National Public Radio's Sunday Weekend Edition had as their lead story a discussion of US foreign policy challenges:
http://www.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.php?prgDate=14-Nov-2004&prgId=10
("Foreign Affairs in a Second Bush term")
What was striking to me was how little Iraq figured in the discussion - yet how it had created the many situations the US faced that had no good outcomes. The failure in Iraq has so tied down the US that it cannot plausibly offer much in the way of carrots or sticks to Iran and North Korea; Russia is laughing at us (and leaking nuclear material ... one of the interesting stories to be written in the future is Putin's), any reconciliation with our allies has to begin with Bush, which isn't going to happen, and there is little that will be attempted in the Sudan.
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