and what about the rest of the world?

Bill Clinton when asked what his mission would be should Hillary be elected president indicated that he would most like to help bring the rest of the world back into diplomatic parity with the U.S. It might be more accurate to say bring the U.S. back into parity with the rest of the world.

Hillary was on Countdown with Keith Olbermann tonight. She made a comment that was very important in dealing with international relations between the U.S. and the World's governments. I don't have the exact quote, but in effect she said that should she become president it would be the end of cowboy diplomacy. She actually used that term.

So what about the rest of the world? What exactly are they thinking? Do they even want to bother in dealing with the U.S.? If the headline below from the International Herald Tribune is any indication, we may be in for a long tough haul.

Supreme disgrace

The Supreme Court exerts leadership over America's justice system, not just through its rulings, but also by its choice of cases - the ones it agrees to hear and the ones it declines. On Tuesday, it led in exactly the wrong direction.

Somehow the court could not muster the four votes needed to grant review in the case of an innocent German citizen of Lebanese descent who was kidnapped, detained and tortured in a secret overseas prison as part of the Bush administration's morally, physically and legally abusive anti-terrorism program. The victim, Khaled el-Masri, was denied justice by lower federal courts, which dismissed his civil suit in a reflexive bow to a flimsy government claim that allowing the case to go forward would put national security secrets at risk.

It somewhat echoes a previous post on this site - exactly what is SCOTUS "refusing" to hear?

Years ago there was a novel and movie entitled The Ugly American. I'm going to quote directly from the Wikipedia entry because it sums it up and reflects on the fact that we still don't get it. Well, at least the people who have the power don't.

The novel describes how the United States is losing the struggle with Communism—what was later to be called the battle for hearts and minds—in Southeast Asia, because of arrogance and failure to understand the local culture.

...because of arrogance and failure to understand the local culture.

Iraq? Iran? France? Saudi Arabia? Russia? China? Darfur? and on, and on, and on...

on the home front, it also comes close to describing the problem with the authoritarian "social" conservatives in our own country with the arrogance and failure they have in understanding our own culture.

doesn't it?

just asking...

I keep bringing this up: Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. - George Santayana...

[writing things like this always makes me sad. i think of my father and uncle, along with all of the other honorable men and women who fought, some paying the ultimate price, to defend in what they believed, to preserve the freedoms in which this government was so adamant at procuring, and to make sure that there was a future for me and others. i think they would be angry. i believe they would be disgusted at what has happened. i feel they would be sad also.]