A Plan B for Obama

Bruce Riedel
MAKE A SOUTH ASIA COMMAND

South Asia is the epicenter of terrorism and the most dangerous place in the world today: Pakistan is a fragile state with what may be the world's fastest-growing nuclear arsenal; India is an emerging great power, but one with precarious internal rifts; and Afghanistan is just struggling to survive. Yet the U.S. government is alarmingly unprepared to engage with the region -- even at the most basic organizational level. Instead of treating South Asia as a whole, the U.S. national security establishment has carved it up into an array of parts: In the military, Central and Pacific Commands each have a piece of the region, and, more confusing still, the desks at the State Department and the National Security Council that handle "AfPak" are separate from those that deal with India. This may make the Indians happy -- they don't want to be linked with failing states -- but it makes no sense for the United States.

If Barack Obama is to really get serious about the region, he needs to create an executive bureau for Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan -- one that spans across the U.S. government. Good organization does not guarantee good policy, but a poorly constructed bureaucracy is almost always a recipe for bad policy. A new military command that puts Pakistan and India in the same theater would help enormously in improving U.S. strategic thinking about South Asia. No longer would one commander talk to the Pakistanis and another to the Indians; the Pentagon would have just one voice. And likewise for Foggy Bottom: An empowered assistant secretary of state for South Asia could travel regularly on diplomatic missions between Kabul, Islamabad, and New Delhi.

Obama was right to recognize that the Afghan war could not be effectively prosecuted without dealing with Pakistan. But it's foolish to think that Pakistan can be effectively assisted without dealing with the issue that dominates its own strategic calculus: India.

Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, was a senior advisor to three U.S. presidents on Middle Eastern and South Asian issues.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

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REDHOUSEBLUESTATE

10:03 AM ET

October 12, 2010

LOL!

This is a recipe for disaster. Following these steps will increase the government's stranglehold on the economy and ensure additional pain at the ballot box for liberals.

PINJAB ROHUNEY

10:43 AM ET

October 15, 2010

their resume lacks basic experience

These suggestions ignore reality....

These banking/real estate bubbles are on 20 year cycles....furthermore, the president only cares about one job...his!

Blame Bush and the failed policies of the past decade...and then double down on the same policies.

This reminds me of the weimar republic. Only we have voted to pay "reperations" (interest) to the lenders.

Paper money always winds up blowing around in the streets.

Very few recommend returning to the "taylor rule" for the fed, reducing gov't spending, reducing gov't payrolls. Ben Bernake is the greatest counterfeiter of our time.

I would have much more faith and confidence in our nation's economic leaders if they had a job as a paperboy, lemonade stand, etc on their resum'e.

Economics is known as the "dismal science" for a reason. IMHO its right up there with psyc.

Lenin, quoted loosely, "high taxes and inflation are the grinding stone of the wealthy".

JWRUSH

9:35 AM ET

November 2, 2010

RE: Well you gotta remember

Uh. If the prices of things are going up, you want to have lots of debt and little cash.

VODKA

2:47 PM ET

hahahahah yeah yeah make

hahahahah yeah yeah make ALCOHOL driven cars and get DRUNK with ..................OIL!!!!!

RABAGLEY

10:58 AM ET

Wrong incentive for efficiency.

If you want to incentivize efficient vehicles and strongly encourage electric vehicles (and variants), increase gasoline taxes and tie the money to infrastructure and further subsidies for electric variant vehicles. Mandating fuel efficiency standards creates a shell game between categories and EPA standards and allow manufacturers to effectively counter that government policies are contrary to market needs. When gasoline/diesel costs $6/gallon, you'll see suburb/exurb developments suddenly demand commercial and office usage, you'll see utility bicycle sales take off, you'll see the market for high efficiency/hybrid/electric vehicles soar, and you'll see dependence on oil fall through the floor.

BIRDFLEW

4:16 AM ET

October 28, 2010

Great idea, but...

Fantastic suggestion.

Think this or anything like it will pass in America? Not a chance.

The big losers in this equation are also the the ones with the most money to influence policy and debate. They'll have the talking heads screaming 'socialism' before the drafts of this plan have even been drawn up.

I can already picture the Tea Party™ (registered trademark of Koch Industries) bawling about a government takeover of the petrol pump.

