I think Mark Styn has become my favorite sarcastically acerbic, mildly irascible, right wing scribbler. And he hits on something I've been saying about Obama for a good 5 years now - the man has been wholly overrated by a near mindless enthusiasm, is a fraud as a leader, or even an 'ideas' guy, and exists on the fumes of a shallow and self serving rhetoric - give him credit for cunningly leveraging white guilt and left wing naivety to expedite a rise to great power, but it's a power which I'm guessing he now largely views as incidental to the thing that really matters, the story of himself.

This lack of leadership perfectly on display with his Afghan pullout decision - I'm struck by how many are wondering at the way Obama seems to effortlessly sublimate his own political needs and interests above the needs of a coherent foreign policy that serves the interests of America - his original embracing of the war in Afghanistan was entirely a cynical political calculation made during his primary race against Hillary - I said so at the time and was crucified for having the temerity to suggest such a thing - his announcement of the 'surge' once in office was likewise entirely political - he really had only two choices here, go small or go big - he took six months to make the decision [which I said, accurately I think, was merely theater designed to give the impression that the great thinker in chief was bringing all his intellectual might to bear on the issue] and then chose a third option, a 'safe' middle ground that had nothing to do with a coherent strategy and had everything to do with serving his political interests, the exact choice any objective observer paying attention to the way Obama goes about things expected he'd make all along - and now he's announced, against the advice of his military advisers, the beginning of a withdrawal - and people are shocked that this move reeks of self serving political calculation? That's all this guy does - this is what he's about.

Roubini on China, which he predicts having to deal with some significant 'issues' in the not too distant future: basically he reminds everyone that 50% of China's GDP is gov't investment and that this kind of autocratic largesse in an environment of seeming unending growth inevitably leads to waste and gross inefficiencies - which is exactly the point I've made often about China [as if I know what the hell I'm talking about - I don't - still, even a blind dog...] - namely, it's stunningly naive to think that this flood of wealth into a closed system does not lend itself to abuse by a bureaucracy intent on fooling itself and the enthralled masses it serves into imagining that everything is fine. I'd say this is the one thing that truly differentiates open systems like democracy from closed ones like communism, even those hybridized by the provisional adoption of capitalsim: we democracies expect gov't to be flawed, indeed, especially when speaking of Americans, seriously flawed, and the fluid nature of the system and the culture that abides it necessarily reflects that skepticism by placing great emphasis on the relative freedom of individuals and their rights and responsibilities thereof; but the dynamic in authoritarian systems is the exact opposite - an illusion of perfection is vital to keeping the invested authority inviolable - allow the ruled to believe those that wield power over them are flawed, make bad decisions, then how is their continuing subservience to that power to be justified? Thus it is that, to express it with tautological plainness, closed systems need to be closed and their mistakes, flaws, accordingly need to be hidden away.

Of course the question for us needs to be: how long can the charade last? Possibly a long time - certainly, all the money flowing into China right now can buy a lot of stability - and possibly you can buy enough stability to carry you over into a new era of openness - but count me less than sanguine on that - I'm sure the Chinese leadership thinks its got it all figure out - but I'm guessing Mubarak thought the same thing - systems that have a vested interest in fearing change do not respond well when change finally surprises them with a visit.

Which is not to engage in blind optimism concerning the future of Western democracy - it's not fated that Churchill's splendid quip that our system sucks except when compared to the alternatives will forever ring true - but at least we know the idiosyncrasies of it, we have a good sense of what it does well and not so well, of the benefits and liabilities, we have a reasonably good idea how it plays with others - and at the same time we have a pretty good sense of all the problems, shortcomings, inherent weaknesses and ultimate dangers associated with the alternatives; dictatorships, autocracies, repressive regimes driven by unstable ideologies - the morphology of these things is a conditional fact of history and should leave an honest observer skeptical viz China and the putative peaceful or otherwise uncomplicated rise of our erstwhile enemy.

Anyway, Roubini's point about the Chinese economy specifically is also true of the country in general: don't be fooled by the engorged GDP - there are flaws there and eventually they're gonna make themselves known - I won't go so far as to call the Chinese economy a gigantic Ponzi scheme as one analyst did recently, but that charge does get the point across - we're still talking about a closed system here and closed systems are inherently unstable because they are ultimately dependent on the perpetuation of fraudulent perceptions that are unsustainable - remember, both communist Russia and Nazi Germany experienced periods of rapid, exaggerated growth that fooled the naive into thinking them post-American success stories - not that I'm gonna insult a billion Chinese by calling them Nazis in the making - it's utterly conceivable the country evolves just like the optimists hope - my point is history suggests that's probably not the way it's gonna play out and we better be prepared for worst case scenarios.

