I was happy to see a reputable publication like Foreign Affairs print an essay by a former Pentagon official making case for a military intervention against Iran's nuclear ambitions - happy [probably inappropriate adjective] because author used arguments similar to ones I've made in the past - namely, that people blanch at the thought of an armed intercession because the dire consequences of action are much easier to imagine than the equally dire consequences of inaction - it makes sense for people to fear the thing that seems more real even if an equally disturbing but different reality exists just off to the side - and if after reflection one concludes that the consequences of inaction could prove just as troubling as those following action, then how to decide which option is right - or, possibly more to the point, less wrong? One possible answer: if we are unwilling to stop a universally recognized and feared thing like nuclear proliferation when it comes to so obvious a threat in this regard as Iran, then how do we hope to ever put an end to this growing menace? In short, any notion of stopping proliferation would be reduced to empty theatrics if not farce if Iran is allowed to get the bomb.

Now, I'm not coming out in full support of military intervention - no, my point all along has been that those who have dismissed out of hand any talk of military intervention as preposterous have been engaged in a specious debate with themselves - we all understand the serious consequences of action - it'd be bad - but it would amount to a significant if not tragic dereliction of duty on the part of those responsible if they approach the Iran problem as if inaction is not fraught with very great danger too.

But, of course, I realize that this kind of interventionist reasoning lends itself to a justification of any number of ill-advised and ill-conceived misadventures - Iraq, for instance. Certainly, a simple look to Pakistan quickly starts one down the road of conjuring up doomsday scenarios that seem to veritably plead for intercession - so the trick becomes defining how and why Iran is different, coming to an understanding of how legitimate and viable that difference is, and then figuring out what to do about it - figuring out whether the difference is compelling enough to force upon one the adoption of a daunting imperative.

I've already alluded to one difference that I think addresses the problem - the countries that have gone nuclear have done so essentially for defensive purposes - but Iran's intentions seem decidedly offensive since the only existential threat they face is from internal dissent and upheaval - granted, institutionalized paranoia could cause them to extravagantly inflate threats that are marginal at best - still, it's hard to distinguish Iran's pursuit of the bomb from a regional strategic agenda that could prove quite destabilizing, to say the least. Sure, the US and the USSR eventually came to using their nuclear stockpiles for similar strategic purposes - but how on earth could that fact twist reality so completely as to become justification for us allowing Iran, an irrational, Messianic, Islamist, anti-Western state to replicate that volatile dynamic? In fact, our experiences should vehemently instruct us into doing the exact opposite, and quickly.

And of course it may be somewhat farfetched but it is not at all inconceivable that certain extremist elements resting atop the Iranian regime would see it as the ultimate gift to Allah if one of their nukes found its way into Tel Aviv or New York City.

So, a compelling difference viz Iran - if we allow a regime like that to go nuclear, where does it stop? Who do we say no to? If allowing Iran to go nuclear amounts to an admission of defeat in the battle against proliferation, are we really then saying that we're ok with the devils that will come rushing through the door we've left open? One thing for certain, it can't be that we've come to the point where we are forced to accept our hands being tied since the military option is still there and Israel has demonstrated in Iraq and Syria that it can indeed work - granted, on a much smaller and demonstrably less complex scale.

Odd - I was thinking just this morning "what ever happened to Petraeus?". Now of course I know he's heading the CIA - but after being a near daily presence in the conversation you don't hear squat from or about him anymore - and then I read that an authorized biography is coming out soon and in leaked excerpts it's revealed he seriously considered resigning when Obama set the deadline for [or maybe that was actually adhered to the deadline for] an 'early' withdrawal from Afghanistan. It reminded me of something I recently read in Small Wars Journal by another retired general who also had some unkind thoughts concerning Obama he felt compelled to share - and I remember thinking that I bet if you talked off the record with the top fifty officers in the US military that one would hear many unkind thoughts expressed - yet liberals like to think that foreign policy is the one unqualified success of Obama's first term. Odd indeed.

I've heard the refrain that the rise of the various not-Romneys etc etc is actually a good thing for Romney, that the competition will make him a better candidate and that it's usual for the eventual republican nominee to have survived some trials and tribulations - often the comparison is made to Obama vs Hillary and how that battle made Obama a better candidate. There's some truth to this - but missing is recognition that both Obama and Hillary were viable presidential candidates and so the battle between them could serve to burnish the image of each - Romney on the other hand is engaged with windmills, some of very shaky construction - none of his opponents are viable outside the prison walls of the republican primary - hard to see how he'll be ennobled by a drawn out battle with that lot. Let's also remember that the uber left was heavily invested in Obama - if Hillary had won they would have become disaffected and Hillary may have had to drift too far from the center in order to re-engage them - I fear the same dynamic working against Romney except of course viz a disaffected uber right.

