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We’re still on the speech at West Point. Matthew Continetti provides a particulary insightful essay on the shortcomings of our foreign policy. While acknowledging our fortunate geography, Mr. Continetti thinks we cannot continue to hide from our great power responsibilities.

The phrase “offshore balancing” did not appear in President Obama’s commencement address at West Point. It did not have to. Obama’s every word was informed by the idea that America should renounce nation-building, extended deployments, base construction, and other elements of hard power in favor of diplomacy, military-to-military partnerships, multilateral institution-building, and soft-power in general. “Just because we have the best hammer,” the president said in a particularly insipid use of cliché, “does not mean that every problem is a nail.”

Not the administration, nor its supporters, nor its critics have been successful in defining precisely what the “Obama Doctrine” is. But offshore balancing seems to me to be as good a way as any to describe the president’s strategy. What does it mean? Because of America’s favorable geography—oceans to the east and west, friendly allies to the north and south—its powerful military, and its commercial nature, our country need not be overly assertive in the world. …

… As America abjures its post-war strategy of onshore hegemony in favor of offshore balancing, what do we see? We see chaos in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, we see the annexation of Crimea, we see mounting tensions between China and Vietnam and between China and Japan. We see new moves by Japan toward rearmament and militarization, we see the return of the European far right, and we see the spread of al Qaeda franchises throughout the Muslim world.

I am not under any illusions. America will get the foreign policy that its elites desire. What they desire now is normalcy. And so this era of retrenchment may last for some time. The era of normalcy ushered in by Warren Harding lasted more than 20 years—right up to the moment Japanese Zeroes bombed Pearl Harbor. But, like all eras, it came to a close. One day America will have to go back ashore.

The last word on the speech comes from Charles Krauthammer.

… What is the world to think when Obama makes the case for a residual force in Afghanistan — “after all the sacrifices we’ve made, we want to preserve the gains that you have helped to win” — and then announce a drawdown of American forces to 10,000, followed by total liquidation within two years on a fixed timetable regardless of circumstances?

The policy contradicts the premise. If you want not to forfeit our terribly hard-earned gains — as we forfeited all our gains in Iraq with the 2011 withdrawal — why not let conditions dictate the post-2014 drawdowns? Why go to zero — precisely by 2016?

For the same reason, perhaps, that the Afghan surge was ended precisely in 2012, in the middle of the fighting season — but before the November election. A 2016 Afghan end date might help Democrats electorally and, occurring with Obama still in office, provide a shiny new line to his résumé.

Is this how a great nation decides matters of war and peace — to help one party and polish the reputation of one man? As with the West Point speech itself, as with the president’s entire foreign policy of retreat, one can only marvel at the smallness of it all.

An article from New Geography shows how California greens have priced ordinary citizens out of many parts of the state.

One of the core barriers to economic prosperity in California is the price of housing. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Policies designed to stifle the ability to develop land are based on flawed premises. These policies prevail because they are backed by environmentalists, and, most importantly, because they have played into the agenda of crony capitalists, Wall Street financiers, and public sector unions. But while the elites benefit, ordinary working families have been condemned to pay extreme prices in mortgages, property taxes, or rents, to live in confined, unhealthy, ultra high-density neighborhoods. It is reminiscent of apartheid South Africa, but instead of racial superiority as the supposed moral justification, environmentalism is the religion of the day. The result is identical.

Earlier this month an economist writing for the American Enterprise Institute, Mark J. Perry, published a chart proving that over the past four years, more new homes were built in one city, HoustonTexas, than in the entire state of California. We republished Perry’s article earlier this week, “California vs. Texas in one chart.” The population of greater Houston is 6.3 million people. The population of California is 38.4 million people. California, with six times as many people as Houston, built fewer homes. …

… The Californians who are hurt by urban containment are not the wealthy elites who find it comforting to believe and lucrative to propagate the enabling big lie. The victims are the underprivileged, the immigrants, the minority communities, retirees who collect Social Security, low wage earners and the disappearing middle class. Anyone who aspires to improve their circumstances can move to Houston and buy a home with relative ease, but in California, they have to struggle for shelter, endlessly, needlessly – contained and allegedly environmentally correct.

Allen Meltzer of the Hoover Institution says Ronald Reagan is alive and well and living in India.

Narendra Modi won an overwhelming victory in the Indian election. He avoided or minimized contentious issues, like Hindu nationalism. The Republicans can learn a lot by following a similar strategy on religion. Modi’s campaign emphasized growth, a better future, and a program for achieving improved living standards for everyone. He charged the current government with “tax terrorism” because it repeatedly changed India’s tax rates and tax law. That created uncertainty, an enemy of business investment and economic growth.

The Indian election was a classic confrontation between the proponents of growth and the advocates of redistribution and the welfare state. Growth won across the board in all classes and regions. The young especially voted for growth. The same message brought Ronald Reagan to the presidency for two terms. Like Reagan, Modi urged voters to choose growth and opportunity instead of redistribution, higher tax rates, and envy.

