>Pete is yet another apologetic mouthpiece for failed U.S.
>policy abroad - when what we need is somebody who has the
>understanding of exactly where we've created geopolitical
>chaos - and how to rehabilitate our standing in the world via
>productive/cooperative policy and diplomacy.

Permitting him this blinkered view of history is ideology by inertia. The saddest part of your absolutely true point here is that he doesn't even have to be an active mouthpiece. He can just casually frame his view as focused on the future, as though it were some airless forthcoming possibility that owes nothing to the present. Permitting us to think the same thing as we've always thought about our destructive role in the world doesn't even require assertion or guidance, just permission. In his case, probably something in the form of "Today we make the possibility of the present the reality of the future" or something similarly headsplitting.