We will let you have Cuba, if you don't interfere with our efforts to destabilize the Ukraine

Is a successful foreign policy an endeavor of skill, or chance?

I don't know, lets consult the IChing.

They say that Reagan consulted a psychic.

Bill Clinton didn't really have to confront anything significant during his entire presidency.   Maybe that's why he had so much time for Lewinsky.

Obama strikes me as too busy for such frivolities.  During his tenure, for better or worse, America has taken marked steps in reshaping alliances with the "normalization" so to speak of relations with Cuba and Iran.  And probably more steps in East Asia that aren't publicized.

The younger Bush misjudged what would happen when you removed the glue that held together Iraq. Naively, perhaps, like most of us, we believed that democracy would take hold in the absence of oppression.  In retrospect, it was obvious that Iran would play a much bigger role in the internal affairs of Iraq than we would.   And Saudi Arabia had a role all along on preventing this.  Hence, Isis. When you throw in a "little" unrest in Syria, its not surprising that events degenerated into the cluster fuck we now see.

 I remember a Saturday Night Live skit in the 1990s poking fun at Bob Dole's campaign.   He, of course, was going to lose the election.   The economy was booming.   America was the preeminent world power.   Why change the status quo?  I remember Clinton was in the background in the skit catching all kids of fish without really trying.  Because his was a lucky term.  The 1990s seem like a life time ago--when America could do no wrong.   I even remember Clinton commenting once toward the end of the presidency that nothing happened during his term that would have tested his "greatness."   True, in more ways than one.   Clinton will likely go down in history as the president that reigned during the false bubble of prosperity before the real estate bubble burst.  In other words, much to his chagrin, (and attempts to write his own indelible chapter in the history books), history will regard him as a nobody.

 Bush, the younger, will likely go down as one of the worst presidents in American history.   When he could have taken a million high roads instead of taking many low roads by bending to public pressure to do something in the wake of 9-11.   Maybe it was inevitable anyway.   My God, Al Gore or Bill Clinton likely would have fucked up things worse.  Only Obama of all the recent presidents probably through inaction would have done what in retrospect would have been the course dictated by the IChing.

Of course, if we don't know what to do next, we should always, of course, do the next thing:-)

 

many miles logged.   Augusta and the Kati trail again.  This time with pow pow and the mystery flat.   Its a blur after that.   And on the way to chicago, I could have sworn that my self was either falling away, or I was having a stroke on the way there.