post–World War II strategy.

In fact, as part of its recalibration of American strategy, the Obama administration has inevitably de-emphasized the importance of democracy in the hierarchy of American interests. Most have assumed this is a reaction to George W. Bush’s rhetorical support for democracy promotion, allegedly discredited by the Iraq War. This may be part of the explanation. But the Obama administration’s de-emphasis of democracy should also be understood as the direct consequence of its new geopolitical strategy—a sign of America’s new international neutrality.

Kagan is of the school that believes Obama directs a deliberate attempt by progressives to turn America into, to use the colloquial shorthand, a version of France - or probably more accurately, a transatlantic copy of the EU but with a more robust military to be used as an international constabulary and a moderating counter-weight to the new true super powers, India and China [with a regenerated USSR tagging along] - in fact if I'm not mistaken I believe certain left wing French intellectuals have been promoting this very scenario for sometime now - the idea I take it being that the more civilized, more enlightened West has evolved past the era of power struggles and can now recede into the background, safe in our socialized democracies, protected by the superiority of our ideas and institutions [and our value to them as consumers] and from this refined distance moderate the grievances of the new competing powers as they struggle to rise to our level. Something like that anyway. The conceptual foundation here would seem to be that all power is relative - that the West, judged by the past norms of military and economic might, may be in decline, but seen in a light that rejects those definitions is actually evolving to a higher plane.

But - is that dream so wrong? I dunno - my first complaint would be that it assumes an awful lot, and of course that's the downfall of all idealist philosophies: they only seem to work if you allow certain assumptions to pass uncontested. So that's a big strike against it, and it's very possibly a third strike, if you will. I'll have to think about it.

One thing that occurs to me: if Obama is a believer in this new world order, why would he call for the abolishment of nuclear weapons? Nukes, or something like them , would be absolutely necessary in such a new world for keeping the peace, as final arbiter of disputes - so calling for their demise does not seem in keeping with long term progressive goals - although is perfectly in keeping with status quo idealist naivety]

Amusing, in a depressing, disquieting sort of way, with Yemen in the news, the several anecdotes I've read about rampant qat use in the glorious kingdom - qat, the narcotic weed that one apparently endlessly chews on like a ruminant a cud in order to savour the full, tranquilizing effect - according to the stories there are few males in the country not addicted to the stuff, one recent visitor describing how after the noon hour cities slip into a slumbering stasis as males of all descriptions vanish into various recesses to chew their ways into an oblivion. Opiate of the masses, the gov't apparently supports the cultivation of the stuff [hardly surprising I guess given the nature of the place] and this has worsened the water crisis as water is diverted and usurped for that purpose.

Amusing - and I guess now, in order to suppress or extirpate another warren of Islamists, or prop up the hopelessly fucked country so it doesn't fold and destabilize Saudi Arabia, I guess now we're supposed to invade the bloody place or funnel millions of dollars of aid towards it or pump air into some clownish dictator so he can pretend at making sense of the mess or do all that and more so we won't have thousands of these qatted retards running around with explosives sewn into their underwear. Fucking amusing.

And we're going to do all this and bear the scorn and cost and calumny so access to the region's resources is preserved for China to quietly exploit so that they can fuck us over some 50 years down the road? Very amusing.

God's cruelest joke? A progressive West inexorably anchored to a regressive East? Quite poetic, I suppose. Well, shit, they in a sense created us so I guess implied is a right to destroy us.

"... I generally find myself not sympathetic to your opinion on these thorny issues but this seems in part a fairly reasonable analysis - excepting of course for your shameless Obamaphile cheer leading, which apparently your ilk just can't help themselves from engaging in - the vapid romanticism of Obama's 'outreach' program can be grafted onto your skeptical inertia viz Yemen and thereby assume the guise of a thoughtful strategy, but the connection is tenuous at best - never mind suboptimal outcomes, better to call Obama's approach the emptiness that makes a nice sound - sub suboptimal, not outright failure if we're lucky - in other words, you do a good job of  pointing out that Yemen is a shit hole and we should be very careful where we step, but your 'solution' to the problem is in the end a meaningless convenience - an endless side stepping that offers up the illusion of moving ahead..."

Terrorism as a business model to spur foreign investment - does Yemen secretly encourage its native and adopted terrorists in order to attract financial assistance from the West? A desperate country without the means to placate a depressed people - running out of oil and water, population increasing far too quickly when measured against its vast needs and wants, unemployment at 30, 40%, an al Queda sanctuary feeding off  Wahhabist inclinations and an endemic dislike if not hatred of America, makes it a very nice nexus and refuge for terrorists - are Yemeni officials milking this for cash? Of course a dangerous game to play as they battle an 'al Queda of Saudi Arabia' uprising and civil war - still, given their seeming lack of realistic options, dangerous relative to what?