11:44 AM ET

Love the new Geneva convention idea

The gap in Geneva definitions was convenient to the Cheney/Rumsfeld administration, but ended up serving nobody since the US isn't an autocratic dictatorship and the rest of the government (notably the still independent judiciary) didn't buy it for a minute.

A new Geneva convention is a wonderful way to tackle the problem, but be sure that the convention is answering the right question (I'm not 100% sure I know what the right question is).

DICKERSON3870

3:57 PM ET

There is nothing quite like...

RE: "The rest of his term should be spent building the institutions of a Palestinian state in the West Bank -- not chasing a dream." - Abrams
MY COMMENT: There is nothing quite like a warmed-over load of BS being excreted by the world’s foremost purveyor of BS, Elliott Abrams!

SEE: "Israeli Settler Runs over Protesting Palestinian Children" ~ By Juan Cole, Informed Comment, 10/08/10
(excerpt) Aljazeera is reporting on an Israeli settler hit-and-run attack by automobile on two young Palestinian boys in Silwan protesting the expansion of Israeli settlements and theft of Palestinian land there. As horrible as the video is to watch– and one hopes the boys are not gravely injured– it is a remarkable simile for what the settlers are doing to the Palestinians. The Jerusalem Fund estimates that there have been on average 2 vehicular attacks per month on Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the Palestinian West Bank during the past year and a half...
SOURCE - http://www.juancole.com/2010/10/israeli-settler-runs-over-protesting-palestinian-children.html

ABLITZ

8:52 PM ET

You'd think by the

You'd think by the description the settler ran down the kids in his car. I don't know if you were watching the same video but the kid ran towards the car and was in mid throw when he was hit, aiming right into the car's windshield. By the way, the settler had his young son in his car with him. You can also clearly see his back window is broken when he stops from the stones that were thrown.
So here are the facts: Settler being stoned, window already broken, his son is in the car with him. Kids charging his car about to throw more stones at the windshield.
I would love to know what you would do in that situation. I don't know if it was an accident or not. It could have been or easily not ( I am no fan of right-wing settlers) but what do you expect? He was clearly in danger and in fact you are supposed to drive towards those threatening you because they should disperse , which obvious didn't work in this situation. If it wasn't an accident, why did he stop after he hit the kids? He only starting driving again after the stones resumed being thrown. He stops again a few dozen feet away from everyone. He is clearly shaken hence why he stopped twice, probably because he realized he just hit two kids with his car and might have killed them.
These are kids. I'm glad they weren't seriously hurt but where are their parents? Why is the press waiting there or something to happen? Would you let your kids play a game of chicken with a car? This is ridiculous and deep down you know this is evidence of nothing.

10:49 PM ET

Palestinian dream city hits snag from Israel

RE: "The rest of his term should be spent building the institutions of a Palestinian state in the West Bank -- not chasing a dream." - Elliott Abrams
SEE: Palestinian dream city hits snag from Israel, By Ben Hubbard, AP News, 10/11/10
(excerpt) It is billed as a symbol of the future Palestine: a modern, middle-class city of orderly streets, parks and shopping plazas rising in the hills of the West Bank, ready for independence, affluence and peace.
But the $800-million project has hit a snag: Palestinians say construction of the city of Rawabi depends on getting an access road, which can't go ahead without Israeli permission.
At a time when the latest U.S.-brokered peace effort is in crisis, the tussle over road-building is a test of Israel's willingness to give up much of the West Bank and allow Palestinian statehood to move forward.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he supports Rawabi's construction, but Jewish settlers and their supporters in the Israeli government, who oppose the very idea of Palestinian statehood, want the whole project scrapped.
Rawabi, some 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of Jerusalem, is one of many West Bank projects such as job-creating industrial zones and improved water supply that have similarly been held up...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://wire.antiwar.com/2010/10/11/palestinian-dream-city-hits-snag-from-israel-4/

5:20 AM ET

October 13, 2010

J THOMAS: Your comparison of

J THOMAS: Your comparison of a Nazi Concentration Camp guard is intentionally provocative and will only appeal tp irrational people like yourself who are already set in their views. How is an armed guard who has the job of organizing forced labor and marching thousands of men woman and children to their death even comparable to someone who is living on land illegally according to international law but beleives he has the right to be there?

Nazi concentration camp? Explain how it is even comparable?

HANINZOABI

10:16 AM ET

He can't because Jthomas is a fool

who has never been to Israel. He just makes statements that he pulls out of his a**.

