We have damaged our reputation in the world and thus reduced our power. We were once seen as the paragon of law; we are now in many corners of the gl… - Lawrence Wilkerson

A rapprochement with Cuba would create the same opening in Latin America that a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian situation would create in the Middle East. I am not sufficiently naïve to believe that either development would meet all regional challenges or solve all problems, but both would be a dramatic and effective start. Both would give America a decisive leg-up on regaining some of the prestige and power we have squandered in the past seven years.

Cobra pilots and some of my colleagues in the Loach platoon (during the Vietnam War) treated that as a license to shoot anything that moved: wild boar, tigers, elephants, people. It didn’t matter... I personally followed the rules.. that had been ingrained in me by my parents, by my schools, by my church, and by the U.S. Army in classes about the Geneva Conventions and what we called the law of land warfare. I had been taught and I firmly believed when I took the oath of an officer and swore to support and defend the Constitution, that American soldiers were different and that much of their fighting strength and spirit came from that difference and that much of that difference was wrapped up in our humaneness and our respect for the rights of all.

Well, we’ve got 330 million Americans 280 million of whom I’m convinced, are ignorant, apathetic, fearful, etc, etc. And you tell them anything, and they’ll believe it. And if you give them the politics of fear, as a daily food, they will believe you. They will go along with you.