"... here we go again - there was no 'real' reason to go to war with Iraq - except since the end of hostilities in 91 everyone approached the Iraq problem as if another war would eventually be necessary - it was a war of choice, we all understand that - why is that being treated here as an astounding insight?

Bush et al 'lied', or rather, were not entirely transparent, or rather massaged the truth in service of an agenda - again, this not unusual - Lincoln did it, FDR did, Churchill did it, hell your boy Obama just did it re Afghanistan if Woodward is to be believed, committing troops to a war he quite obviously no longer believes is 'good'  and 'necessary' - taking liberties with the truth and war always have and always will go hand in hand. I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing - I'm just saying acting, as liberals do, as if Bush invented the idea of being less than honest in the promotion of a war strategy indicates either a disingenuous or hysterical point of view.

The question is was America specifically lied into a war by Bush and the boys that it had no business being involved in, a much more serious charge and one that Shelton seems to be making - but that charge would only be valid if America had no vital strategic interests in Iraq and had outright lied about WMDs merely to, for instance, steal oil - none of which is the case. What it comes down to rather is an interpretation of events and how one interprets events very much depends on one's ideological predisposition - to a liberal like Ricks the answer is obvious and thus his promotion of Shelton's book - but for a realist based conservative it's not so clear - we were already at war with Iraq and a quite rational although by no means unimpeachable case could be made that to put an end to it now while the opportunity presented itself would serve well our long term interests - that Rumsfeld screwed up the war plan has very little to do with whether the war itself made sense, a distinction liberals constantly fail to make.

But whether they lied about WMDs to sell the war - that case is closed, it's clear they [and many others] actually believed they were there - where the 'truth' starts to slip away is when they claim that WMDs were what the war was about - they weren't, they were merely the pretext - the war was always about dramatically changing the strategic map of the Middle East - but again liberals always conveniently ignore that distinction because because 'lying about WMDs' is a much juicier story.

Again, did Lincoln ever tell the country or the soldiers fighting the Civil War that they were making the great sacrifice in order to secure the commercial interests of the North? Or that after so many had died to free the slaves that he hoped, right up until his assassination, to eventually ship them all off to Panama because they really weren't worth the immense trouble of keeping them around? How one interprets these things is all about ideological prejudices - what Shelton's are, I don't know - Mr Ricks' are not in doubt though..."

"... absent from the general's analysis is fact that Obama chose the war in Afghanistan as part of a cynical, short range political calculation - he did not embrace the conflict because he had a clear sense of how to fight it or why to fight it or what the strategic consequences of fighting or not fighting it might prove to be be - he chose 'the good war' because in order to beat Hillary and then Bush he needed to conjure up a militaryesque, commander in chief persona for himself that he could sell to both liberals and independents. Is it any wonder then that Obama doesn't know what he's doing, is at a loss when it comes to making real world military decisions? Or that maybe he's vulnerable to being pushed around by his generals because they know exactly what he is - a naive political opportunist who on a purely rhetorical level leveraged his facile opposition to the war in Iraq and support for the war in Afghanistan to promote his grandiose ambitions?

But regardless of that why exactly is it we want to assume that Biden's plan wasn't rejected for reasons of political expediency? I mean anyone who has followed the intense debate within the military about COIN knows why Petraeus et al would have had little time for Biden's plan - but why do we then assume that Obama was boxed in by the Petraeus vision of COIN? Seems to me rather that Obama was boxed in by his own naive embrace of the war in Afghanistan and that made Biden's small, contra Petraeus, endless CT engagements without clear victory version of the war politically untenable.

The left wing media has consistently misread and misrepresented Obama on war - he's been unduly lauded for his opposition to the war in Iraq as if his stance there was logical and nuanced and full of strategic brilliance [which it wasn't] and had nothing at all to do with savvy political calculation [which it absolutely did] - and likewise with his embrace of the war in Afghanistan during the primaries which the left has never either acknowledged or understood was all about political considerations. Take the long gestation period for the current Afghanistan policy: the distended process is always presented as a reflection of a studious Obama being so engaged on the problem and so wanting to get it right - but to me the drawn out process is more a reflection of Obama either being way in over his head and therefore unable to make a decision or, once again, the manifestation of political calculation ie he knew the policy would not sit well with his base so he had to give the impression it was the result of deep and profound soul searching and the application of an academy approved intellectual rigor - in other words, the long gestation period was a charade.

