LWM: That poll indicates quite well how poorly the global community views us. But it doesn't tell us what our foreign policy should be, (obviously not the current nightmare), or what the rest of the world expects or would like our foreign policy stance to be.

Agreed that Bush the uniter has been quite successful — at uniting the rest of the world against us. The past six years has mostly seen the world choosing up sides for WW III. WW III will be over the control of the world's dwindling oil resources. There will also be wars over water resources, but that will come later. The last time I looked, the scorecard looked something like this: The US, UK, and Israel (with possibly Australia, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau) versus the rest of Europe, Russia, China, North Korea, and the entire muslim world. India would probably like to sit this one out but will join the US axis when Pakistan attacks. Japan would also probably like to sit it out, but they need oil too. Hard to tell which side they'll opt for. Some eastern European countries would probably like to side with the US axis, but their strategic location would prevent it.

The current US foreign policy is directed at assuring the US of an uninterruptible supply of oil and preventing any other state from developing the military or economic strength to challenge the US for world domination. This policy must be adjusted because the rest of the world is not going to sit back and let the US gain control of all remaining oil resources. If no single country has the power to stop the US, they will band together, openly or secretly, to thwart the US in its goal.

Now the US cannot be all things to all people — and it shouldn't try to be. But its goal should not be world hegemony through overwhelming military superiority. The US should be at most primus inter pares — a benevolent giant that leads by example and champions human rights, economic parity, and self-determination of peoples. The US needs to reposition itself to be a leader on environmental challenges and the concept of equal justice under law that used to be part of what America stood for. No one can look at our prison demographics and believe that that is anything other than an empty slogan.

This is, of course, utopian and to a large extent pollyannaish, but it is not an impossibility. It is, to a large extent, the ideals that were set forth in the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, authored in a period of optimism after the defeat of the fascist regimes in 1945. But as the number of people who remember that conflict steadily and inexorably declines, the concept of "Never Again" is just as steadily and inexorably morphing into "Maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all if we were the fascists this time and we knew nobody could beat us".

I agree that this is a discussion that the electorate needs to have and that the electorate needs to be adequately and correctly informed in order to have this discussion. Which means that it isn't going to happen in the near future.

Reality check time.
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But it's worth pointing out in the context of Cheney's remark that Bush said precisely the same thing (over and over):

Each of these men and women took an oath to defend America
George W. Bush — November 11, 2005
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/11/20051111-1.html

You took an oath to defend the nation
George W. Bush — August 22, 2005
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20050822-1.html

I'm not sure that the have the concept of defending the Constitution. After all, "it's just a goddam piece of paper."

LWM: There is nothing "utopian" or "Pollyannish" about it. It is pragmatism, pure and simple.

... but there are those who subscribe to Hobbsian notion that man's nature is brutish and that war is a natural state (and it's hard to use history to prove them wrong).

So when one gets up on a soapbox and starts railing about "truth, justice, and the American way" (back in the days when the American way did imply truth and justice), there are those who claim that it is all pie in the sky and that man cannot overcome his baser nature so why try. Strangely, many of these people also claim to be Christians.

But the neocons who constantly say "look on my works ye mighty and despair" are sure as hell headed for their own Ozymandias moment.

... didn't you already blog this over a year ago on the old Unclaimed Territory?

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/05/conservatives-try-to-distance.html

Has anything changed except for more of the breathless Bush hagiographers jumping on the bandwagon?