Nobody talks about getting into a land war with China anymore but back during the Cold War, it was generally understood to be a bad idea. And someone would point out that if every Chinese man, woman and child started marching into the ocean, they’d never run out of people because of the birth rate. Which I gather is less of a problem these days.

I only bring this up in the context of more troops for Afghanistan. I don’t know if the Chinese have troops there, but they could if they wanted to. And that’s my point.

Want to find Bin Ladden? Squash the Taliban? No problem. We’ll just line up a a few million of our soldiers, about two feet apart, and walk from one end of (fill in the name of country) to the other. When one of our guys gets shot or falls in a hole, we’ll send a replacement.

Yes, it’s a dumb strategy. But not much dumber than what we’re doing. And since the Chinese leaders don’t have to worry about mid-term elections, they can skip a lot of stupid stuff. But maybe they’d do this, just to clean up our mess.

“You go home. We’ll take care of these rock piles and the whackos who live there. Fix your economy, do something about your schools, and clean up the corruption in your financial and political institutions. When you get your shit together, call us.”