That's what I'm talking about... *

The NYT is beginning to make sense of the Middle East, how much weight we here should put on what they're choosing over there.

Defense..... Defense.....

“People do not change when we tell them they should,” said the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum. “They change when they tell themselves they must.”

And when the moderate silent majorities take ownership of their own futures, we win. When they won’t, when we want them to compromise more than they do, we lose. The locals sense they have us over a barrel, so they exploit our naïve goodwill and presence to loot their countries and to defeat their internal foes.

That’s how I see Afghanistan today. I see no moderate spark. I see our secretary of state pleading with President Hamid Karzai to re-do an election that he blatantly stole. I also see us begging Israelis to stop building more crazy settlements or Palestinians to come to negotiations. It is time to stop subsidizing their nonsense. Let them all start paying retail for their extremism, not wholesale. Then you’ll see movement.

* Friday, Aug. 17, 2007;

Know when to walk away ... know when to run...
You never count your money
when you're sitting at the table
There'll be time enough for counting,
when the dealing's done.

~The Gambler. (country tune -- check it out.)