"... the problem, the thing I fear is that China, especially or even solely in its business community or the governments attitude towards business, will increasing take on the traits that made America great and powerful while America itself increasingly takes on the traits that have made Europe weak... and I think intellectuals on the left, an effeminate band to which Obama rightly belongs, from the hubris of a delusional idealism or the myopia of an animating ideology either failo to understand the consequences of their actions or do indeed understand because such a conversion is the deliverance they long for..."

"... my god, Walt, how is it you make a living as a putative intellectual? Why does anyone employ you? After getting the Apache video controversy utterly wrong by replacing objective analysis of the facts with code pinkish propaganda [something you should have apologized for if you had any respect for the American soldier] I'd hoped you'd be shamed into silence - but no, now you're gonna explain Iran to all us warmongers because obviously your unsullied, unblemished, uncompromised intellectual gifts demand a hearing.

Iran's military is no match for ours? Are you serious? We've been in Afghanistan for nine years and nothing resembling a modern military has ever existed there!! Iran hasn't invaded another country? If they have no deterrence in the form of a powerful military or WMDs how could they and why would they? Much more sensible to rely on proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas while you secretly develop a nuclear capability. Jesus, did you put any thought into this essay at all? America and Iran are essentially the same because both have engaged in questionable initiatives? That's a joke, right? Because by that logic given the Indian Wars and Teddy's run up San Juan and the Philippines etc etc we should have stayed out of WWII because essentially we were no better than the fascist regimes in Japan and Germany - in fact America should just unilaterally disarm since relativism renders all power illegitimate. Hell, let's pull it back a few hundred years: Elizabeth should never have opposed the Spanish Armada because, what, was England really any better? And how all those brainy guys in Athens got fooled into thinking it a good idea to fight the Persians is anybody's guess - Hellenised cretins, you couldn't see the peace just sitting there waiting to be negotiated?

Your proof against the threat of proliferation in the Mideast is an unpublished dissertation? C'mon, really? Jesus, man, a barely sentient Keith Olbermann has expressed more objectively reasoned opinions than this and it's his job to peddle simplistic, ideologically biased formulations..."

Info leaked on memo Gates apparently wrote chastising administration for failure to develop a coherent and thorough Iran policy - thorough in the sense of what happens should OIama's dubious 'engagement' strategy prove ineffective. Various people trying to walk back significance of memo now - but that's typical of these things, lots of denials and clarifications - regardless, memo interesting for many reasons, but immediately I think of two things that just happen to be top of mind at moment: Obama's recent statement that like it or note America has a powerful military - this sentiment seems to reveal regret, embarrassment, annoyance, lurking disdain for the existential realities of America and what it means [and has always meant throughout history] to be a powerful country - if I was running against Obama in 2012 I would run against this statement and nothing else because it reveals, either as a consequence of temperament or ideology, that the man is unfit to be the commander in chief of a civilizational force like America; which leads quite nicely to the second thing I thought of - Chamberlain and the run up to WWII - specifically, an interpretation of his actions that suggests his appeasement for peace was actually a success in so much as Chamberlain got what he wanted - the problem is what he wanted was completely out of touch with the reality that was Hitler - Chamberlain pursued the easy peace because he didn't have the stomach or understanding to pursue or grasp the hard peace and thereby made the much harder peace to come inevitable. My point on Iran has always been people dismiss the military option because they make the assumption it would be worse than appeasement, or, to be kinder, accommodation - but in reality it's just easier to imagine the consequences of military intervention - appeasement is much more amenable to wishful thinking and therefore a priori can seem the better choice - which it may be, I don't know - it's not like I'm advocating military intervention in Iran - I'm just saying people who ignore that option are not analyzing the problem with the appropriate sense of realism.

China is also looking to foster closer relationships with the space programs of other nations, he said. He invited the representatives of the world's space agencies to come visit China's space facilities "to discuss cooperation with our experts in the field of manned space and together to promote the development and the progress of space technology."

Sure - in other word, in order for us to surpass Russia and US in space we need 'the world' to make its technology available to us so we can steal it [jesus, I'm cynical when it comes to China - hey, I'm no sucker] And why the hell does China plan to build it's own space station as this same article purports? There's already an international space station up there which would seem to fall in line with their putative communitarian agenda - but of course they want an independent presence in space for the same reason the Soviet Union did and it has absolutely nothing at all to do with peaceful cooperation.

Response to an article taking Michelle Obama to task for failing to pursue any causes or initiatives having to do with the military that would seem to fall under her 'First Lady' purview - the article asked 'Does the The First Lady care more about her vegetable garden than the wives of fallen soldiers?': 

 "... three points:

1 - as a person who has lived in the other English speaking democracies where you don't hear squat from 'first spouses' this American obsession with the first lady seems quite bizarre - I'll assume it has something to do with the puritan/fear of sex nexus in the American psyche and leave it at that.

