A Bush in the China Shop

Bush's trip to India and Pakistan is all about trying to counter China's influence. Oh, and acting as an unpaid traveling salesman for the nuclear power industry and weapons manufacturers. He will be successful for his corporate benefactors because that job is like selling drugs to addicts. The job he is paid for by the American taxpayers is much more difficult. Balancing China will require some long term thinking, so we'll count ourselves fortunate if this gang of Mayberry Machiavellis* arrives back home without having made things much worse.

There is no consistency in the administration's thinking (being charitable). They tell us that nukes in Iran are intolerable, nukes in India we've got to live with, nukes in Pakistan are ignored, nukes in Israel we just don't talk about, and nukes in North Korea we should apparently forget about. There are many obvious differences between these countries that could support a more rational, consistent policy. Left unspoken, but necessary for a truly consistent policy, is whether anything justifies the continued possession of so many (>10,000) nuclear weapons by the US. Please, let's be reasonable and leave any intellectual heavy lifting for the next administration**, hopefully a gang that can shoot straight (and not at friends).

* the gang formerly known as the neocons or their own favorite: vulcans. They wanted to sound tough and rough (if necessary), but think Barney Fife, Sheriff Andy's bumbling Deputy (memorably played by Don Knotts, who died recently at 81).
** Bush Sr. was US ambassador to China. Fortunately, Nixon and Kissenger ran the show from the White House else we might have gone to war over something (Tibet, anyone? Taiwan?). Consequently, Bush Jr. can probably say "my dad is the US ambassador" and maybe "where's the party?" in a couple Chinese dialects.