Let's face it Raoul, America absolutely sucks at nation building and you'd think we'd learn that when we go it alone our track record is abysmal. Now I'm absolutely certain that our leaders often had the best of intentions when the plans were first hatched but somehow, in the complications of human behavior, vast cultural differences and downright ineptness, every attempt by us to tweak a nation's government to become more progressive through the use of force has ended up with egg on our faces.

And neither party can claim the moral high ground in these failures. Both Republican and Democrat administrations have made huge blunders trying to exert the will of the United States in other country's politics. Who knows where Cuba would be today without the Bay of Pigs invasion cementing Castro's power. How would Viet Nam have evolved if we'd simply let nature take its course there? My guess is in both cases we stimied the actual effects we were looking for.

I often cite the fact that our nation's leaders ought to be forced, when they come into office, to sit and watch hundreds of episodes of the Star Trek series, specifically involving the Prime Directive. Roddenberry, in addition to being a master of entertainment, had his finger on the pulse of national evolution, that given time, people (and species) of all races have to go through their own steps and missteps to mature to a point of peaceful coexistence. Any interference from outside and that process gets completely convoluted.

Of course during those societal stages all cultures go though there are extremely dangerous times to their neighbors and none can let down their guard to ensure the internal strife doesn't spill outside their borders. That security issue though involves creating powerful defenses and deterrents, not preemptively attacking the unstable country or assassinating their leaders.

One other educational process should be forced on our new leaders. They should all be required to read the Foundation Trilogy. That science fiction series had profound effects on the way I view global intricacies. Political leaders can't think in terms of reacting only to events based on immediate needs and desired outcomes. They have to understand the ripple effect of their actions and how a short term gain can create instability hundreds and thousands of years into the future. Obviously we don't have the ability to know exact events in the far future based on some tiny event today as the book portrays but we can certainly see the obvious trends based on what we know of human behavior. We can also ensure that our retention and growth of knowledge in science and logic (not religious doublespeak) help us recover from the obvious pitfalls that await us.