I read your book a few weeks ago I and I found it really thought provoking.

However it didn’t seem to me that you had a solution for getting the American people to change their expectations. While I completely agree with your criticisms on our current foreign policy, I find myself constantly frustrated by the innate jingoism of most Americans who not only oppose any restraint on our foreign policy objectives but find the thought of cutting our military budget tantamount to treason.

If we assume that Obama truly wanted to embrace this new vision for the “city on the hill” how could he ever get the American people to support him without being crucified by his opponents? As you point out in the book, Jimmy Carter tried to affect some of the changes that you support and was demonized for his efforts. His “cross of malaise” speech is a cautionary tale for any politician today.

It seems to me that the greatest challenge in American politics isn’t speaking truth to power. It’s speaking truth to the American people because they show little interest in knowing what the truth is.

He was profoundly affected by the anti-war message of that film, and when, in 1942, the popular star of Young Dr. Kildare (1938) and subsequent Dr. Kildare films was drafted, he was a conscientous objector. America was outraged, and theaters vowed never to show his films again, but quietly he achieved the Medical Corps status he had requested, serving as a medic under fire in the South Pacific and as a chaplain’s aid in New Guinea and the Phillipines. His return to film after the war was undistinguished until Johnny Belinda (1948) – his role as the sympathetic physician treating the deaf-mute Jane Wyman won him an Academy Award nomination as best actor.

I have watched both parts of the interview several times and gleaned more with each viewing; what he says is dense and important and well worth re-viewing for those of us who have the option of online viewing during some portions of the day.

Probably won’t be able to get to this book until the holidays, but this thread has been helpful. Thx Chris and Prof. Bacevitch. (And egregious.)

Its author eventually emmigrated to the US after, IIRC, spending WWII in Switzerland.

The “Western Front” tells of German soldiers in WWI in the trenches, commanded from a distance by martinettes who really know nothing of the kind of war their men fight.