Okay... before bashing Kerry once again, let's just say that the basing agreement Obama signed with the Philippines actually sounds like a good move, which is something I don't think I've ever said about anything else Obama has done in the foreign policy realm - although, word of caution, Obama clearly values gestures over actions when it comes to foreign policy - even with something like Libya it was the gesture of leading from behind and how it related to 'responsibility to protect' delusions that mattered most - so, good move by Obama, but my guess is it'll likely just end up as another empty gesture.

But back to Kerry who in an interview on WSJ website that's behind a pay wall so I haven't actually seen it but if the description of what he says is accurate implies that he [and therefore Obama's entire security inner circle I assume] views Putin's actions as not being grounded in a much larger strategic puzzle and threat but rather simply an expression of something limited to just Putin himself, almost as if to say this is just a manifestation of a personality quirk of ol' Vlad's that may be troubling but not ultimately broadly significant - which is basically a repeat of what he said at the beginning of all this wherein he essentially dismissed Putin's actions as a misplaced attempt to spoil the enlightened protocols of the 21st century by behaving in a so awfully clumsy 19th century way.

I would call this the interpretation of events in order to suit a conclusion one is strongly motivated to prefer -  in other words, Putin's actions don't fit well with Obama's preferred worldview and therefore the problem can't possibly be with that worldview but rather must be about Putin's stubborn refusal to act in proper and civil accordance with it - so let's slap some sanctions on him until he smartens up and starts playing nice.

I of course believe what we're seeing are moves in a very significant strategic game with wide influence that implies threats and dangers of great import that move closer to an inevitability the more the Obama administration demonstrates an unwillingness or inability to understand or confront them. I'd contend that Russia being on the verge of signing a large energy deal with China and just this week I believe agreeing to ship the S-400 anti-air missile system to China [can Iran be far behind?] are clear indications that my take on things is closer to reality than Kerry's - which is a pretty disturbing thought.

The remarkable thing about Kerry's idiotic 'apartheid' statement is that there doesn't appear to be any recognition at all on his part or the people he's talking to of how making such an inflammatory characterization as that that utterly stigmatizes Israel as the unconscionable villain completely disincentivizes the Palestinians - ie, if by not making sacrifices now to get a deal they just sit back and wait for the world to thoroughly demonize Israel as the poster child of racist abuse and subjugation of an underclass until, like the reviled South African regime before, Israel is completely isolated and left with no choice but to capitulate, thus dooming them to the ravages of the truly intolerant Islamists, then why the hell make sacrifices for peace now or endure all the hardships and tough reckonings that would come once you no longer can just blame everything on Israel?

So again one is forced to ask: are Kerry et al really this stupid or has ideological hubris blinded them to such a degree that they just seem this stupid? Or - more worrying I think - is this a deliberate attempt to cater to anti-Zionist sentiments so as to back Israel into a no win situation?  

So, let me see… the payoff, the harvest reaped from Kerry's utterly foolish, ill-advised, astoundingly naïve attempt at peace in the Middle East, a peace that was never at all possible because it's pretty damn clear the Palestinians have no interest in agreeing to terms which Israel could possibly ever accept - the payoff for this effort by Kerry that any clear thinking person could see was not wise and fraught with the likelihood of making things worse is that in the end what we get is in a 'private' meeting Kerry labelling [and libelling for that matter] Israel as a nascent apartheid state, intimating and thus in essence condoning idea that Palestinians would probably now be justified in renewing violence over the failure of the talks and then suggesting that if we could only get rid of Netanyahu as leader of Israel peace indeed, at least as Kerry delusions it, just might have a chance - thereby confirming for all those Israel haters out there that yes it's true Israel is a very bad place and just you go right on hating it. What can one say? The man is an idiot - either that, or Obama truly believes that if he just pollutes the water enough in which Israel swims they'll eventually have no choice but to get out of the pool and make do with what the idiocy of hope and change has left them. I'd love to be a fly on the wall of Netanyahu's cabinet meetings - the room must be full of absolute contempt for the Obama administration - at the end of the meetings they must have to do a little yoga or something to calm themselves before facing the cameras lest someone say what they actually think.

Even if one doesn't buy into the idea of a loose alliance existing between Russia, China and Iran to take advantage of a weak US president and slowly put in motion events and structures that will unwind, diminish American power and quite possibly in a rather significant way - even if one doesn't buy into this theory and accepts that those three are just acting in service of their own interests and any overlap of technique and benefits is strictly coincidental - don't Putin's actions in Ukraine make an 'alliance' a de facto thing regardless of intentionality? Doesn't China now look at the benefit of Putin screwing up things in the Mideast and Europe for the US and see this as a huge net gain for them viz balance of power, especially if one believes in the sincerity of Obama's putative Asia pivot [which I don't, but whatever]? Likewise, doesn't Putin now see if he didn't before [and I certainly believe he did] that if things really do start to get nasty between Russia and the EU/US that having an energy hungry behemoth with a permanent seat on the Security Council in his corner is a rather nice bit of leverage? And it certainly doesn't take a genius to figure out that if those two see Iran as an important cog in these various machinations then Persia's ambitions get a significant boost. This may not have started out as an informal alliance between Russia, China and Iran but it's very hard to see how it doesn't now perforce become one.

