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[Marie McHarry <mmcharry AT gmail.com>]

> Here’s my question to you: Is it more important for an American
> president to be liked or feared outside the country?

I think the most effective president would be one who is respected for
having solid ethical and moral values and standing by them. We purport
to be a country founded on freedom and justice. When we are seen as
abiding by freedom and justice for all, we get respect. Historically
(with some major exceptions in the Philipines, Central America, Iran
under Mossadeq, and even Viet Nam, to name a few) we gave our word and
it meant something. Episodes of history that Americans know little
about are engravened on the minds of millions of people around the
world, and those episodes don't make them like us, let alone respect
us. We started by betraying the Indian Nations and have marched our
way through blood to secure whatever American bidness wanted, from
land in the American West to bananas in Central America to oil in the
Middle East.

I doubt the current president will be different. He's already planning
to do what??? in Afghanistan? Can anyone tell me what we've
accomplished in Afghanistan in the last 8 years or what we hope to do
in the next 30? In the end, we won't even have such as passes for a
happy ending in now-capitalist Viet Nam. Afghanistan has never had a
central government, and unless we plan to stay there for a couple of
generations, we have no chance of imposing one. I'd like to see a few
people out in the streets bitching and moaning about wasting blood and
treasure in a lost cause.

I believe Tom Ricks, who I greatly respect, has written a book
explaining why we need to stay in Afghanistan -- I imagine it has to
do with Pakistan having nuclear weapons. I plan to read that
eventually. Right now I'm reading James MacGregor Burns's "Packing the
Court" about judges who've legislated from the bench (hint: they
mostly all have since John Marshall and the Marbury case).

Marie, crawling back into her hidey hole as she seems to be close to howling