You're ascribing a cartoonish straw man interpretation to what I said. A little logic would tell you that the projected posture can't be non-aggressive, but nor can it be aggressive. Rather, what works is to project the willingness to be aggressive when circumstances require it. "Speak softly, but carry a big stick" is correct; but since Bush can apparently hold only one thought in his head at a time, he remembered only the second part of that observation.

This is basically gas, and most of our adversaries will laugh at it. It translates out to making a lot of noise, but never actually doing anything. Like Europe, or the U.N. Teddy Roosevelt said "speak softly, but carry a big stick." And it became obvious during his administration that he would be more than willing to use that stick.

As far as "points of view" are concerned:

Bin Laden's point of view allows him to hijack loaded airlines and drive them into skyscrapers. It allows him to kill women for not wearing the right clothes, or learning to read. It allows him to declare that the world will think like him, or die.

I'm confidently calling "crazy" on his point of view. Not all people who think differently from my point of view are crazy, by any means. That's a straw man. But some are. And they are the ones who have actually DEMONSTRATED that they are not deterred by either actual or "perceived" military might.

Being able to articulate insanity in an ordered and complex manner, something I see all the time on various websites out there, does not make it sane. You are welcome to blow all the smoke at it you like. All crazy people think their views are okay from "their side of the table." I don't care, and I don't want a philosophy in charge of our defense that is trying to see things from Osama's point of view.

At some point, even the most cheeseheaded liberal has to arrive at the idea that maybe there is NOTHING defensible about certain ways of looking at the world.