new era

with blair, clinton and chirac all out of office now, all my favorite world leaders are out of power now.

which is too bad, because it seems like the world is shifting towards more conservative, isolationist and authoritarian regimes.

mainly that's too bad because i feel that's the opposite of where we need to be going in world politics.

the justifications we (the us, nato, the u.n., the e.u.) used to get rid of slobodan milosevic, liberate east timor, intervene in sierra leone, and now the belated call to dafur are righteous and morally correct.

those that live in free, prosperous democracies have a mandate to spread those ideals of liberty and justice to everyone.

for two reasons: one, security. if a small nation has a vested interest in democracy and world-wide free trade, you are less likely to see hostile military action or extremism take hold in government. two, it is the right thing to do.

putting aside everything that went wrong in iraq, if we would have used this reasoning to oust saddam and we used this as a first principle for planning our military action, i think fewer people would have been opposed to this from the start. i know i would have.

america is still the richest and most powerful nation on the planet. maybe even ever.
and that is fantastic.

but we need to let the world know that even if it's for our own selfish reasons, we will step in and force the tyrants out.
monroe doctrine, ww1, ww2, marshall plan, serbia, america has a track record of doing good in this world.

we cannot let a setback like iraq keep our country from losing the faith in our ability to be that beacon of light of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.