This message worked for President Reagan. And it worked for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. It offers opportunity to the many willing to work for a better life.

Republicans should make this message their main themes in the 2014 and 2016 elections. We know that President Obama’s party, like the Indian Congress party, is committed to more redistribution, a larger welfare state, and more regulation of the internet, the environment, investment, consumption, business, and labor. That policy can be called “regulatory terrorism” because like tax terrorism it discourages investment and growth. President Obama, like the incumbent party in India, never tires of urging higher tax rates to finance more redistribution. …

What we eat determines how we think? That’s the premise of a WSJ article on the different cultures that produce wheat and rice.

Could what we eat shape how we think? A new paper in the journal Science by Thomas Talhelm at the University of Virginia and colleagues suggests that agriculture may shape psychology. A bread culture may think differently than a rice-bowl society. 

Psychologists have long known that different cultures tend to think differently. In China and Japan, people think more communally, in terms of relationships. By contrast, people are more individualistic in what psychologist Joseph Henrich, in commenting on the new paper, calls “WEIRD cultures.”

WEIRD stands for Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic. Dr. Henrich’s point is that cultures like these are actually a tiny minority of all human societies, both geographically and historically. But almost all psychologists study only these WEIRD folks. …

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PDF is lost on the Mac side of the new MacBook. We’ll try to find it next week.

We have been treated to the Pope’s economic ignorance with his attacks on free markets. Last week he went to Israel and doubled down on his foolishness. Caroline Glick writes on Francis’s unfriendly visit.

… Alas, the Golden Age of Catholic-Jewish relations seems to have come to an end during Francis’s visit to the Promised Land this week.

In one of his blander pronouncements during the papal visit, Netanyahu mentioned on Monday that Jesus spoke Hebrew. There was nothing incorrect about Netanyahu’s statement. Jesus was after all, an Israeli Jew.

But Francis couldn’t take the truth. So he indelicately interrupted his host, interjecting, “Aramaic.”

Netanyahu was probably flustered. True, at the time, educated Jews spoke and wrote in Aramaic. And Jesus was educated. But the language of the people was Hebrew. And Jesus preached to the people, in Hebrew.

Netanyahu responded, “He spoke Aramaic, but he knew Hebrew.”

Reuters’ write-up of the incident tried to explain away the pope’s rudeness and historical revisionism, asserting, “Modern-day discourse about Jesus is complicated and often political.” The report went on to delicately mention, “Palestinians sometimes describe Jesus as a Palestinian. Israelis object to that.”

Israelis “object to that” because it is a lie.

The Palestinians – and their Islamic and Western supporters – de-Judaize Jesus and proclaim him Palestinian in order to libel the Jews and criminalize the Jewish state. It seems like it would be the job of the Bishop of Rome to set the record straight. But instead, Francis’s discourtesy indicated that at a minimum, he doesn’t think the fact of Jesus’s Judaism should be mentioned in polite company.

Francis’s behavior during his public meeting with Netanyahu could have been brushed off as much ado about nothing if it hadn’t occurred the day after his symbolic embrace of some of the worst anti-Jewish calumnies of our times, and his seeming adoption of replacement theology during his homily in Bethlehem.

Consider first Francis’s behavior at the security barrier. …

The president’s speech at West Point has received lots of attention. Jennifer Rubin posts on this “cynical … speech.” 

President Obama’s speech at West Point was pure Obama — cynical, strewn with straw men and vague to the point of meaninglessness.

Take his opening barb: “By most measures, America has rarely been stronger relative to the rest of the world. Those who argue otherwise – who suggest that America is in decline, or has seen its global leadership slip away – are either misreading history or engaged in partisan politics.” The issue isn’t whether we are in decline; it is whether Obama’s policies are leading to decline. Rather than directly address his critics’ specific criticisms of, say, his wrongheaded obsession with the “peace process” or the failure to check China’s aggression and “pivot” to Asia, it’s much easier to write the critics off as rooting against America. …

… As Obama goes through his “principles,” it becomes apparent that he is either highly cynical or misinformed, since his own record follows none of the precepts he outlines. He asserts, “If nuclear materials are not secure, that could pose a danger in American cities. As the Syrian civil war spills across borders, the capacity of battle-hardened groups to come after us increases. Regional aggression that goes unchecked – in southern Ukraine, the South China Sea, or anywhere else in the world – will ultimately impact our allies, and could draw in our military.” Umm, but all those things are happening — on his watch. …

… It was a depressing and cynical speech, one that presumes no one is aware of what Obama or the rest of the world is doing. Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute summed it up for Right Turn, “I don’t know what America or what world he thinks he’s living in. It is nothing more than rationalization and recasting failure as success — like saying an F is an A and congratulating yourself.” And we have 2 1/2 more years of this. Heaven help us.

Scott Johnson calls it “more mush from the wimp.”