It's high time people accept the fact that Obama is a con artist - which happens to make him a very good politician and certainly I've never denied that in a very limited way he's a damn good politician - but the presidency demands leadership and Obama's no leader, and I didn't need Woodward's book to teach me that - it's been obvious since that celebrated keynote address in 2004 what the man's about and only the ideologically deluded should be surprised that the dream has been seriously roughed up by the unforgiving hand of reality..."

Hillary as Obama running mate in 2012? I don't think so - yet someone's floating the story. Trial balloon? Why on earth does someone think she'd entertain an assignment like that? To be set up as the successor in 2016? No way any party these days wins three presidencies in a row so that ain't it. She is herself an Obamaphile and will do whatever's necessary to preserve the cause? That would shock me - what wouldn't surprise is idea of her going to bed every night reveling in the sweet revenge of watching Obama disappoint all and sundry. Naw, this is either some rogue story or maybe something Obama's people have floated to test response [possibly from Hillary herself] since they're no doubt fretting about Dear Leader's chances in 2012.

update: Hillary has come out and firmly denied it.

History has given China this moment to do what Japan could not. The Japanese did not seriously attempt to rebalance until their economy was well-developed, ossified, and allergic to change. So when the jig was up on their longstanding economic model, rather than rebalance, Japan unraveled. In this sense, the global financial crisis was serendipitous for China. By reminding China's leadership that relying on exports means depending on unreliable foreigners, the crisis put the pain of rebalancing in perspective. It is not out of altruism that we have seen renminbi appreciation accompanying Chinese wage hikes and other rebalancing measures. A slight loosening of controls over media and finance could be in the offing. Deregulating the service sector might be a frightening political proposition, but perhaps less so than not having one when the exports dry up.

A good article comparing the economic malaise Japan has become to the economic malaise that possibly awaits China if they cannot put into place lessons to be learned from the Japanese collapse - the point being China largely borrowed their current thriving economic model from Japan's once thriving economic model and therefore is liable to make the same mistakes or become vulnerable to the same miscalculations and endemic inefficiencies. It's that notion of inefficiency considered along with the prescription of increased freedom in the last two sentences above that interests me. no one's gonna deny the exponential growth in China - likewise, though, I imagine few would suggest that this particular 'great leap forward' is or will prove any more efficient then the great leaps of Mao and company that preceded it. China's economy, like Japan's before it, is at the moment served well by it's authoritarian, top down, heavily bureaucratized command approach to capitalism not because of the efficient, innovative, dynamic attributes of this approach but rather because once an autocracy decides to wrangle its vast resource of cheap labour and turn it loose to feed off the bloated carcass of consumerism, well, the prospects for growth are immense because the amount of untapped potential is immense - but nothing about that suggests that the resulting marketplace and the allocation of capital within that marketplace will be dynamic and efficient - in fact command economies always end up inefficient, wasteful, corrupt because the marketplace the bureaucracy is responding to is artificial - is in fact a creation of the bureaucracy itself - like 'the bridge to nowhere' times a billion. And this is what interests me - the economics is complicated and what the hell do I know about economics anyway - but this is what interests me: in order for the Chinese economy to continue to prosper and eventually stabilize in an efficient and rational way the bureaucracy that now commands it will have to relinquish its power so that freedom can work its magic - but tell me, why would anyone believe this bureaucracy will willingly do that? Isn't it much more likely that this bureaucracy will resist change and assiduously try and rationalize that resistance? And isn't likely that the communist party will gladly assist in the manufacturing of this illusion? Once the inefficiencies are revealed the causes will have to be addressed or covered up - but addressing the causes will lead to great disruption, possibly even social upheaval, and the loss of power by many who now have it - for them won't the only option be then to cover it up? I've always said that the greatest achievement of democracy based on individual liberties is that it upends claims to absolute power and therefore not only makes dynamic change palatable but even desirable - thus the miracle of America. The Chinese miracle on the other hand is a creation of the state, not a product of the people - it will not embrace change easily.