1:58 PM ET

Ah J Thomas, First of all I

Ah J Thomas,
First of all I said I don't know if he intentionally did hit the kid or not. My point was it's not obvious from the video. In fact, if you read my post I said the reason he probably stopped was that he realized he hit the kid. Why would he stop if he was trying to hit him? It looked like the only reason why he drove away was because people starting pelting his car with stones again. Hence it was probably not his intention to run him over, if you believe the settler himself (which I'm sure you won't) he claimed it was an accident and he was only trying to get out of danger and not trying to hit the kids. This goes back to the greater point of this is evidence of what? That we shouldn't care about non-violent movements to end occupation? That the increase of the GDP in the West Bank and a continued investment in infrastructure and institutions isn't a good thing? The emergence of Salem Fayeed of a leader that could actually do good for his people instead of pocketing their money and allowing militant fractions to escalate a cycle of violence? The idea of Israel and the PA working together to stop attacks coming from the West Bank isn't progress?
Because a settler may or may not have intentionally hit a kid hurling rocks at his car none of this matters? Come on now you're just trying to to show your bias and do away with reason.

You are still equating the "evil" settler with the concentration camp guard. In fact it seems like you are saying the guard has the moral high ground on the settler because the settler had a choice of living there or not. But has the settler intentionally harmed anyone? Most likely not. He has not led anyone to their death (most settlers with a very few exception have not physically harmed anyone, but someone I'm sure you'll try to say they are indirectly committing genocide or some nonsense .) They think they have the right to be there and some are completely misguided but remember the historical presence of Jewish communities in the area before Modern Zionism (most notably Hebron), there is precedent for these communities. You calling this people "evil" is just a disservice to the word itself. Let's reserve that for those who truly are.

11:42 PM ET

a warmed-over load of BS

RE: "The rest of his term should be spent building the institutions of a Palestinian state in the West Bank -- not chasing a dream." - Elliott Abrams
MY COMMENT: There is nothing quite like a warmed-over load of BS being excreted by the world’s foremost purveyor of BS, Elliott Abrams!

SEE: "Jordan Valley joins list of peace obstacles" ~ By Karin Laub, Associated Press, 10/12/10
(excerpts)...The Palestinians say they can't give up an inch of the fertile valley, which makes up a quarter of the West Bank and would be one of the few largely undeveloped territories of their crowded future state, a place to build new cities and settle refugees.
With an eye to the future, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad broke ground Monday on an agroindustrial park in the valley that, with funding and technical help from Japan, is to create 10,000 Palestinian jobs one day and transform the sleepy area into an economic hub...
...Starting on the $30 million project is a huge gamble, though, because after four years of negotiations, Israel has yet to issue key permits, such as permission to link the park's access road to a nearby highway leading to the Jordanian border, Palestinian officials say...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/12/AR2010101203992.html

4:53 AM ET

October 14, 2010

Hasbara? "You guys"? Who said

Hasbara? "You guys"? Who said I was Israeli or even Jewish? Caught up in my own evil? I don't support the far right settler movement because I think they are an obstacle to the peace process and are very stubborn. I don't support them. How many times must I say that.
There is nothing worst than a well read (or self-proclaimed educated) person who is so caught up in their own world and so closed minded that they use the education only to prove to themselves what they already believe and nothing beyond it. Open up your world and enlighten yourself.
You assume that I am an Israeli and Jewish. Why? It shows your own bias and what's the point of arguing with someone who can never be more than radical in their views.
Considering I have expressed my distaste for settlers, support for peace and the current Palestinian leadership while still supporting the existence of the state of Israel I would say I am moderate in my views. It would be an absolute waste of my time to continue further as a moderate arguing with a radical (read: rational arguing with irrational) Hence while I'm not even going to bother anymore.

MARTY24

12:01 PM ET

Arguing for/against evil

It is J Thomas who argues for evil.

In 1967, the Israelis assumed that after their stunning victory, the Arabs would agree to a peace that accorded to Jews the rights Palestinians continue to claim for themselves. No such luck. Instead, we got the three "nos" from Khartoum. While some Jews returned shortly thereafter to places from which they had been ethnically cleansed after the 1948 war ( pace J Thomas: *some* Arabs were forcibly displaced during the war, while *all* Jews on the wrong side of the armistice line were), settlement began in earnest when Israelis began to believe that there was little likelihood the Palestinian Arabs would ever accept that Jews have rights. If the self-declared widely-read J Thomas is paying attention he may be aware that the Palestinians have refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state, something essential to any potentially viable solution, even to get the settlement construction freeze extended as they now demand.