Two enduring uber right delusional conceits I hear repeated over and over again concerning the presidential primary: one, the proclamation from some that they'd rather lose the election than nominate someone who isn't a hardcore conservative [and good luck getting them to define exactly what constitutes 'hardcore']; and two, the quixotic claim by some that it doesn't matter who is nominated since absolutely anybody would be better than Obama. The holders of the first delusion hunger for an absolutist zeal that is in essence undemocratic and specifically un-American seeing as how our system is so wedded to checks and balances designed to mitigate extremes and absolutist claims. These people are either lost to a type of madness, stupid or being highly disingenuous concerning their hopes for the country. Holders of the second delusion are either engaged in a superficial rationalization designed to excuse them from examining too closely the absurdities underlying the candidacies of fops like Paul and Cain et al, or they are with craven dishonesty preparing the ground for a begrudging acceptance of Romney - although it is possible that some are fatuous enough to actually believe that an 'anyone but Obama' rallying cry is both feasible and clever.

One should forget about Iowa, I'm told - they're outliers, they usually get it wrong, they vote for reasons that seem to have little or nothing to do with political practicalities - maybe the dubious renown of 'first in the nation' status has swamped their senses with delusions of grandeur - maybe God's to blame - but forget Iowa they say - unless of course Romney wins, and then... well, if these wacky outliers, people addled enough by whatever distemper afflicts them to actually entertain with seeming seriousness the utterly disturbing thought of Ron Paul as president, if such as these are willing to embrace [however awkwardly] a reasonable logic and choose instead Romney, well... sure, then that might mean something. Otherwise, forget Iowa.

But I'm not buying into that necessarily - Iowa may not be a reliable indicator of the eventual nominee, history suggests that's all true - but as a reliable indicator of ideological pathologies currently roiling the right? - different question altogether - especially when national polls or polls from primaries soon to be seem to corroborate what Iowans are thinking. One can be desperately put off by Paul's flirtation with the lead and still fairly easily dismiss it as an aberration [and also draw comfort from fact that polls seem to sugget that ol' Ronny of the nasty newsletters doesn't actually seem to be that popular with republicans - apparently it's end of days independents and mischievous democrats who are driving his numbers]. But aside from that this race seems notable for a very specific reason - ie, Romney is the only legitimate candidate - everyone else is either too deeply damaged and flawed [Gingrich, Cain, Paul and Perry] or too lacking in either substance, credentials, experience or an overall, broad base appeal [Bachman, Santorum and I guess Huntsman, although he by all rights deserves a category all his own] to be taken seriously as a respectable alternative to Obama or of having any chance in hell of beating him regardless - and yet with only one legitimate candidate to choose from huge swaths of the right have with great impetuosity and unabashed ignorance rushed to embrace anyone but that candidate while masking this irrationality in the most superficial and tawdry of rationalizations.

I don't see how one can pretend that doesn't suggest things are bit wrong in the land of the right - and if that's the case, who can tell what monstrosity might crawl out of the misty swamps of Iowa intent on laying waste to common sense everywhere.

People complaining about super PACs - I both understand and reject these complaints. Sure, if we had a perfect electoral system one would like to believe such ugliness would be unnecessary - but if you're going to admit that the average voter is 'informationally challenged' when it comes to seeing through to the reality of candidates and issues, and you're also going to admit that polls seem to suggest that most voters don't like it when one candidate appears to be attacking another, then you're gonna have to allow that some other means has to exist for the expressing of unpleasant 'facts'. Yeah, truth and decency gets abused to various degrees - but given the limited skills and attributes of any given electorate how else is the informational deficiency to be corrected? Gingrich is a perfect example of this [and this no doubt why he is now complaining bitterly about super PACs]: when the idiot Cain fell and Newt immediately rose this rise was based almost entirely on superficiality - namely, he argued with elitist, lefty moderators at the debates - the uber right liked that, so Newt became their man - most if not all were unaware of the freight car full of baggage the man was pulling after him - none were aware that almost every colleague of Newt's from the 90s, the people who knew him best, seemed literally unnerved by the prospect of this narcissistic nut job becoming president - etc etc - all they knew was that he seemed to have an attitude and that was good enough for them. So, without a super PAC, how do you get through to these people? Romney himself can't do it otherwise he''ll look mean spirited - if these people could be trusted to read thoughtful, in depth, unbiased journalism that might work - but of course these people have reflexively thrown their allegiance to Gingrich precisely because they don't have those reading habits. Enter the super PAC.

