HILLARY'S FOREIGN POLICY

Peter Beinart criticizes Hillary Clinton's foreign policy vision stated on the Daily Show and applauds Obama for having a more accurate vision of America in the world.  But I believe I side with Hillary on this one.  I sense she is trying to affirm America in spite of our mistakes.  Not everything the U.S. has done since World War II is bad for the world.  He goes on to accuse Hillary of siding with the right in America.

For Hillary, America’s current problem is that once the Cold War ended, we “withdrew from the information arena.” As a result, across the world, a new generation no longer remembers the great things we supposedly did in the past, and America has stopped telling them about the great things we are still doing today. Her answer: “get back to telling” the story of America’s greatness, not only to the rest of the world but “to ourselves first and foremost.”

Really? Is America’s biggest post-Cold War foreign policy problem really that we’ve failed to adequately remind others, and ourselves, how good we are? After all, George W. Bush told Americans endlessly that the “war on terror” was another grand American crusade for freedom, in the tradition of World War II and the Cold War. In his second inaugural address and other thundering rhetorical displays, he announced to the world that America would champion liberty far and wide, as in days of old.