To see why opposition to settlements is evil, just substitute Black for Jews and White for Palestinian in any discussion about those communities. The world would be appalled if there were areas where Black people weren't allowed to live; would J Thomas accuse a Black person who wanted to live in a previously all-white area of being evil? Why should it be any different for Jews? Except, of course, that the world endorses anti-Semitism as the only form of acceptable racism. So, J Thomas, are you a racist?

Nor do the settlements interfere with a viable solution: In the 1980s Israel removed the town of Yamit from the Sinai in conjunction with the peace treaty with Egypt. And if the Palestinians weren't so insistent on their right to deny any rights to Jews, there is no obvious reason why Jews could not live in a Palestinian state; there are more than a million Arabs living in peaceably in Israel. So, again, J Thomas, are you a racist? Are you the evil one here?

As for the auto-into-children situation: this is part of an ongoing confrontation in which the first violence was perpetrated against Jews by Muslims who insisted it was their right as Muslims to engage in violence against Jews. I can't think of any reason anyone, even an evil settler, would want to harm a child who wasn't threatening him in any way.

We can infer from his postings that J Thomas supports the use of violence against Jews; does he also support KKK action against Black people who want to live in "white" neighborhoods? The "logic" he employs requires that he do so.

2:51 PM ET

REALLY??

Ok this is new...Build west bank?? like USA is BUILDING Afghanistan and before that Iraq? I think building along with deciding the fate is best left to the individual states all USA needs to worry right now is get its act together coz CHINESE ARE COMING to get their loaned money back.

11:09 PM ET

November 3, 2010

Israel blocks Palestinian premier from Jerusalem road opening

ARTICLE: "Israel blocks Palestinian premier from Jerusalem road opening" ~ Deutsche Presse-Agentur, 11/02/10

(excerpt) Jerusalem - Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad was forced Tuesday to cancel his attendance at a road inauguration in East Jerusalem after Israel instructed its police to prevent any Palestinian political activity there.
Fayyad had been due to attend the opening of a Palestinian Authority-funded road in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Anata.
But Israeli Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich signed the orders preventing his visit late Tuesday...

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/middleeast/news/article_1595881.php/Israel-blocks-Palestinian-premier-from-Jerusalem-road-opening

NEWWORLDORDER

4:03 PM ET

There are no "moderates" within the Islamic Republic

The west should support the secular Iranian people, not the fanatics within the regime including the so-called reformists. All the so-called reformists' struggle is over share of power and preventing a secular regime change. The west should instead support the secular Iranian people.

4:04 PM ET

The west should not support

The west should not support any fractions within the Islamic republic, all the ones who believes in the IR ideology and the barbaric Sharia are as evil as the ones ruling the country. The so-called reformists are not reformist at all, they are as conservative and evil as the rest. Just read Rafsanjani's words about how Muslims should arm themselves with nukes and destroy Israel

http://www.iran-press-service.com/articles_2001/dec_2001/rafsanjani_nuke_threats_141201.htm
Rafsanjani (the master mind behind the so-called reformist movement) is still one of the wealthiest (if not the wealthiest) and the most powerful man in Iran, both Mousavi and Karoubi are his puppets and he is the head of the most powerful assembly in Iran and legally capable of removing Khamenei from power.

JIM FINGER

10:42 AM ET

CUT (REALLY CUT) WORLD PEACE AND PROSPERITY

Whether this nation likes it or not, we are the world's policeman. With the miserable failure of the League of Nations, FDR realized that there was only one course of action to prevent recurrent world war. It was with this in mind that he sought and succeeded in his strategic vision that lay behind our involvement in WWII, the Marshall Plan and our foreign policy decisions since. For those who think the strategic reason for our involvement was the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, it is long past time think a little more deeply.

The U.S. had wide oceans back then (in fact far wider than they are today) and could easily have retreated to let the rest of the world fight to exhaustion. Why did we not? Were we simply reflexively reacting to losing 3,000 servicemen and some hardware at Pearl? Absolutely not! Why did FDR scheme and politic mightily to overcome the vast pacifist/isolationist sentiment that was pervasive prior to Pearl? Was he simply itching for an excuse to divert attention away from the failures of statist economic policies? I think not!

