Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Which is the higher good -- better death stars or more storm troopers?

Our green, human-scale emperor-elect Obama has long since made the obvious white-hat choice: more storm troopers.

If you're running the world, the smart way you hope to move incrementally, step by step, toward the only one final solution, all the while remaining up close and personal -- Empires like that don't drop bombs. They wear... boots. They don't fly in -- they walk in.

But can he win anything this way? Or just create more quags? The world's already pockmarked with blue-helmet fancy-boys trying to keep emerging states from killing off signifigant parts of themselves -- and to little effect. So why add something like an Obama's Raiders to that mix?

My guess: Mr Milk Chocolate Caution just ... won't.

The other night I heard from my inside source on nat-sec matters, Mister Y, the man at the bottom of it all, down there at Foggy Bottom. His money line:

"Look for a second '34, Owen -- a turning point of empire, as we look inward for a spell. You know, good neighbor gone global."

"Watch as the whole occ-occing of sand-dune country gets a wind-down. We'll pull back, at least till the rest of the world's great states at the edges of our empire get itchy and gutsy enough to... you know... get us riled."

So: "splendid isolation", anyone?