Sunday Roundup

"This will be a great decade," said Bill Maher at midnight on New Year's Eve as we were toasting the arrival of 2010 at a friend's party. Then, with a wry grin, he added "...for China." We laughed but I was immediately reminded of a fascinating article by Michael Wines I'd just read in the New York Times. It lays out how China is spending billions of dollars in Afghanistan securing raw materials for its voracious economy while America is spending hundreds of billions in Afghanistan fighting an unnecessary war of choice... even as the fight against terrorism has moved on. So China is mining copper and coal in Afghanistan -- and earning tremendous goodwill -- and we are squandering our young, our treasure, and any goodwill we had. Meanwhile, 1,700 miles away, al-Qaeda is training terrorists in Yemen to attack America.