The world is a far smaller and far more interdependent than it was prior to WWII. “Wide oceans” mean nothing in an age of commonplace jet travel, ICBMs and nuclear weapons. They mean even less when the economies of the world are fueled predominantly by the massive daily flow of hydrocarbons. Consider the economic dislocations that would occur if the flow of oil from the Middle East was stopped for as little as two weeks… to say nothing of a longer duration. If there is any lesson to be learned from Weimar Germany, it is that massive economic dislocations beget conditions that give rise to demagogues with “solutions.” Demagogues with solutions give rise to war… not brushfires, but serious war… with 10s of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions dying and economic infrastructures laid to waste. The U.S. fed 117,000 dead (of a total 37,000,000 dead) in 18 months into the jaws of World War I. We then fed 320,000 dead (of a total 60,000,000 dead) into our 45 month involvement in WWII. By comparison, we have suffered fewer deaths throughout our involvement in Iraq than we did in the 5 weeks during which we took Iwo Jima. Shall we compare the strategic importance of Iraq, or countering Iranian hegemony over the Middle East oil fields, with a 2 mile by 8 mile sandbar in the Pacific? Shall we abandon the most successful strategic foreign policy gambit of all time, the European Union, to the notion that Russia will never seek to do any more than to extract enormous wealth from it by means its dependence on Russian natural gas? Can we trust that the Europeans are now too sophisticated to forever eschew the ethnic fratricide that characterized Europe in the centuries up to and through WWII?

There can be no doubt that Pax Americana has put some strains on the American economy. However, the far greater strains are those of government guarantees… from those on our housing markets to those of our mushrooming entitlement commitments. Foreign policy makers, who call to “really cut” military spending should seriously consider whether the stress that has been put on our economy and, therefore, on the disadvantaged in our society is truly worse than seeing them march off to war. For surely they will eventually be marched off to war if the U.S. should retrench militarily and go the isolationist route with a nod to the illusion that we will be protected by “wide oceans.”

LEON DEINOS

2:41 PM ET

Quit pretending to be the world's policeman

Most of the foreign policy proposals in this collection of essays involve the US' military activity. Everything else seems secondary. But that is the way things seem to be these days.

Military (or arms; not defense) expenditure (and its outliers, such as "homeland" security, foreign aid, interest for past wars, etc.) is the biggest budget item of the federal government. It is also the least promising way to provide for economic recovery. Citizens young and old are being cheated of education and pensions, and the ones in between of jobs, but the military industrial complex roars on in our declining land.

Therein lies the biggest problem faced by Obama, who seems to have been fully caught up in the militarist line. This happened to JFK and LBJ with the David Petraeus of their day, Maxwell Taylor. Taylor, a very ambitious man, was ignorant of the countries he was urging those presidents to intervene in, and LBJ, in particular, paid the price of listening to Taylor's nonsense. It looks like Obama is in the same trap. Bad for him, even worse for our country.

It is way past time to cut our country's foreign policy to match better the quality of our incompetent, overrated generals, reduce arms expenditure, leave southern Asia alone, and bring the soldiers home.

3:43 PM ET

Biggest Budget Item

The biggest budget item should be the military. For in the preamble, the purpose of the federal government is stated as follows "provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare..." True enough that it does not say provide for the defense of the world. However, with the immediate reach and consequence of weaponry, both military and economic, there is no choice but to defend the world and, yes, even preemptorily defuse situations that could bring the world economy to a sudden halt. For, when the world economy is brought to a halt, so too will ours.

But, while military spending should be the largest part of federal government spending, it is not even close:
http://www.heritage.org/BudgetChartbook/defense-entitlement-spending

No matter how one slices or dices the issue, it is entitlements that are proving our ruination, not military spending. And, as entitlement spending undermines military spending, it makes the world much less safe for our children and grandchildren. It was nonsense to conceive of "wide oceans" being a form of defense 70 years ago. It is beyond ridiculous, to the point of intellectual bankruptcy, to even bring it up in today's world!

More info: http://www.heritage.org/BudgetChartbook/contents

MADOCPOPE

4:23 PM ET

Plan "B?" - More Like Plan "F"

With few exceptions the "plans" presented in this piece are but rehashes of previous failures. The mystery is why anyone would then believe that yet another attempt at inflicting them would produce anything other than yet more failures.

"Alternative energy" as the answer to our dependence upon foreign oil? Right...

