Sing it sweetheart!

A lot of ground has been lost over the last eight years in our relations with other free nations of the world. When I say ground I mean leadership, respect, confidence and even just basic collaboration. Good old George wasn’t going to let anybody and I mean anybody, tell him what to do. (Except for maybe Cheney and Rumsfeld.)

Makes you stand up a little straighter as you watch the President re-establishing the rule of law in our country. He stood before the State Department diplomats and declared that cowboy diplomacy is over. The following excerpt is from an article I posted a few days ago which shows what the Bush administration thought about partnerships.

Joschka Fischer, German foreign minister and vice-chancellor: During the Kosovo war we had developed a format which was, I think, one of the cheapest models for policy coordinating in the interests of the U.S. [Secretary of State] Madeleine Albright was in the driver’s seat, and the four European foreign ministers discussed with her on a daily basis how the war develops and so on. This was U.K., France, Italy, and Germany, together with the U.S., on the phone. We continued after the war, not every day, but this was the format, to discuss problems and understand the positions. And suddenly it stopped. We had very, very few—I don’t know, two or three times. Only for a very short period when Colin came in, and then it stopped, because the new administration was not interested any longer in a multilateral coordination. (Published in Vanity Fair)


We are taking our first steps down the road to earning back a little bit of the respect we have lost over the years. So I offer up Ms. Aretha Franklin, Detroit Native and hat-wearer extraordinaire in the hopes that the United States of America can once again earn “just a little respect”.