President Obama gave the commencement speech at West Point this morning. The subject of the speech was foreign policy. The White House has posted the text here. The White House has posted the video here and uploaded it to YouTube; I have posted it below. Please check it out.

I find it difficult to imagine the mental nullity required to draft and revise this speech. You almost have to feel sorry for Obama’s speechwriters at this point. In year six of the Age of Obama, he’s still yammering about closing Gitmo. (Applause.)

The New York Times summary of the speech is here, the Washington Post’s is here. Watching the speech live this morning, I thought I had a vision of the Obama doctrine. These are its leading elements as I observed them. …

Mac Owens has a cogent point.

… The president has repeated the tired refrain that he was not elected to start wars but to end them. However, despite his implication, wars are not fought for their own sake. Wars are fought to achieve some goal. The tragedy is that thanks to his fecklessness and predisposition to subordinate foreign policy to partisan politics, the purpose for which the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan were fought will be lost.

The editors of the Washington Post, who thought it was a good idea to elect this president, share the thoughts of some or our regulars.

PRESIDENT OBAMA has retrenched U.S. global engagement in a way that has shaken the confidence of many U.S. allies and encouraged some adversaries. That conclusion can be heard not just from Republican hawks but also from senior officials from Singapore to France and, more quietly, from some leading congressional Democrats. As he has so often in his political career, Mr. Obama has elected to respond to the critical consensus not by adjusting policy but rather by delivering a big speech.

In his address Wednesday to the graduating cadets at West Point , Mr. Obama marshaled a virtual corps of straw men, dismissing those who “say that every problem has a military solution,” who “think military intervention is the only way for America to avoid looking weak,” who favor putting “American troops into the middle of [Syria’s] increasingly sectarian civil war,” who propose “invading every country that harbors terrorist networks” and who think that “working through international institutions . . . or respecting international law is a sign of weakness.”

Few, if any, of those who question the president’s record hold such views. Instead, they are asking why an arbitrary date should be set for withdrawing all forces from Afghanistan, especially given the baleful results of the “zero option” in Iraq. …

Here’s what the NY Times editors thought of the speech. This all of the Times we’re doing. Follow the link if you want more. 

President Obama and his aides heralded his commencement speech at the United StatesMilitaryAcademy at West Pointon Wednesday as a big moment, when he would lay out his foreign policy vision for the remainder of his term and refute his critics. The address did not match the hype, was largely uninspiring, lacked strategic sweep and is unlikely to quiet his detractors, on the right or the left. …

Andrew Malcolm posts on the outing of a CIA Chief of Station.

President Obama is off to West Point again today. He’ll deliver yet another speech containing Obama Pivot Number God-Knows-What to outline his latest vision for a new world order that isn’t going to happen but will get him through a few more news cycles in the 967 days remaining in his White House tenure.

You can always tell when Obama feels threatened. He orders up new investigations of others and begins throwing speeches at just about everything in sight. The latest Obama investigation is beyond embarrassing and adds to his accumulating image as an incompetent boob.

At the start of his brief Kabul stop, 15 people briefed Obama. As usual, the White House emailed some 6,000 media members the briefers’ names and titles.

One person was listed as “Chief of Station,” a unique government job title that identifies the CIA’s top officer in-country. Oops! It should have been deleted before distribution.

So, the Obama administration blew the cover of its top spook in Afghanistan, who oversees deadly drone strikes and other clandestine business of war. Fame can be dangerous to that officer’s health. …

Kevin Williamson posts on the “victim presidency.”

As many have remarked here, Barack Obama has a strange habit of acting like somebody else has been president these past years. It’s really odd. …

… It’s a remarkable talent he has. When he was getting beat up politically for his association with that goofy racist clergyman, he lectured us on the evils of racism, as though we’d been the ones sitting in on those hateful sermons. Every time he has some spectacular screw-up, which seems to be about once a quarter, he pronounces himself outraged, as though he had not failed us but had been failed himself. 

So Barack Obama has sworn that he will not tolerate the incompetence of the Obama administration. I’d like to think that that means he is going to resign, but I don’t think that’s what he meant.

It is less technical than it seems as MIT Tech Review tells us how statisticians found the Air France flight that crashed into the Atlantic five years ago.

“In the early morning hours of June 1, 2009, Air France Flight AF 447, with 228 passengers and crew aboard, disappeared during stormy weather over the Atlantic while on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.” So begin Lawrence Stone and colleagues from Metron Scientific Solutions in Reston, Virginia, in describing their role in the discovery of the wreckage almost two years after the loss of the aircraft.

Stone and co are statisticians who were brought in to reëxamine the evidence after four intensive searches had failed to find the aircraft. What’s interesting about this story is that their analysis pointed to a location not far from the last known position, in an area that had almost certainly been searched soon after the disaster. The wreckage was found almost exactly where they predicted at a depth of 14,000 feet after only one week’s additional search.

Today, Stone and co explain how they did it. …