"Palme D'Or" for Mike Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11&

[kandrathe]

A better planned and less controlling U.S. foreign policy would have taken away some of those millions in supporters, and I'd say that that should be a goal now. Some of those supporters could become the next Osama types in the future when the current ones are dealt with, so for the long term the U.S. could use that planning in their foreign policy.

Some thoughts on this; I feel it is bad leadership when the US administration makes decisions based on US opinion polls, but it would be worse if the US administration was always testing the pulse of the world opinion before making a move. Most moves they make I feel are made to forward American interests, and really that is their job to look out for us. Also, I recall the old saying that you can't please all of the people all of the time. Sometimes the leaders make the very unpopular decisons for what they think is our own good, and sometimes that gets them thrown out of office.

9/11 was carried out by 20 people with mace and box cutters, with perhaps another 10-20 helping with logistics and I would estimate the total cost for the operation was less than a hundred thousand dollars. I'm not sure you can craft foreign policy such that there will not be at least a few hundred extremists still willing to use a WMD on US soil. We still need the strong defense, whether there are a million angry Islamacists, or 200. Certainly, we should not go out of our way to anger people, but neither should we be unduly influenced by international opinion -- and certainly not by extremists.

I've made the point before that it may not be the actions, so much as the delivery by the administration. This is again my criticism of the current administration's poor communication, not only to the American people, but also to the world. So when you say "better planned and less controlling U.S. foreign policy", I'm thinking that it may have just been poor communication and the implementation that was flawed. For example, Kyoto. There is a right and wrong way to tell your mother you will not be coming home to visit for the holidays. Whether you agree with the reasons, or not, this administration should have been a little more sensitive to the effort that many nations contributed to trying to craft a workable agreement on reducing the emissions of GHG's. They should have been clearer in their "preemption doctrine", in that it did not apply to states, but only to terrorists. They should have been clear that they support and will always try to work within their partnerships within NATO, and the UN.

The only US action that would temporarily mollify anger on the Arab street would be to withdraw all forces from the Middle East, end support of Isreal, and distance ourselves from the leadership of Gulf States. This capitulation might very well create a vacuum that ignites a massive chain of civil wars in the least, and an escalating world conflict in the worst. I don't know really. It is dangerous to be there, and it would be dangerous to not be there. The one thing I know is that if we are going to be there, we should walk a little softer and keep our mouths shut more.