Comments on The Belmont Club,"One country’s nightmare experience with engaging the Taliban"

twobyfour
... they always hire help that is dumber
The corollary is also true. One mark of a competent manager is that they are confident enough to hire good people. Carter crawled into office partly on the denigration of Gerald Ford as an incompetent klutz. It was an early application of the techniques that were refined into pure bile for the destruction of Sarah Palin. In reality of course President Ford was an intelligent man and one of the finest natural athletes ever to hold his office. His greatest peculiarity was that, even more than the similarly unelected Harry Truman, he lacked the obsession with personal power that marks everyone who sets out to become President. Consider who his Cabinet choices were and compare them to the equivalents that Obama has foisted on the country. He had Edward Levi for Attorney General, Donald Rumsfeld did well at Defense and Eliot Richardson at Commerce. He was not dramatic but he replaced Nixon's weaker cabinet picks.

Regarding Pakistan, at this point I am a little surprised that David Petreaus is allowing himself to be used by Obama.

-------
Concur that the impact of a US regulated entity buying the submarine shipyard might be to prevent the Israelis or Taiwanese from getting more boats. It is unlikely that the Dutch will do business with them instead. Maybe the Israelis can borrow some watercraft from the French again? Maybe they could sell some Jericho missiles, and warheads, to Taipei and Tokyo. The Israelis really do need a few more submarines.

-------
My hope at this point is that at the end of the day the history of the Administration of the Man from Nowhere who had accomplished Nothing will be preceded with a quote not from Yeats but Shakespeare.

it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing
Scottish Play, Act V, scene 5

-------
Subotai Bahadur,
(for your #86)
Not only do I agree with every word that you wrote, I would like to claim that in various places I have already said most of that.