With Lil' Kim in the jolly old DPRK about set it seems to light off another test nuke, it's time again to ask: are we really just gonna continue on with the obviously failing diplomacy game until these wackos perfect the most lethal of technologies? What if the yield of this bomb is significantly greater than the last? What if it becomes clear that they are getting close to miniaturizing a warhead that'll fit on a ballistic missile? Are we really just gonna continue to let them test missile technology until they've got one that could reach the US? Since a missile test is sure to follow a bomb test, is it really so crazy to think about shooting the thing down - I mean, if we don't let them test it, how can they perfect it? Can we not get China to sign off on something like that, to even join in since the fear of taking out one of NK's missiles would be them going all bat shit crazy against Seoul? Is there really no way for us to pressure China into doing something constructive here since they're the ones essentially enabling this madness? I mean, if something truly awful happens they can't want to look like the enabler - or are they stuck between a fear of a destabilized NK and what that might mean and the political disaster of a seemingly unlikely but still possible reunification with the south? [or is it possible China figures NK with a viable nuke is a 'containable' least bad outcome here for them? There are some experts even speculating that China's helping NK's nuke program, even to the point of supplying tech on how to militarize a nuclear warhead - hard to believe, but again, they may see this as the least bad outcome for them - they definitely don't want to a see a unified democracy allied to the US crouching on their border]

A lot of difficult questions - and I think difficult questions have a tendency of making people vulnerable to embracing fallacies - the dangerous fallacy hanging over all this is that the status quo is fine, problematic but still workable - the thing is, it's always easier to picture the negative consequences of acting aggressively as compared to 'playing it safe' - but in no way is that proof of the safe route being best when it comes to real outcomes - just as surely as there's a time and place for well reasoned caution there's also a time and place for coming to terms with fact that caution is working against you. I think we're getting to that point with North Korea [well, actually, I think we got there a while back, but there ya go] - and, unfortunately, the way things are going and with a president in the White House who is clearly either not a fan of, big believer in or well suited to the use of American power, it won't be long before we're stuck asking the same questions viz Iran.

It seems liberals are busy constructing oppressive othodoxies everywhere, thought prisons where truth is dictated and anyone who denies that asserted orthodoxy is by denying it automatically persona non grata - the non debate over gay marriage is an example of this, where anyone opposing it was immediately cast as an intolerant homophobe - so to the attempt to do the same viz climate change where some liberals have come out and said with a straight face that anyone who denies the reality of climate change should be charged with a crime - the 'debate' over inequality is definitely moving in this direction, where again the rhetoric of the left attempts to construct an orthodoxy that says of course capitalism serves the evil rich at the expense of the poor and anyone who denies this truth must be in league with the evil rich - and then there's racism, the go to warden of the thought prison who can shut down any criticism of anything or anyone by a 'white' person [preferably a white hetero male who is or at least appears to be 'privileged' in some way which, conveniently, by just being a white etc etc is privilege enough according to prison rules] by simply saying 'only a racist would think that way' - shutting down debate with a charge of racism is truly the non plus ultra of liberal orthodoxy in the age of Obama.

As is obvious this agenda is all about suppressing dissent and quarantining liberal ideology against doubt - once again we see how progressives take naturally to autocracy - indeed, their ideas cannot survive outside of an enabling orthodoxy that allows, insists on them being imposed - they're not just by nature sympathetic to autocracy, they're in fact nothing without it.

"… I'm sorry to say but the sad fact is that the vast majority of us and our fellows are absolute fucking morons and much of what we say and do in the explicative mode is a rather pathetic and ultimately transparent attempt to pretend that isn't the case so as to fool ourselves into thinking that what we are actually matters…"

The much repudiated minority dissent by Sotomayor in the affirmative action case is interesting - in so much as her view of the proper role of government makes clear that should the liberal autocracy that threatens to overwhelm us ever actually come to be personal liberty, free speech and the rule of law as expressed by an independent judiciary will definitely be afterthoughts in the calculations of our progressive caretakers as they set about creating their utopia.

"… the mandarins of Beijing aren't idiots, Putin isn't an idiot, Persia's bearded potentates are not idiots… they're looking at America, they see what's happening, they've taken the measure of Obama and the dysfunction he rules over and have concluded that if a guy as misguided and as poorly suited to governing a superpower as him can twice get elected head of the erstwhile most important country in the world and whose depressing reign, adding insult to injury, may be succeeded by someone equally as ill suited for those chief executive duties but who'll be handed the job regardless by an ignorant electorate and sycophantic media simply for having been born a woman who ironically enough rose to prominence by marrying well… I mean, as said, these people ain't idiots, they see this mess and no doubt rightly conclude the world order that has existed since the end of WWII is coming to an end and they plan on positioning themselves well to pick up the pieces… the seemingly unbounded naive idiocy of Obama and Kerry may have been surprised and dumbfounded by how Ukraine went down and the players on the board moved about, but the game was not lost on ol' Vlad, nor China, nor Iran, nor many of America's increasingly disquieted allies..."

"… you understand, the president's fondness for saying the debate about whatever is over, as he's done twice in the last week regarding Obamacare, is just the logical extension of his expansive view of executive privilege into the realm of god-like omnipotence… really, it makes perfect sense when seen in that gospel of John context, the ideological void, as it were, being given true form by the Word that is God... I mean, that great man Al Sharpton, whose keen intellect no non-racist can doubt, recently compared Obama to the risen Christ so can we really fault him for embracing the role of deity with enthusiasm when so many clever people seem in such desperate need of his salvation?… no, it'd be petty and small minded of us to deny an absurdity that so many clearly want to believe… there is that comforting certainty to liberalism, that sense that if one just embraces foolishness with enough conviction to render all dissent blasphemous, then nothing bad can happen..."