An Accurate Odometer

Lew, Gen. Odom's comments were devastatingly accurate. A couple of points that jumped out at me:

1. "Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. . . . It is the story of the American colonization of the west and our Civil War."
2. "They [al Qaeda] implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy this apostate Shiite regime. As an aside, it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran."