Bush State Dept. Hotshot Endorses Godless Appeasement of Negotiation

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The real truth Americans need to embrace is that nearly all of the most urgent global challenges — the quaking financial markets, climate change, terrorism — cannot be resolved by America’s acting alone in the world. Rather than retreat into isolationism, as we have often done in our history, or go it alone as the unilateralists advocated disastrously in the past decade, we need to commit ourselves to a national strategy of smart engagement with the rest of the world. Simply put, we need all the friends we can get. And we need to think more creatively about how to blunt the power of opponents through smart diplomacy, not just the force of arms. …

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[I]t is crude, simplistic and wrong to charge that negotiations reflect weakness or appeasement. More often than not, they are evidence of a strong and self-confident country.