Now, sure, I would prefer the primary process was mostly about debates - real, full throated, probing, sound bite free debates - between a limited pallet of candidates [three at most as far as I'm concerned - but I have no idea what means you'd use to winnow out the crack pots, ego maniacs and poseurs] - but for that to work you'd need an electorate that was engaged, willing to listen closely, willing to read and analyse after action commentary, willing to change its mind based more on considered opinion than feelings - and that's just not gonna happen - you couldn't hope for an electorate like that before the dawn of television and mass media, no way you're gonna get one now - let's face it: there's a lot of 25 year old college grads out there who voted for Obama in '08 simply because Jon Stewart told them the black guy was 'cool' and Hillary was 'old' - if you can't rely on the educated for thoughtful, coherent, informed, unbiased decision making... well, if I finish that sentence I'm gonna sound like a mean spirited elitist... where's my super PAC?

Apparently Ron Paul is now leading or on his way to leading in Iowa? The phrase laugh or cry comes to mind and then quickly you realize that neither condition is near weighty enough to stand against the astounding idiocy of such a thing. The court has indeed fallen to insanity.

This is the message the greatest democracy in the world wants to send - that in the first voting for the person we hope will replace Obama as president we choose Ron Paul? I thought the man a crack pot joke before I read this article in the Weekly Standard - now it's like, please someone stop this madness - has the uber right entirely taken leave of its senses?

Sadly this all fits with something I said a few weeks ago: the longer this primary drags on, the more compromised and damaged the republican brand will become - and even if Romney manages to win, the field is/has been so embarrassingly bad that I'm not sure he'll ever wash the stench of it from his hands. Continuing association with the mongrel pack may prove so toxic I'm tempted to suggest that he drop out now and immediately start running as an independent.

"... a long respite within which one imagines that serious contemplation upon the sad state of affairs afflicting the world will somehow lend itself to the writing of it all out and thereby purchase on the cheap absolution... but doesn't happen, you know, and oddly enough, one ends up not being surprised by that... and you drift... I get ol' Dodgson, for all his dodginess, and those Golden Afternoons... one does long for the peace of such a river and the delighted laughter of young girls... how else do you suggest we cure the court of its madness?..."

I hear that Bachman has accepted invitation to Trump debate and has done so because she's a fan [well, and desperately in need of the exposure] - if true I deny with extreme prejudice any claim I've made in the past about her possibly morphing into a legitimate contender - not that I was a supporter, understand, no - just thought I saw something there - but accepting the debate invitation is bad enough, doing so because you admire that farce of a man is mortal sin made manifest - sorry, go take your place beside Cain in the 'embarrassing reject' line. [having said all that now appears Bachman in fact hasn't yet agreed to participate - so my apologies - fact remains though that she is still open to participating but is 'worried' about how unbiased Trump can be given that he hasn't ruled out a run of his own and may have already decided on who he will endorse - so basically you're agreeing that a debate moderated by someone as unsavory as Trump would be a farce which, coming on the heels of the farce that was Cain, really doesn't do the reputation of the republican party any favors - and therefore, why not say no now? So Bachman still gets the thumbs down from me - as if it matters - because of time constraints, it starts to seem fairly certain that the uber right is firmly convinced, having bedded Bachman, Perry and Cain, that it is now madly in love with Gingrich no matter how sullied and unfit the bride may appear to be - I'm sure the marriage will be as pure and blessed and felicitous as all of Gingrich's other marriages].

But the Trump debate is interesting though - not as a legitimate venue, god no - rather in the sense maybe it ends up drawing with more clarity the battle lines I intimated at a while back between the conservative intellectual establishment and the increasingly it seems irrational republican base - because Trump is a perfectly clownish emanation of that irrationality - Paul, Huntsman and Romney have declined the invitation - right wing intellectuals have urged the others to do likewise arguing that empowering cartoonish, self-promoting stooges like Trump can do nothing but diminish the republican brand - if the others don't comply and thus, instead of disenfranchising the fool Trump with a majority opinion, end up enabling him and the bullshit populist line he will then peddle to the base about how Romney et al are typical of the out of touch establishment elite etc etc - well, like I said, the battle lines will be drawn - you will then have a very bad situation on your hands and the potentiality of the primary turning into a circus that sinks any republican hope for 2012 [but, on the positive side, dramatically improves the prospects of a successful third party run].

I wonder if this possible eventuality ever factored into Obama's thinking, especially given his increasingly leftist populist rhetoric [he even referenced the '99%' inanity of Occupy Wall Street yesterday in a speech - when a president of the United States is invoking that kind of socialist nonsense things have truly gotten bad] - but I wonder if Obama was clever enough to see that his leftist agenda could survive by enraging the right into such an idiot like state that it self destructs? Don't get me wrong, I consider Obama a horrible president who embodies an ideology that is entirely out of step with the times, out of step with the necessities and hard decisions the emerging  new world order forces on America, hell, forces on the West in general - but I always said, when it comes to his own political interests, he's a cunning bastard and smooth operator - gotta give him that.

