In fact, the expansive, idealistic, and at times militaristic American approach to foreign policy has produced some accomplishments of world historical importance—the defeat of Nazism, Japanese imperialism, and Soviet Communism—as well as some notable failures and disappointments. But it was not as if the successes were the product of a good America and the failures the product of a bad America. They were all the product of the same America.

The only real rebuke is for those that blame Iraq on `the Neoconservatives' rather than on a strain of political thought that has been part of US foreign affairs since the birth of our nation.

The only part of the article I don't get, however, is his apparent dislike for the term. But after detailing opposition to the thoughts that underlie it from `conservatives, liberals, socialists, realists, and idealists alike', I'm not really certain what a better term would be.

That criticisms aside, and aside from a few other minor quarrels I've got with some of Kagan's point, it's a fascinating article.

While I shouldn't say that I endorse your partial emulation plan, I endorse your partial emulation plan, and feel that it validates part of my own plan. Helpful tip, which you may already know, that fierce hunger pain passes, and is replaced by Second Wave Awesomeness. Stay up, my brother.