horse of george

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.