What, 1500 have drowned so far trying to flee Libya in makeshift boats since humanitarian effort started? And how many more, trapped in besieged cities, have died? Another 1000, 2000? Not to mention the infrastructure destroyed. A war entered into ostensibly to stop a theoretical massacre has instead created a quite real one - and who knows what's to come - I personally think odds are only divine intervention or the presence of a large occupation force will be able to stop a civil war from erupting once/if Qaddafi goes bye bye - so, can we add another 10,000 deaths there?

But let's forget the virtually indefensible humanitarian aspect of this war - let's look at Obama's whole 'leading from behind' nonsense - Gate's in a speech in Brussels has basically come out and said, you remove the US military from the equation and NATO is nothing short of a joke - they can't even manage the logistics of a relatively easy air campaign over a minor threat like Libya without extensive US participation and backup - so I guess Obama's plan to marginalize the US military [always on a top ten wish list for lefties everywhere] is looking less then inspired.

And what has the American press spent the last three days fixated on? Sarah Palin's emails from when she was governor of Alaska - they've been going through those like the very secret of life was buried in them - and the funny thing is? Turns out there's nothing particularly embarrassing in them - some spelling mistakes - in fact Politico, which when it started was pretty even handed in it views but has since skewed increasingly to the left - but regardless, they I guess had no choice but to write a review of the emails today the upshot which said Sarah comes off looking like a pretty capable governor.

"... the best argument for a Palin presidency is her seeming relative ignorance... we've tried electing smart people, or at the very least, people smart enough to fake being smarter than they actually are, a basic political attribute that Sarah apparently lacks... it isn't working out... it may be time to go counter-intuitive here and embrace real simplicity... now, I know what you're saying, we did stupid with Bush... but Cheney and Rove ran that administration and they weren't exactly country bumpkins... no, Sarah gives the impression that if elected she'd definitely be calling the shots... and then finally we'd have a true democracy with an honest to goodness simpleton running things... could work out... anyway, I defy you to prove to me it couldn't... and what a delicious irony it would be if a Palin presidency eclipsed Obama's... although, admittedly, that's a pretty low bar... but my god, what a sight it'd be, liberals dropping dead from despair all around us... you'd have to invent an entirely new discipline of political theory in hopes of making sense of the absurdity of it..."

It was odd to hear a liberal pundit say, albeit with some hesitation, almost I think embarrassment, the obvious the other day, ie that the Obama presidency really hasn't done much well - the economy sucks, his big initiatives are unpopular, the country's balance sheet is blown completely all to hell, foreign policy looks confused if one is inclined towards being generous, incoherent verging on disastrous if one isn't - sure, he killed Osama and got a bit of a bump in the polls for that but the bump faded fast  probably because most Americans realized that it was a bit unseemly for a president who was, in his political infancy, championed by the anti-war left and whose core constituency will never be mistaken for proud defenders of American military might - it was unseemly for this man to be so assiduously attempting to drape himself in the raiments of martial glory - and he does have the auto bailout, which is not the wild success he's claiming for it - even the left leaning Washington Post has called him on his 'lies' in that regard - but neither is it a complete screwup - at best one can say the jury's still out on that one - but that's it, the Obama presidency so far: some nice [I find them grating, disingenuous and stylistically overdone - but whatever] speeches, and... what? Squat, or worse - usually worse.

But like I said, striking how few outside the realm of conservative commentary are willing to acknowledge this reality - or, having acknowledged it, are willing to say it out loud - and even then, how shamed they seem in doing so, like Peters denying their Christ.

In fact today if you browse Reuters [awful lefties] wha'd'ya see? Headline reading: Obama leads potential republican opponents by double digits! I mean, who the fuck cares? The only reason you'd care about a stupid, meaningless poll like this is if you were highly invested in Obama the ideology, so invested that actual job performance is beside the point - so, who cares if he's a horrible president, right? Just so long as he can turn the country leftwards, that's all that matters - it's insane - if this guy was CEO of a company shareholders would be rioting in the streets demanding removal given his performance, but a supposedly legitimate news organization thinks it makes sense to trumpet utterly meaningless poll numbers about an election that's 16 months away?! Who gives a shit if he's a horrible president and we're all doomed - look, he's ahead in an absolutely irrelevant poll against a hapless gang of nobodies that nine tenths of the electorate don't even know exist and quite possibly doesn't even include the eventual nominee! Hurrah for our side! My god. Ya really start to wonder if this is the end of democracy.

I did read an interesting article in a military journal that made argument that, politics and cultural aspirations aside, from a strictly defense point of view Israel would actually be better off with the '67 or even '48 borders - he quoted what's his name... famous military hoho, can't remember bastard's name... said something like 'he who attempts to defend everything ends up defending nothing' - words to that effect - anyway the point was Israel did much better in their wars before '67 because the territory they had to defend was much more manageable - the writer talked about defense in depth being an attractive thing, but also a problem if one lacks the resources to cover and hold extended lines - the writer also said an expanded Israel ends up too dependent on America and that such a dependency is eventually doomed to disappoint.

