<If this administration put out an effort to sell America; spend the money to educate the world on what we do right and what we do well, America could be that shining city on the hill, that other nation states would want to emulate. If you believe in free markets you have to believe that comparative advantage has a tautalogical truth to it and others would want to copy our system if they thought it actually was good and worked.

The administration doesn't have to "sell" America (despite what corporations may say who hit the government up for foreign advertising subsidies). America sells itself, in many ways and through many channels. What you say is already true. For a vast majority of the world's population, America and American culture is admired, emulated, and respected. Where we run into trouble is with fanatics--still a minority in the world--and foreign governments that see American values and love of freedom as a threat to their power. Unfortunately it's usually the latter who have most of the guns in their countries.

How many times have you read about travelers who have gone to a country which is supposedly our "enemy" and found that the average person, off the official beaten path, was quite friendly towards Americans? How many people would give almost anything to live here? Heck, how many people HAVE given almost everything to live here? Fact is, most people of the world vote with their feet, and move to capitalist nations when they can rather than beating their heads against the wall trying to change the political system where they live.

The ideal would be some way of exporting our way of life to other nations so that we aren't swamped by immigration, but I have yet to see a sure-fire way of accomplishing this. Attempts at "nation building" in the past have largely failed, with some major exceptions like Japan after WWII.

Instead, our leadership has embarked on a path the demonize the enemy, polarize those not in the fray, and push American belligerent arrogance. Bad choice, bad administration, bad politics.

I'm not sure how hard you have to work to demonize people who routinely blow up civilians. As far as putting other nations besides Afghanistan on notice, if we can't put the fear of God into them after annihilating the government of Afghanistan, then what's the point? There are a lot of people and governments on this Earth that can be impressed by nothing less than a thorough ass-kicking, and that's just the way it is.