As those who warn Hugh Hewitt against engaging me in interviews describe my position on Iran.

Isn't it amazing that a guy who supported (and still supports) the war in Iraq and advocates regime change in North Korea is so easily characterized as some surrender monkey on Iran simply because I have the unfortunate tendency to point out that there's nothing we can or will do militarily against Iran before it gets the bomb--primarily because of the Iraq tie-down?

Even better is the notion that I want to "give Taiwan to the commies" (as if we can find any in China nowadays) simply because I don't want to see our entire military force structure held hostage to this fantastically defined requirement and would prefer to exploit China's already large presence inside the Gap for our own purposes (no, no, please don't offer any grand strategy like that when we prefer focusing our entire long-term acquisition strategy on the high-end Taiwan scenario, no matter how many Marines and Army that kills between now and that mythical date!).

Too often in the blogosphere, being a hawk is confused with advocating military interventions in all occasions, no matter how fantastic the prospect.

And that is a sad reflection of the state of our current public dialogue on grand strategy, which consists of primarily "over [somebody else's] dead body" versus "cut and run."

Being a grand strategist ain't about telling you what you want to hear. It's about telling you what you need to hear.