tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74047182011-10-24T03:02:49.266-07:00Uncompromised Commentary and Illiberal ThoughtsC. Owen Johnsonnoreply@blogger.comBlogger161100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7404718.post-22438156798210737542011-06-04T23:19:00.000-07:002011-10-24T03:02:03.947-07:00

A great deal has been said and written about China in recent years -- about its "miracle economy", its financing of US debt, its impending "superpower status", and so on. Almost all of this discussion ignores the context in which all this activity is happening and thus ignores the realities of China with the result that such discussions are typically useless for understanding the current

C. Owen Johnsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7404718.post-35403779683474397412011-01-28T01:33:00.000-08:002011-10-24T03:02:49.327-07:00

This is an essay I wrote in 2006 on my thoughts about our strategy for fighting the GWOT. I wrote in repsonse to some comments and questions by Shrinkwrapped and he was kind enough to post it in his blog. I'm reposting it here in its entirety by request of an interested party. It is rather long -- you have been duly warned. Why we write…It may seem odd to begin a essay on strategy with a

C. Owen Johnsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7404718.post-57115986404270779992011-01-24T21:08:00.000-08:002011-01-25T00:34:51.682-08:00

 Over that the Volokh Conspiracy, Profs. Randy Barnett and Orin Kerr have been going at it hammer and tongs for donkey's years over the constitutionality of the individual mandate imposed by ObamaCare. I am not a lawyer, much less a legal professor, but it is apparent to me that the debates has been going on so long because Kerr and Barnett are arguing about different things. In essence, Barnett

C. Owen Johnsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7404718.post-59775282139226492712011-01-13T00:14:00.000-08:002011-01-13T00:20:57.644-08:00

John Steele Gordon at Commentary magazine posted a piece yesterday calling Paul Krugman the "Joe McCarthy of our times." I find this not a little ironic, though not in the sense of necessarily disagreeing with Gordon. Joe McCarthy was a very bad man but the threat he was focused on -- communism -- was real and serious in the 1950s. The Soviet Union during that time was expansive, hostile, and

C. Owen Johnsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7404718.post-70172300921983400802011-01-12T02:43:00.000-08:002011-01-13T00:19:55.062-08:00

Masters and Commanders is an excellent, extremely detailed account of the occasionally humorous, often acrimonious, always fascinating interactions between the four principals most responsible to for guiding WWII: Generals Alan Brook (CIGS) and George Marshall (US Army Chief of Staff), and British PM Winston Churchill and US Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt. Historian Andrew Roberts does a masterful

C. Owen Johnsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7404718.post-1157309426259241332006-09-03T07:12:00.000-07:002006-09-03T11:55:04.173-07:00

It was brought to my attention this morning that today is the second anniversary of the terrorist attack on the school at Beslan. Other bloggers are offering their retrospectives, which are certainly worth a read. Mine is of a different nature, perhaps because I am naturally contrarian, but I hope it will not be perceived as heartless or insufficiently aware of the magnitude of the tragedy. My

C. Owen Johnsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7404718.post-1157031003649050122006-08-31T06:25:00.000-07:002011-10-24T02:52:26.756-07:00

The first part of an essay I wrote on our strategy for fighting the GWOT has been posted over at Shrinkwrapped. My sincere gratitude to him for allowing me to use his venue for my piece.

C. Owen Johnsonnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7404718.post-1156490588480534932006-08-24T23:56:00.000-07:002011-10-24T02:50:10.656-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, in a comment over at ShrinkWrapped, I made the offer to try to explain what our strategy was in the GWOT, whether or not it was realistic, and whether or not it was working. The central question of course is can we fight this war as we currently are and win it, or are we facing the prospect of a large and extremely bloody general war with, perhaps, Islam itself? A war that

C. Owen Johnsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7404718.post-1096967075876850412004-10-05T01:55:00.000-07:002011-01-04T23:03:35.250-08:00

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all Men are created equal…" Who did they think they were kidding? All men, to say nothing of women, aren’t created equal: Brad Pitt is better looking than me, Arnold Schwarzenegger is stronger than me, and my older brother is smarter than me. A lot smarter. We three are in no way created equal. What a bunch a bilge.. right?Of course not. That isn’t

C. Owen Johnsonnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7404718.post-1096439122524332452004-09-28T23:02:00.000-07:002004-10-19T04:29:50.620-07:00

Fallujah is back in the news again with the recent escalation of terrorist activity in the small portions of Iraq that the Old Media care about. This in turn has caused many commentators to renew their assertions that the US handing of Fallujah last Spring was a mistake. To quote David Warren [who I am not picking on; he’s just handy and his views are typical]: "The Americans have made one big

C. Owen Johnsonnoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7404718.post-1095837245209221512004-09-22T01:07:00.000-07:002006-08-12T17:21:09.980-07:00

I interrupt my usual quasi-politic posting to say that I have just seen Sky Captain & The World Of Tomorrow, and it is an absolutely brilliant tour de force. Stylistically pure with a uncompromising and utterly stunning esthetic, this is best movie released in a great while. The engine of this movie is a sly and wicked intelligence that does not obtrude but adds a delicious layer for those who

C. Owen Johnsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7404718.post-1095678150988963022004-09-19T04:00:00.000-07:002004-09-29T01:08:08.236-07:00

A horrific act like the terrorists massacre at Beslan calls for either hysteria or understatement; we have had some of both and in my title at least I’m going to opt for the latter. Whether the body of this post will veer into the former, I leave to others to judge. In truth, beyond the sickening feeling occasioned by the act itself, I cannot say if I am merely concerned, afraid, or very afraid.

C. Owen Johnsonnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7404718.post-1089885245642479682004-07-15T02:53:00.000-07:002004-07-15T03:04:45.780-07:00

Now the Senate's report on the CIA's intelligence failures is out, the pundits are all commenting on it. I haven't read the report but there are several points everyone commenting seem to agree on. One of these is that we didn't have enough “good” HUMINT [human intelligence, which one commentator equates with spies which is incorrect]; that there was a “human intelligence failure” with respect

C. Owen Johnsonnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7404718.post-1089885022350193292004-07-15T02:49:00.000-07:002004-07-15T02:54:41.653-07:00

What is the irony of the Senate’s report castigating the CIA for a “global intelligence failure”? It is that the conclusion that there was a “global intelligence failure” is based on a real, and singular intelligence failure: the work of Iraq Survey Group [ISG] run by David Kay. The ISG investigation Dr. Kay ran is the “proof”, the sole pivot on which the “no WMDs in Iraq” argument rests. It

C. Owen Johnsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7404718.post-49461927251978917682004-03-24T23:32:00.000-08:002011-01-24T23:35:00.244-08:00

I have these days a radio in my car. I do not have a tape deck or a CD player, or I should not be moved to write this, but I do have a radio and just as important to this rant, this is the first time since the mid-80s that such is the case.  Having a radio, and listening to it, I have little control over what I hear, but instead must sample what radio stations choose to play — and sample I do,

C. Owen Johnsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7404718.post-65079284276294299892004-01-25T00:27:00.000-08:002011-01-25T00:30:38.827-08:00

In Oct 99, my group, of which I was lead analyst, was given a task to evaluate threats from about 6-8 different countries. State-sponsored terrorism was one of the threats. In our proposal, we argued that evaluating state-sponsored terrorism without considering the actual terrorists organizations themselves made little sense. We knew this was a bit dicey because terrorists fell under the rubric

C. Owen Johnsonnoreply@blogger.com0