Agreed. I believe he is through. Ain't a gonna study war no more, and hence we see the ascendancy suddenly of the ilk of Ted Carpenter.
Some have said that he is just giving the EU and Iran enough rope to hang themselves
They hung themselves long, long, long ago. We have given them so darn much rope, we can no longer be confident in a campaign to denuclearize them. And the rest of the Mideast which had hoped, albeit understatedly, that we would do just that, and long ago, ...are losing any belief in the U.S. in that regard. The failure of Israel [ considered America's proxy by the Islamics ] to clean Hezbollah's clock tolls loudly in their ears. The rhetoric of Iran's and China's North Korean proxy-state denunciations of the U.S. as Paper Tiger becomes believed.
... if so Iran's announcement that economic incentives wouldn't stop them from enriching Uranium may have been the sound of the trap door dropping.
This was only the 10,000th such trap door. At the comparable stage of what I term "Serial-Appeasement" in the 30's Hitler had occupied the Sudetenland, and had rearmed.
We will see in the days ahead.
Yes, unfortunately we will. At the current pace and direction, the Administration will lamely try to conduct economic sanctions as per the Carpenter appeasement/deterrent approach. Absent pre-emption by either us or Israel, it will fail, and a Nuclear Iran will nuke Israel. No ifs, no buts, no maybes. And they will coincidentally also arm Al-Quaeda. If they haven't already. So we will likely be simultaneously nuked because this administration will not secure the borders or the periphery...deeming such a simple thing..."a retreat" or a defeat of their global strategy anyways. The "strategy" that blithely and wrongly assumed we could make trading "partners" "stake-holders" in our national security.
That strategy was long ago defeated. 9-11 should have been the wake-up call. Xeno-malific Religion trumps economics. Every time. But they still obstinately refuse to admit it. As Tommy Franks said, "Hope is not a strategy."
We will all suffer for the materialists PC ideological zealotry.
And after we are nuked into non-existence, Russia and China will gleefully assert their global supremacy, and impose their design of a world government. All because our own government lost all sight of its duties and proper role...and the real nature and designs of our communist enemies.
What to me is really interesting is that we now have the State Dept. bloggers admit that they have systemmatically tried to discredit the legitimacy of the anonymously-leaked Chinese war plans, see GlitteringEye*
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*What passes for Analysis in FoggyBottom blogs is the classical liberal approach where they try to attack facts, but exhibit the classic mistake of omission and misrepresentation, over-stepping their claims...for example saying things to discredit the policies described, by claiming the alleged source... Chi Haotian isn't defense minister, (no, not currently he isn't, but we first, don't know when the speech was made, ans second, he in fact was Minister of Defense for the traditional maximum 8 years term...which is Hugh as we say here at FR) then he was duly replaced in 2003...by his hand-picked successor...that part is also omitted by these Foggy Bottom mis-directors.