That's been tried, and tried, and tried for about half a century now and we're no closer to it, really, now in 2010 than we were when Carter put solar water heaters on the White House roof. Instead of throwing more money down the "alternative energy" rat holes how about we spend it on things which actually live up to their advertised performance and actually work? The US has enough oil shale and tar sands within our borders to meet our needs for centuries.

Combine this with a program to build more nuclear power stations and we'd be all set energy-wise - and attain this state of energy independence within but a handful of years instead of decades (if ever) that the alternative energy folk keep promising up.

As to the rest, it's but prescriptions for bigger government, bigger deficits, higher taxes, and a bleaker future.

Madoc

VMITCHELL

10:29 PM ET

"Pakistan is the Cancer" -

"Pakistan is the Cancer" - President Obama

Couldn't agree with the President more.

Nearly every single terrorist plot in the US, Europe, India, and elsewhere traces back to Pakistan.

Pakistan is the epicenter of terrorism with a welcome mat out for the Taliban (both the Afghani kind and its own homegrown version), Al Qaeda, Lashkar, Jaish-e-Muhammand, and every other jihadi group.

Pakistan has spread nuclear weapons to Libya, North Korea, and Iran, and the man responsible, AQ Khan, is one of the two most popular men in the nation, the other being bin Laden.

For half its existence, Pakistan has been under military rule.

Pakistan supports cross border terrorism against Afghanistan and India.
But as pitiful, pathetic, and dangerous as all of these are, what's worse is Pakistan's truly scary and incredible denial and delusion: 'ALL of this is false!! It is anti-Islamic!! It is the US, the West, India, Israel, Blackwater!! Somebody else!! Not us!!'

The denial is what fuels the terrorism by allowing the nation to cast a blind eye and justify the use of terrorism - the only reason some in Pakistan are having second thoughts is because their own home-made monsters, the countless jihadi terrorist groups used against India and elsewhere, are destroying their creator.

Denial, delusion, hysteria, distraction, irrationality, believing you are the victim, etc etc etc the real problems of Pakistan and the larger Muslim world.
One really has to think, a nation as damaged and dangerous as Pakistan continues to obsess with a country 10 times its size, a 1000 times wiser, which is trying its mightiest to develop and advance, which wants nothing to do with Pakistan, yet all the epicenter of terrorism can do is fixate and salivate over India and its fast growing economy and democracy.

Pakistan is sick, the problem is not just the terrorist training camps, but the national psychosis and mental illness which allows its house to burn while it continues to scream and blame others. Time to grow up and look in the mirror, the world's patience is running out.

DEFANNIN

3:48 AM ET

We Need a Standing Army in Africa

I agree the US should raise and send troops to Africa. It and Australia are the only habitable continents where the US does not have a standing army. We have thousands of soldiers in Europe, more in Japan and Korea, Not to mention the 6th Fleet floating around the Pacific to keep everyone in line. We have standing armies all thru the Middle East. And in South American we are helping countries with THEIR drug problem. We of course are a peace seeking country. We would never use our armies to make war, except to achieve the greater good of peace. How are we going to influence the peace in Africa if we don't have an army there? And why are we paying some General to be the head of CEN-COM Africa if he does not have any troops to fight with.

So that's settled. Now How do we get troops into Australia? Are they abusing their aborigine population? We just have to keep those Ozzie's in line.

JOEGO

11:52 AM ET

Exactly Right On!

Decoupling our economy from the the middle east by getting off foreign oil is the best thing we can all do. Vote for energy independence with your wallet and this country can be on the path the to a wonderful future. Ignore the obvious at your own personal risk. Our best foreign policy is to set a good example ourselves.

INDIANSCEPTIC

4:57 AM ET

GUTLESS

Pontless advising a brainless and gutless fellow.

Save your breath to cool your porridge.

DILBERT

3:37 AM ET

Woolsey is only half right

The US (as does the rest of the world, excluding OPEC) needs to "Get Off Oil" - the quicker the better.

Woolsey rightly points out that the alternative to oil use is to move to electric battery based transportation, however, those batteries will need to be charged from electricity from the grid (i.e. power plants). For those countries that can't get to 100% power generation from hydro-gravity sources, the only relevant non-polluting technology is nuclear. The US needs to quickly ramp up electricity production from nuclear power plants to meet the rapidly growing needs of replacing the energy currently being used by burning oil in our cars.

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