I saw the writer's point - but it's hard to factor in accurately whether military success from '48 to '67 was more about the manageable battle space or the incompetence of the opponent - if the latter, do you really wanna be in a position of hoping they're still that addled? And also hard to factor in the growing sophistication of asymmetric threats and the missile tech available to them - a lack of defensive depth could cause some serious problems in that respect - but by same token, asymmetrical swarming along extended lines could also pose some serious headaches. I also don't think the dependence on America is the huge problem the writer suggests - after all, every Westernized country in the world is ultimately dependent on America for its survival - and this dependency can bring benefits as well as liabilities - benefits both for America and Israel - I mean, would Israel actually be more secure if America no longer thought its support an absolute necessity and therefore disengaged? Can't see that - you may wanna argue America would be better off - Obama certainly thinks so - but I think in the end that dependency serves Israel well.

So, an interesting point of view, worth considering - but pursuing the logic of it would require accepting huge assumptions full of risk - no, the Yom Kippur War made defense in depth a fixed given in Israeli military thinking - they'll be holding onto as much land as they possibly can.

Having reached the, for me anyway, reasonably logical conclusion that, given the facts, Obama's '67 borders speech  lent credence to impression most objective observers already had of his administration not being a huge fan of Israel nor a sympathetic witness to its opinions on what a realistic approach to the unending problems of the Mideast should look like - and judging that it really doesn't matter if this antipathy is willful or the toxic runoff of incompetence since results are same [although long term liabilities may be different, so maybe it does matter, just not now] - having concluded that, the question becomes is this a good or bad thing concerning prospects for peace and stability in that lovely corner of the world?

Liberals believe Israel is the problem - they believe this because Israel and the how of both its creation and survival represent the expression of a type of power that does not comfortably conform with a liberal world view or a liberal conception of human nature - whereas on the other hand the Palestinian 'plight' fits very neatly into liberal notions of victim-hood that lie at the very heart of the incumbent sentimentality of their ecumenical idealism. Therefore it makes perfect sense to the liberal academy that Israel should be forced into concessions - that's as easy a formulation for them as, say, believing that of course the rich should be heavily taxed [Michael Moore even went so far not long ago to opine that the wealth of the wealthy actually doesn't even belong to them since of course it was stolen from the poor]. They rationalize this framing of the problem by making it sound like an Israeli surrender on this issue is the reasonable view - time, history, demographics, technology, world opinion etc etc all point to the reasonableness of it - and then they further rationalize it by presuming, without evidence, as only liberals can [and sometimes in direct conflict with evidence or common sense], they presume a net positive trailing in the wake of concessions by Israel because, although there will be hard compromises and a period of readjustment to new realities, in the end the long suppressed forces of moderation in the Arab/Muslim world, now freed of the awful burden of having to endure the defilement of a Jewish supremacy, will rise up and usher in an era of comity, good will and tolerance.

Conservatives, realists - cynics if you will - sceptical types who view with deep suspicion the escapist fantasies of liberalism, come at the issue from the other side and say simply: the Arab/Muslim world has endemic problems that have little or nothing to do with the West in general or Israel in particular regardless of unending efforts to make them the scapegoats of these problems - forcing Israel to act as if such isn't the case will result in one of two things: fearing for its very survival Israel will become utterly hostile to any attempts to compromise its security whatsoever - it will abjure and scorn calls for peace and accommodation because it will no longer see peace and accommodation as realistic options while Obama is president - Hamas and Hezbollah, stirred by the promise of a weakened Israel conjured from the dust by the miscalculations of Obama, will crowd the border and push hard - this will lead most likely to war; but if not confrontation, then submission - Israel will be cornered and humbled, if not indeed for all intents and purposes destroyed - this humbling will not though, contrary to the fanciful delusions of liberals, empower the putative moderates of the region [who, as we have seen in Egypt, have no real means by which to advance their inchoate interests] but rather enable, rouse and inflame the irredentist chauvinisms of the Islamists who will view themselves as righteous, glorious victors over the unclean unfavored by Allah, thereby setting in motion a series of cascading upheavals - and not just Islam against the Jews or Islam against America - but Sunni contra Shiite and oligarchy versus theocracy - after all, with Israel brought to its knees, every despotic asshole in the region with an agenda to push is gonna wanna take credit for it so as to cozen the faithful to best effect.

So in short, as a sceptic, I'd say the Obama approach, whether willfully antagonistic towards Israel or just simply misguided by arrogance or incompetence, is not the enlightened effort it imagines itself to be - which is not to suggest the conservative way is free of difficulties - not at all - reality is there may be no way to arrange the pieces of this puzzle so as to fashion something palatable or even sustainable - I've always tended to believe things are bound to get much worse in that part of the world before they get better - and for that reason it's not entirely nuts to wonder what the hell is the point of Israel or to wish 1947 had never happened - but of course wishing for the impossible is a viable strategy only for those who confuse vanity with strength - a counterfeit strength never lasts - events have a way of separating the dreamer from his dreams - only Narcissus gets to sleep forever.