We've lost a crucial underpinning of America's safety

[calteacherguy]

security and ultimate well being. It's what, for a century, has enabled America's power to be perceived as benign. It's enabled America's purposes to be perceived as noble. It's enabled America's allies to rally to just causes. It's enabled America's adversaries to be shoved into the corner and condemned as erroneous and morally wrong. It's what enabled Americans to travel abroad and conduct business with personal safety and be received with respect. It's enabled America's Armed Forces to be welcomed in foreign lands. In America's conduct abroad, others saw a reflection of what we enshrined in our own Constitution and in our system of government as our values - fairness, tolerance, decency, justice, mutual respect, personal opportunity. It's brought hundreds of thousands of youngsters to our shores to study and millions to seek to live. And it's been the secret of America's power and influence.

It is our legitimacy as a nation.

http://securingamerica.com/node/2425

[snappyturtle]

1. Don't mean to be a doomsdayer but I can't see how

we can be perceived as legitimate......we don't even know what we're (those in charge) are up to.

[calteacherguy]

2. we're not going to restore the legitimacy we seek without a full inquiry

into how we as Americans could've gone so wrong. How could it have happened? Why did it happen? And who must he held accountable for abusing the good name and authority of the United States of America. This includes not only addressing the administrations misuse of intelligence in the run up to the war in Iraq, but also into who and how we misled our Armed Forces and our intelligence agencies into believing that our international obligations under the Geneva Convention and the 1996 Treatment on the Prevention of Torture- Treaty of the Prevention of Torture weren't somehow legally binding or applicable.

Holding a few soldiers accountable in military trials is not enough. Their actions reflected a broadened tolerance for hither afore reprehensible acts of mistreatment all in violation of international law and the responsibility for which must be sought at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the White House itself.

I say this without partisanship and with a great deal of sadness. I love this country. generations of Americans have served and sacrificed in battle to preserve our freedoms, including our inviolable Bill of Rights. Torture, however you define it - and let's not quibble with the definitions - was never acceptable as a matter of policy. It was always something deeply abhorrent to our ideas of human dignity, and we sought and supported legal retribution against those who employed it elsewhere.

How can we as Americans hold others to high standards of conduct unless we hold our own leaders to the same high standards?

http://securingamerica.com/node/2425

[snappyturtle]

4. I think we're very good at 'inquiring' and that's about all. nt

[northofdenali]

3. Thanks for this post. I greatly admire Wes Clark

and hope he is a strong presence in our next Democratic administration. We need men and women with this attitude to turn our country back to it's Constitutional rights and obligations, and to regain the respect our nation once held worldwide.

If I haven't done so before, I'd like to welcome you to DU. I needed this post today!! So much gloom - and this is a refreshing reminder of what we once were, and will be again.

[calteacherguy]

5. Thanks.

:hi:

[unkachuck]

6. yep, if you go out into the world....

....and start wars like a Nazis, before you know it, people are going to think you're a Nazi....nations, like people, are only as good as their word and character....