I'm a little uncomfortable with the framing that we need to leave Iraq in order to spend more time competing against China, but in general, Tom Friedman's column today is pretty sound. And this really is a well-chosen closer:
I heard a U.S. officer in Baghdad tell this story:
His unit was on a patrol in a Sunni neighborhood when it got hit by an I.E.D. Fortunately, the bomb exploded too soon and no one was hurt. His men jumped out and followed the detonation wire, which led 1,500 feet into the neighborhood. A U.S. Black Hawk helicopter was in the area and alerted the U.S. soldiers that a man was fleeing the scene on a bicycle. The soldiers asked the Black Hawk for help, and it swooped down and used its rotor blades to blow the insurgent off his bicycle, with a giant “whoosh,” and the U.S. soldiers captured him.
That image of a $6 million high-tech U.S. helicopter with a highly trained pilot blowing an insurgent off his bicycle captures the absurdity of our situation in Iraq. The great Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi said it best: “Great powers should never get involved in the politics of small tribes.”
On the other hand, it really shouldn't worry us that the Chinese are expanding the number of students doing advanced graduate work in renewable energy development. The formation of affordable alternatives to fossil fuels is a positive sum endeavor, in which Chinese innovation will be saving the same world as American innovation. The better they do, the better we'll do. Indeed, this is the gigantic upside of Chinese development and education -- it enables that many more people to develop awesome, fun, and/or important stuff that we can all use.
