Saludos desde Lanzarote (islas Canarias)
Sergio Santana

If you should come back, thanks for your info, I will check into it. The Neocon roles in the conflicts you cited I am familiar with. I am aware of the Wilsonian influence on foreign policy but did not realize they had gotten in bed with the neocons. Then again, it's hard to remember all the associations of so many people. At one point I tried to use an alphabetized divider to record names , associations and records. I misplaced it and have not kept up.

Did you by chance come across Peter Brock's “Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting”? His writing, for an award winning (environmental) journalist, is unbelievably awful and the editing did nothing to salvage it. I found it difficult to come to any definite conclusions other than it would be good to have an investigation and coherent review by someone who could turn the information into a cogent piece of the picture.

I agree to some extent that the Republican cover would be a good move. I prefer to push the idea that Obama is not an idealogue, he is a pragmatist who works from an understanding of right and wrong that I use.

We need to abandon ideology for the time being and start trying to

Do the right thing for the right reasons.

While avoiding doing

The right thing for the wrong reasons

The wrong thing for the right reasons

The wrong thing for the wrong reasons.

If we do the first enough and learn the correct lessons, we might eventually develop an ideology that supports the Constitution without going through all of the pendulums swings we have over the decades and centuries.

I also think that Americans have reached a teachable moment in regards to the reality of what our foreign policy, covertly as much or more as overtly, has messed up the world and the progress of democracy. As Kinzer said, it is hard to wrap your brain around what the middle east would have looked like in 2000 if we had not covertly unseated the first democratically elected president of Iran and reinstalled the Shah in '53.

The world as a whole faces the same storm of crises and we will need to work together to figure out how to resolve them. It will be a crossroads in history that demands new thinking and given the well documented worldwide grassroots movements to do this, I have to hope and believe it will happen.

It's been a while since I read “The New War” and will probably get it out and scan it. If you haven't read it, I think you might get a better understanding of Kerry's thinking on the international issues and how some form of international legal alliances need to be formed in order to effectively fight them. He offered nothing specific other than it will be a monumental task to create something effective while not infringing on national rights.

Whatever the decisions on the cabinet positions, I think it is going to be uncharted water in going forward. What looks dangerous and futile may well turn out to be as successful as Obama's run for the presidency.

Yeah, that audacity of hope.

It's a right brain thing . The US needs to do more right brain thinking – that is not convoluted by religious ideology. As an atheist, I am really impatient for that to gain traction.

Mark my words, if Hagel is not in this administration, Republican realists will wait until the Dems to fail on national security.

I've worked in and around DC in the foreign policy community for a little while now. What I have found, and I can give you a couple of examples, is that there is a great deal of common cause between Wilsonians and Neoconservatives. Going back a decade to the interventions in Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo…The Republican supporters of those interventions were the neocons that we deal with today.

The main reason for this is ends. Both Wilsonians and Neocons seek to remake the world in America's image. Neocons are more prone to try and use force to achieve these ends whereas Wilsonians are more prone use laws to try and achieve these ends. Both are equally Utopian and equally dangerous.

As for collaboration, I would check out some of the stuff that has been produced by Bruce Jackson and Ron Asmus. Additionally, there was an excellent column in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks back that was written by a prominent Neoconservative and a Wilsonian arguing that the U.S. shouldn't take itself out of intervention game. It's entitled the Dangers of a Diminished America and you can find it here at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122455074012352...

It's not so much that Kerry is directly linked to these people, it's that the Wilsonians will turn to the Neocons to support their interventions. That keeps them in the game and sets them up to move into pole position in a crisis.

What we need is a more restrained U.S. that only intervenes when it's vital national interests are at stake. Hagel provides that in line with what Senator Obama believes. Moreover, Hagel brings with him a different group of Republican realists that are ready to support Senator Obama's foreign policy agenda (as it currently stands).

The only thing I want less than a return to the Clinton administration is a continuation of the Bush regime. I grew up in the 50's, Ike Was more liberal than Clinton. They all make mistakes, it is inevitable.

Your first paragraph is confusing. You imagine that the world will feel that Kerry will give in to what they want and then be dissappointed because he carries out what Obama has said he wants to do. (Kerry's understanding of narco-trafficking applied to Afghanistan?)

Obama tends to talk like he is more willing to use the millitary than I would like. It strikes me (wishfully?) as saying stuff that he is not committed to acting on, to get elected in a promilitary mindset that is not reliably changed. In office I expect him to push the diplomatic and minimize the military.

Whatever the world might be disappointed in being different from what they expect, if they are approached with the cooperative, respectful, creative approach that I think Obama, Biden and Kerry would use, it would dissapate quickly.