Maybe I should welcome Gingrich's emergence as serious contender, and not for reasons previously expressed - no, because unlike with Cain who I considered an ignorant huckster fool and therefore a joke and embarrassent to any party, any nation for that matter willing to indulge his delusional bid for the presidency, Gingrich actually knows stuff and can engage in a somewhat substantive and modestly intelligent debate about that stuff - what's more, in order to divert attention from his many flaws he's going to have to be on the offensive so as to keep the base ever amused by his anger etc etc which apparently is all they seem to care about - which means Romney, who has clung to a desperate game of playing it safe for the very good reason that the uber right will not forgive him one single misstep, will now have to parry and attack and step up his game in response - which means it could get interesting, there could be some fine fireworks on display.

And in that regard I see that Gingrich has challenged Romney to a Lincoln/Douglas styled debate and Romney has turned it down - that won't work to my thinking - I understand why team Romney wants to avoid such a thing: the base is looking for any excuse to bury Romney therefore he would not only have to perform well in the debate, he'd have to actually palpably win it. But I don't think they can avoid this challenge - no doubt they're making the calculation that all those skeletons in Newt's closet are eventually gonna come tumbling out and scuttle his bid - and that's probably true - only problem is Newt may somehow cobble together enough discipline to keep that closet closed just long enough to get the nomination. It would be at that point a third party challenger emerges [since I see no way Gingrich beats Obama] and, as I said, would not surprise me at all if that challenger ends up being Romney [you don't think losing to Gingrich would tarnish Romney? Possibly, but he can cast the uber right as villain in that loss which will of course hurt him with some conservatives but will also increase his appeal with independents and disgruntled moderate democrats].

I'm getting the impression that the farce that was, is, always will be Herman Cain has caused some conservatives to take a step back and reconsider with growing alarm and concern the state of the republican party, the state of what it means, in the age of Obama, to be a republican - in short, I sense a growing anxiety that maybe the right is becoming dangerously indebted to and defined by outrage, anger, reactionary zeal at the expense of short changing  ideas, rationality, competence, meaningful experience, expertise - concern that it's not just the rank and file who are demanding their emotional needs be mollified and sated by some populist passion play but the entire cohort up on through the officer class also now increasingly it seems addicted to feeling rather than thinking as if the former were an entirely sufficient surrogate for the latter.

When a guy like Mitch Daniels, whose resume and executive track record seem to embody the needed tonic for what ails the nation, is marginalized early in the nominating process because he's not a shouter, not a fist pumper, not a shallow, grandstanding rhetorician and glib scourge of the left, when a solid and esteemed prospect like that is ignored while an utter clown like Cain or bombastic, ethically challenged narcissist like Gingrich are raised breathlessly on shoulders and rushed blindly towards the throne by the madding rabble -  well, a man not entirely bereft of common sense should be motivated to take a step back and wonder just what the hell is going on here.

[maybe I should hope for Gingrich to win the nomination - that would pretty much guarantee a third party entry, and maybe Romney himself as that third party entry - hell, maybe that's part of the plan: try your best to get the uber right to accept you, but if they're gonna insist on theatrics over substance, insist on some phony ideological purity test, then screw 'em and run as an independent. I mean, if ya think about it, an argument can be made that even if Romney survives the primary the fact that so many republicans are gonna have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the booth to vote for him may render him not viable as an effective Obama opponent anyway - certainly the Limbaughs et al are unlikely to play nice. We're sitting here wondering who could be that third party challenger - I don't know if anyone's mention Romney yet - but if Gingrich manages to pull it off for sure there's gonna be a lot of conservatives out there saying 'No, sorry, not gonna happen' - in fact, if one is of the opinion that an ugly nominating process and convention will damage Romney to an unsustainable degree, a surprise Gingrich win that sets a Romney third party run in motion could actually be the best thing to happen]

Islamists, including of the ultra-conservative Salafis variety, look to be winning and winning big in Egyptian 'elections' - and remarkably some seem surprised and consequently disquieted by this turn of events. As a moderately intelligent person - or, moderately not unintelligent person - I'm consistently amazed and intrigued by authentically bright people, people much smarter than me, getting tripped up by logical permutations that just seem so obvious - to wit avid Israel hater Thomas Friedman in Times today grudgingly having to admit that maybe Israel's highly cynical take on the putative Arab Spring has been right all along. Really? This is just occurring to you now? You know, I can forgive a person for coming to the wrong conclusion on something - what I find troubling and much less venial is the failure or complete inability of so many of our 'public intellectuals' to objectively consider the various potentialities any given event may give rise to before coming to their possibly flawed conclusions - that the chimerical Arab Spring could produce outcomes decidedly not in the best interests of the West was obvious to anyone willing just for moment to put aside their preferred point of view - yet so many, on both left and right, proved unable or unwilling do that simple thing. I find that troubling - although, given the nature of the beast, possibly not all that surprising.