I wish you HAD found me, K.

Here is where and why the policies he is pursuing will fail:

Concretely, we must direct our effort to the task that President Kennedy called for long ago. “Let us focus,” he said, “on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions.”

This was surely the road ahead. Yet it is ironic that Kennedy uttered those words as the US was entering Vietnam, the archetypical and disastrous war of the era of people’s war. The US proved to be incapable of establishing acceptable and practical institutions of this kind in one small country on the Pacific sea coast. Such a task is more difficult in the middle of Asia where it costs the US taxpayer US$400 for every gallon of gas delivered to the front line!

Obama returns to Kennedy’s insight:

Agreements among nations. Strong institutions. Support for human rights. Investments in development. All of these are vital ingredients in bringing about the evolution that President Kennedy spoke about. And yet, I do not believe that we will have the will, or the staying power, to complete this work without something more — and that is the continued expansion of our moral imagination, an insistence that there is something irreducible that we all share.

The US does not have the staying power. An expansion of moral imagination cannot compensate for the fact that the US is no longer the only economic superpower. The economic and financial fragility of the US prevent major wars cannot be fought without consequence for the economic and financial viability of the political economy of the US.

Economic constraint is one important determinator of the way in which the US fights wars. The US is making more and more enemies in the AfPak region. US military methodology is an important cause of the growth in power and number of the enemies in the region. Eventually those enemies, flushed with triumph, will govern Afghanistan.

Are there any other words that distress you?

I feel like I’ve been kidnapped in the Tardis to a time and place I never ever wanted to go to. Some sort of US prep school in 1959. Thanks for nowt, j_p_z. That was skin crawling.

Honey, come here quick! And bring the camera! Katz has found the dictionary!

Awww, what a pwecious widdle diddums. Wook at all the paaaages! Hey honey — did you get a picture? We can put it up on the refrigerator!

Pleased as pnuch with it, I am.

1. An undertaking or enterprise of a hazardous nature.
2. An undertaking of a questionable nature, especially one involving intervention in another state’s affairs.

“Adventure” works for me…