I find all your points quite valid.

The interconnectedness of the internet is moving faster than I can adjust. It was only just in responding to you that I realized how different things were 4 years ago. We are running one really big, live experiment with the human race.

Central to our discussion is the fact that rhetoric and diplomacy will have no net effect if they are not accompanied by a substantive change in our foreign policy. Herein lies a contradiction: we want to act out of national self-interest and we want to be admired as a beacon-on-the-hill democracy. Somehow, we struggle to understand the resentment and antipathy that comes from those people on the short end of our self-interest stick. As long, as you point out, our foreign policy is guided by oil (or other economic) interests, our intentions will viewed with cynicism. This is the way of the world — but let’s not be surprised by the negative reaction we receive.

I am not a foreign policy expert, but in the work that I do with corporate groups, we see very similar dynamics: if someone (a leader or group) acts out of self-interest/self-promotion, there is a lot of negative energy and suspicion in the team or company against them. When leaders can act with the larger goal in mind (for the entire team or company), and put aside personal interests, then they are able to truly lead the people around them. I have seen radical transformations of inter-departmental dynamics. It has made me wonder on occasion what would happen if our foreign policy were less guided by self-interest and more by a contribution focus.

Idealistic blasphemy, no doubt. But I firmly believe we would wield far more moral authority and be much less of a target.

In this sense, a mere apology would have been completely useless. An apology, accompanied by a completely different approach — more humble, less selfish, more willing to respect other countries’ interests — could have lead to a less deadly resolution of Iraq. But it is easy to speculate from the sidelines. Dubya did the very best he could with the world view he had.

Its hard for me to believe that an apology would have been enough to make that change. I don’t believe any words come near to the power of the images and exchange of ideas that can be shared across the world on the internet. And, although he’s a gifted orator and a brilliant man, I don’t think Obama’s diplomatic skills had a major impact. From the point of view of an average Joe in the Middle East, his words may be meaningless in the face of continuing essentially the same policies as before. No one has better interpersonal skills than Bill Clinton, but Al Qaeda chugged along during his tenure as well. I don’t have as much faith as you in the power of just words and diplomacy.

My last comment is that I don’t agree that these uprisings are peaceful or that the governments of the Middle East have had major changes in the way they view us (or Israel, or the small population of Christians in the Middle East). Iran hasn’t stopped their nuclear programs; they’re just distracted by their own population right now. And we in the US just hear less about it on the news because this isn’t an election year. It still may be all about oil, right? That’s why we joined France and Britain in interceding in Libya, which is a major oil supplier for Europe, yet we turn a blind eye on Syria and Bahrain, where the government crackdown is far more brutal and violent. We don’t know what the new governments will stand for, or what their policies will be towards us or their own people.

Really, who knows? We all tend to interpret events through our own world views, with such different conclusions. But I appreciate this “conversation” as your ideas help me keep challenging my own assumptions – thank you for that.

Ah, I appreciate such a thoughtful question.

I’ll preface my remarks by stating that I’m not sure I’m right on this one. But my thoughts are the following:

I stand by my post — in large part because the idea of declaring defeat was primarily a strategy to change our relational dynamic with the middle east. I believe ‘they’ have a lot of built up conclusions about who we are: colonizers, self-interested, indifferent to their needs, out to manipulate and/or exploit them. The idea of declaring defeat was to defuse the humiliation they felt at being dominated by us (militarily, economically, and perhaps to a lesser degree, culturally), and to give them ownership for stabilizing Iraq. If they could no longer see us as the enemy to be resisted at all costs, perhaps they might begin to focus on the issues and dissatisfactions stemming from that region (vs. caused by the US). I think that Obama’s more diplomatic stance towards the Mid-East has begun to change our relationship with them.

This leads us to another possible interpretation of the Jasmine revolution: the Arabic-Muslim youth are now turning on their long-standing dictators because there is no longer a bellicose US ‘satan’ stomping around arrogantly, stirring up nationalist unity. In the limited reading I’ve done on internal Iranian politics, for example, this is clearly the case. The more threatening US leaders are, the more the Iranian clergy are able to use that to muzzle the Iranian youth. When we are no longer an outside enemy to circle the wagons against, the Iranians only have themselves to look at. Then there will be nothing to divert the Iranian youth from their dissatisfactions with their government.

Could Obama’s less aggressive rhetoric, although not yet producing tangible results with Iran, be a key ingredient in the Middle East looking at itself instead of being angry at us? I think so.

That being said, I also agree that it is highly plausible that the (fragile) success of Iraq’s democracy has been a beacon of possibility for Tunisia, Egypt and others. But if we were still threatening to invade Iran, would there be a context conducive to these peaceful uprisings? If we were still in a black or white mindset re: allies and enemies in the Mid-East, would we have taken the risk to encourage Mubarak to step down? Hard to judge such intangibles.

And then of course there the advent of Facebook and Twitter since 2003, so technology is also part of the synergy.

What do you think of all that?