[Preechr]

Of course there have been mistakes made. Lessons learned and more to come of both. This is unchartered territory. Globalization happens in fits and spurts. It's had three large expansions in the last hundred years or so, with big gaps in between. Hopefully, we'll be able to finish the job this time.

I agree that the formation of the DHS was probably the biggest mistake so far. No other single act turned the rest of the world off quicker to this effort than that retarded, self-centered reaction to 9/11. Imagine a small town beset by roving bands of burglars, where the citizens have learned to just deal with the fact that their homes aren't safe when they go to work, and every once and a while their stuff's just gonna disappear. Sure, the cops show up and make a report, but no progress is being made. One night, the police station itself gets robbed, and the reaction of the Chief of Police is to announce the following day his plan to spend half his year's budget on a space-age, high-tech security system for his headquarters.

As for the efforts being made in the middle east, hindsight's always 20/20. Sure, we could have done a better job in Afghanistan if we knew what we know now. We didn't. Every war ever fought could have been prosecuted better. Serious mistakes have always been made, up to and including wars that should never been fought at all. This one is not one of the latter type. This is a brand-new breed of war. This is diplomacy on steroids. The War on Terror is not just focused on Iraq and Afghanistan. Those were just the two worst-off places on the list of countries we needed to work on. Serious efforts are being made using methods other than war in Iran and North Korea (as you know) as well as Egypt, Saudi, Lebanon, Syria, Indonesia... all the places in the middle east that still suffer from limited or no connectedness to the larger world economy. We are also working with Canada on Mexico back here in our hemisphere. Why do you think Bush has taken the extremely unpopular stance on an open southern border? If we send 13-20 million more or less Americanized illegals back to Mexico where there's nothing to do and no money to be made, we will have created a terrorist problem right in our own backyard that would make the middle east look like a group of unruly fourth-graders on a field trip.

Terrorism comes from lack of jobs. Does that make the debate over "outsourcing" a bit clearer? In order for a place like Iraq to attract the Foreign Direct Investment required to create those jobs, however, Saddam would have had to make Iraq a more attractive place to those foreigners with that Direct Investment money. He would have had to make efforts toward economic transparency and political freedom. Nobody's building factories in a country that's just going to steal the profits or where the workers are basically just slaves. Well... Maybe Nike...

You don't have to be a perfect, fully-formed, Christian-based Western Democracy with an American or a European running the show, either. Again, look at China. Ten years ago, the majority of our defense budgeting was based on a future great war with those guys... Now, there our new "Favored Nation" and are in position take our top position on the global economic tree within about ten years. Go China! Sure, they still have a "communist" government... But look at what happened when the USSR tried to make that transition overnight! I'd move a little slowly on that level too, given that example. Their economy is building itself, basically. The government made the wise decision to effectively step out of the way and remove as many roadblocks as it could to progress, though it still likes to take credit for the boom-times... good, solid communist ideology practiced as capitalism, but whatever works...