thinking out loud . . .

OK. Confession up front:

I was hoping your bottom line was going to be It Sucks!

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you managed to include every Democratic Party foreign policy, bash-Bush talking point of this decade.

David, just as one example…do I need to point you to the dictionary definition of unilateral? You referred to “the Bush administration’s arrogance and unilateralism.” You know better than that. The accurate (and honest) descriptor would be non-U.N. sanctioned.

Here’s another, contained within the same phrase: arrogance.You are not amazed at the arrogance of a president with no foreign policy experience at all (zero, nada) thrusting himself onto the world stage filled to the brim and overflowing with the (apparently sincere) belief that his words alone could make all America’s enemies turn their swords into plowshares and we could all be friends? And the thought that, by turning his back on Bush administration agreements with Israel—agreements that Israel acted on in good faith—and by adopting the intellectually-bankrupt moral equivalence line of every Israel-basher from the U.N. to Ron Paul in telling Israel to engage in some “serious self-reflection”… This doesn’t look like arrogance to you?

The one redeeming quality I find in your well-crafted, elegantly-worded, and completely misguided column, is the opportunity it provides to write an incisive (and better-informed) retort. I’ll just publish this letter on my blog. Hey, if you’re lucky, I’ll even publish your response!