Who Lost James Fallows?

The Pentagon hosted a conference call today with bloggers in order to promote the Defense Department’s latest report to Congress on the military power of China. When the DoD first started this outreach program, there was a great deal of criticism–the Pentagon was spoon feeding administration talking points to conservative bloggers, they said. Well, that was never quite the case, the Pentagon has allowed any and all bloggers to participate in these calls. The effect: today’s call was dominated by lefty bloggers explaining to the Pentagon why the United States shouldn’t concern itself with China’s build-up, and why Beijing’s bulking-up is entirely reasonable. Take my friend David Axe, for example:

Axe: Can I follow up on that? It seems that it might be possible that the increase in China’s defense investment is actually perfectly consistent with their economic growth, in that what we’re seeing is not anything that’s unreasonable or out of proportion to China’s means, especially in light of just how impoverished, in a sense, China’s military was for so long. Couldn’t we see this as just reasonable investment to somewhat modernize a vast, creaky, out of date military? DoD: [silence]…that’s a good question. In fact, if you look at the Xinhua press reports today on their announcing the 17.6 percent increase in their defense budget, that is something that we do hear…