Michael Moore, Obama and Afghanistan

How nice to be ideologically pure.

I remember how he went from college town to college town in 2000. How he told the masses of adoring, rich, white college students that a vote for Bush and a vote for Gore were the same. They came by the thousands, paying $10 a pop to see him.

Those hundreds of thousands of dollars went to Ralph Nader's campaign, a large percentage ultimately diverted to Florida. And to New Hampshire, whose four electoral votes would have elected Gore even without Florida... and where Nader's total of 4% was greater than the difference between the two major party candidates.

Moore may be right about Afghanistan, but let's never, ever forget that he's a big part of why we went to Iraq in the first place.

If Afghanistan doesn't go well, Moore can always ambush Democratic politicians and make a new movie with the footage. It's nice to be able to remain so ideologically pure and cash in three times: first on the cynicism on the left, then on disgust with the right, and now the center-left.

Barack Obama represents the last best hope of progressive politics in this country. It took four decades after Lyndon Johnson to get a president even this progressive. If Obama goes down, don't expect to get a candidate to his left; his failure will be blamed on the progressive who elected him. He may be a bit of a wuss, but the way to get change is to push him, and hard. And to get a Congress that's more, not less, Democratic.

Obama campaigned on ending the war and Iraq and doing Afghanistan right, to the roaring approval of liberal activists all over the country. This is what he campaigned on. He has done well by not letting generals dictate his ultimate decision, cutting their requested troop levels in half. Let's hope he keeps this war as limited as possible. There is certainly a lot that could go very, very wrong.

I oppose the escalation in Afghanistan largely because I don't really have the faith that it will greatly improve the situation, and because we're propping up a corrupt regime that is unwilling and unable to handle its own security. More importantly, as I have written many times, the long term security problem for the US is not Islam but China.

China's Achilles heel is Islam. It depends on the Middle East for oil, but it also depends on their acquiescence to maintain their territorial integrity. China's west is populated by tame Tibetans who would like independence... and Uighurs who, if armed, might very well fight to get it.

The majority of Islamic nations as well as Al Qaeda are awful butch when it comes to Palestine, but you'll never hear a peep from them when it comes to their brothers in China. In return, China gives the Muslims cover on human rights and stays away from the global policing of terror.

By mid-century, China will have more GNP than the United States.There will be a lag, but eventually its defense establishment will outstrip ours. The nation has only a handful of weaknesses. One, it can only maintain its territorial integrity by force. Two, its geopolitical competitors border it. Three, it needs to import energy and food.

The United States could hit the first and third weaknesses head on if it had an Islamic strategy. What we need, more than anything, is for the Taliban (or something like it) to move into China, and to attract global jihadi support.

But we will never, ever, break China's marriage of convenience with the Muslim world by occupying the Islamic countries that border it.

Our geopolitical failures go back to the President who decided to invade Iraq and Afghanistan on September 12th. And to Michael Moore, who put him there.