LH:

You really must learn to be more thoughtful if you are going to address important issues.

Here's an example of what I mean:

"America means well: on this point the vast majority of Americans will permit no dissent. We differ from all other great powers in history. Our leaders differ as well. To those who formulate U.S. policy, ideals really do matter. As President Obama insisted in his Cairo speech, anyone depicting the United States as a "self-interested empire" is way off base.

When U.S. policy goes awry, therefore, the culprit might be bad luck, bad planning, or bad tactics, but American motives lie beyond reproach. Thus, the reassuring take on the Iraq War, now emerging as the conventional wisdom, is that—however mismanaged the war may have been early on—the "surge" engineered by General David Petraeus has redeemed the enterprise: a conclusion doubly welcome in that it obviates any need to revisit questions about the war's purpose and justification, while meshing nicely with the Obama administration's inclination simply to have done with Iraq and move on."

The complete essay, entitled Best Intentions is long, reflective and insightful.


A