2 - if she has to be told or encouraged to do what should be obvious that probably means she really doesn't give a shit or is ideologically predisposed to marginalize such things, in which case any effort she exerted now would be mere tokenism and might do more harm than good.

3 - as a proud anti-Obamian I'd say her attitude is perfectly emblematic of the left wing academic culture that spawned the royal couple - the tenured intelligentsia of this country does not care for the study or practice of war and tends to view anyone who does display an interest or respect for things military as not fully evolved. Obama does a reasonably good job with his public persona of covering up his true nature [although I think it's clearly revealed in his approach to foreign policy] but the First Lady apparently does not share a similar need to dissemble her disdain..."

Today in Wall Street Journal op-ed:

The president has in his command a great fighting force and gifted commanders. He clearly hopes they will succeed. But there is always the hint that this Afghan campaign became the good, worthwhile war by default, a cause with which to bludgeon his predecessor's foray into Iraq.

Again, I pointed this out two years ago, that Obama's rhetoric on Afghanistan was mere political calculation  and revealed just what a dangerous fraud he'd prove to be when it came to foreign policy - I believe I was kicked off the comment sections of at least a couple of high profile liberal blogs for having the temerity to suggest that their dear leader was a fraud, a liar, a phony - why is it taking the pundits so long to put this puzzle together? Makes me curious regarding the role 'instinct' plays in the understanding of any given problem set - I recall that one of my first warnings against Obama was that because he's not only highly intelligent but is so good at telegraphing an appealing image of higher intelligence that people would be seduced into making the mistake, the flawed but seemingly logical connection of assuming that intelligence would produce good and right decisions - that given the prevailing public perception of Bush as being 'not bright' that people would tend to draw the faulty conclusion that higher intelligence would equal better results as a matter of course. I made the point that effective leadership was about much more than simply being smart - I believe I used the illustration that I've often found myself in a room where I was most decidedly not the smartest person in that room but regardless come an emergency there's not a one of them I would have trusted with my life - or trusted at all. Which is not to absurdly suggest that I'm somehow against intelligence - but rather to say that people are fooled by many things - good looks, fame, money, power - even righteous vigour and moral probity - I tend to believe that superior intellect is a guise Obama wields with particular relish.

"... an atrocious bit of commentary - you want to promote this video as if it communicates something profound about the nature of war, or maybe just current wars, you're not clear about that - but what is clear is that you apparently know nothing at all about the practice or history of war. You blanch at the demeanor of the crew? Are you ignorant? There's nothing they do or say that is out of keeping with the average soldier's experience of combat - you find that disturbing, fine - but had you rode along with a bomber crew aboard a Lancaster or B-17 over Dresden etc you would have heard the same, if not much worse - in fact you put a camera on the front lines of any war in history and you'll see things much, much more disturbing - and that goes for wars naive sentimentalists like yourself like to think of as 'the good wars'.  You don't have the stomach for such ugliness fine, but you then need to pursue that emotion to its logical conclusion and become a pacifist, reject war and violence entirely - certainly don't be giving your precious Obama a pass when a UCAV attack he's sanctioned wipes out a few shepherds in the Hindu Kush mountains.

The Apache crew and their overseers should not  be casually absolved for what was obviously a serious mistake -  but what is also obvious is that the crew was flying reconnaissance and force protection for a ground insertion in a combat zone, that they believed the men on the ground were armed and therefore a possible threat to the incoming patrol and most important of all that the situation dramatically escalated after the crew saw what they believed to be an insurgent with an RPG - what I find shocking is how many left leaning commentators conveniently neglect to mention that RPG, which suggests to me Mr Walt that you like them are not engaged in some serious discussion of the nature of war here but rather peddling propaganda..."

It begins [as in alarmist some might say hysterical or prone to fits of delusion China thinking begins slow morph into reality]:

The move comes after a growing number of national legislators and political advisors called for preventive measures to preserve the purity of the Chinese language.

"If we don't pay attention and don't take measures to stop mixing Chinese with English, the Chinese language won't remain pure in a couple of years," said Huang Youyi, editor-in-chief of the China International Publishing Group and secretary-general of the Translators' Association of China.

"In the long run, Chinese will lose its role as an independent linguistic system for passing on information and expressing human feelings," he told China Daily in an earlier interview.

According to his proposal, all documents and speeches of top government officials should be written in pure Chinese, without the use of English abbreviations such as GDP, WTO or CPI.

With largest national population in the world and an additional diaspora that I'm guessing is probably largest in the world all toiling dutifully away for what will no doubt be the largest economy in the world within 20 or 30 years - and they're worried about a few English phrases slipping into their media - they're worried about the purity of the Chinese language being under threat by coinages like 'GDP' - purity, important notion, fascists like their purity - well, let's not go crazy here with the fascism - still, if wars are in part about culture and culture is an expression of language, then... a deluded hysterical alarmist might say the first shot has been fired.