Meth the Press

Is John McCain on meth? Or is he just listening to Martian radio on that steel plate in his head? In that "spirited exchange" on Meet the Press yesterday, McCain blurted, catlike, the hairball observation that his reading of military history brought to mind not a single instance of military withdrawal producing "success."

Really? As my favorite Republican Senator of all time, Everett "The Wizard of Ooze" Dirksen was wont to remark in simpler times (all that was at stake in the halcyon days of my youth was the nuclear annihilation of the world), it sometimes seems as though the South lost nothing at Appomattox excepting of course the Civil War.

Losing the battles while winning the war is also a theme of U.S.-Japanese relations since 1945, if I'm not mistaken. We still have ninety or so military bases on Japanese soil (and it looks as though it's going to be Japanese pacifists that kick us out, not the neo-nationalists!), and yet the result of all that brass and treasure piled on Okinawa this last half century has been naught but to build the best trading partner post-Maoist China ever had.

I guess George Bush hates Japan; hence the neglect. But George Bush loves Iraq; hence the micromanagement. Weird.