America is not Bush
The damage the president has done to our country's reputation can be rebuilt -- by those who uphold our Founding Fathers' ideals................
The current challenge is not a struggle against a totalitarian foe.
It is not, as Bush has said, "the ideological struggle of our time."
It is not an ideological war.
It is not a battle against an enemy called "Islamofascism" -- a confected category that conflates Bush's idea of war not only with the Cold War but also with World War II.
Most important, it is not a struggle for national survival against an existential threat. Jihadism and its use of terror are, of course, a dangerous threat, but they do not, and cannot, destroy the United States as the Soviet Union could do. ...............
We must be unblinkered and unillusioned, conscious of "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind," as our Declaration of Independence put it, with the sense that America never is alone or isolated -- and not ultimately because we are scrutinized by others but because we understand ourselves and our history.
America can begin to recover its reputation in the world only through self-recovery. more at:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/05/31/policy/
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