Robert D. Kaplan, a former colleague of mine at the New America Foundation and a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, has an interesting and provocative piece in the New York Times this morning that basically argues that tough, fire-breathing Marines can be cuddly and do great humanitarian relief work as well.

I am still here and getting some posts ready on Bush’s foreign policy, particularly the important trends in some key Middle East states. I have been offline for several days because of travel and because of a really nasty chest cold that has kept me down despite being in Hawaii on a work trip.

One of the mistakes of American foreign policy over the last several decades was to not heavily invest in, build, and fortify serious multilateral security and economic institutions among Asian nations. America has not really taken APEC seriously and on the security front has long chosen to rely on bilateral arrangements between the U.S.

I like watching tennis and particularly enjoy watching Roger Federer and Andre Agassi play, as long as my tennis-fanatic friend is with me to explain the points and all the bad calls by judges. But this match in Dubai makes my head spin.

Thanks to all of you who signed the Gunner Palace petition requesting that the Motion Picture Association of America revise its “R” rating of the film to “PG-13”. This is a big win for Michael Tucker who shot this documentary and the soldiers whose story he helps tell in their words.

I am just wrapping up an interesting conference in Kauai sponsored by the BMW Foundation which assembled about 50 alumni of the foundation’s various young leaders programs over the last decade. We had a bunch of Russians here, Germans, Chinese, Americans, and some individuals from Singapore, Canada, the Netherlands, and India. Fascinating group of people….

A few weeks ago, I happened to be included at a dinner at the home of the Deputy Chief of Mission of the Singapore Embassy, Susan Sim, who invited a small handful of people together to toast a mutual friend.

I’m at a foreign policy conference in Kauai today that is going to preempt my posting anything until tonight — but I will be back later today with thoughts on America’s revived bravado vs. China.

With all of the recruiting our military services do among our country’s youth — it is outrageous that the Motion Picture Association of America would try and bar youth from seeing Gunner Palace.

I posted a comment the day before yesterday on a New America Foundation sponsored screening that I helped host (with my colleague Jenny Buntman) of Gunner Palace. There were some interesting folks in the audience, including the mother of one of the memorable characters in Michael Tucker’s documentary.