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Despite unprecedented levels of technological advancement and the interconnectedness of the world, the pursuit of truth in the realms of foreign policy and national security remains a critical issue. This is because the level of 'noise' that must be sifted through has also reached an unprecedented size and scope.
The thing that strikes me, from looking at the names so far in the Donald Trump's Cabinet on the foreign policy side, is the one thing that unites them - and that's General James Mattis at the Pentagon, Mike Pompeo at the CIA, even Mitt Romney to become secretary of state - they're all very, very hawkish on Iran.
The long-standing, non-partisan and publicly-declared foreign policy commitment of the United States is clear. We will do whatever is required to prevent Iran from possessing nuclear weapons. Our nation has not ruled out any option that may be required to achieve this objective, including the use of military force.
Human rights, race relations, gender politics, health care, and foreign policy - it's a lot to keep track of, and yet all of these things affect us in our daily lives. Making sense of everything requires meticulous unpacking of feelings, delicate navigation of social norms, and a community of love to help along the way.
President George H. W. Bush soon launched Operation Desert Shield, sending an enormous contingent of troops to Saudi Arabia. But once there, what exactly were they to do? Contain Iraq? Attack and liberate Kuwait? Drive on to Baghdad and depose Saddam? There was no clear consensus among foreign policy advisers or analysts.
Presumptuous for me to say, but at least - at a minimum - I've been able to influence the direction of the Democratic Party on foreign policy. And I've been relatively - presumptuous to say - relatively successful legislatively in the Senate, being able to win a lot of Republican friends, and being able to cross the aisle.
My mom works at the VA; she's been working at the VA for 15 plus years, and yet she's helping so many veterans coming back from brown Muslim countries, and my mom treats them. It's this weird - sometimes I feel torn. It's this dual identity. I'm so proud to be American, and at the same time, I disagree with our foreign policy.
The Obama administration has turned a blind eye to radical Islam since before they came to office. If you look at everything that's transpired since the famous Cairo speech in 2009, it's all been an embrace of those who are the most radical elements in that part of the world. That is not a good sign for America's foreign policy.
Certainly I have more in common with Bernie Sanders than differences. I think if you had to look for differences, you would find them in foreign policy, where my campaign is perhaps more critical - I would say definitely more critical - of funding for regimes like that of the Netanyahu government, which are clearly war criminals.
The United States has been fighting African pirates since the early days of the republic - battles so formative that, among other things, they established a long-standing pattern of dealing with foreign policy problems through armed interventions and also inspired the iconic phrase 'the shores of Tripoli' in the Marine Corps hymn.
I think there are a lot of Republicans who recognize that investment in adolescent girls and empowering them is good for our foreign policy. When they're educated, they tend to give back more to their communities, to rise out of poverty in a way that is good for their families and their communities and, ultimately, their countries.
It's nice to be thought of as attractive and all of that. On the other hand, it curtails you somewhat, too. They won't let me read for 'West Wing,' just to play, you know, a normal person. Or 'ER,' to play a doctor - the things I'm actually good at. I mean, I'm pretty good on foreign policy - they won't even let me come read for that.
Most Americans have no memory of the designs Franklin Roosevelt's New Dealers had for postwar-American foreign policy. Human rights, self-determination and an end to European colonization in the developing world, nuclear disarmament, international law, the World Court, the United Nations - these were all ideas of the progressive left.
In 1945, at the beginning of the Cold War, our leaders led us astray. We need to think of the Cold War as an aberration, a wrong turn. As such, we need to go back to where we were in 1945 - before we took the road to a permanent war economy, a national security state and a foreign policy based on unilateralism and cowboy triumphalism.
Hillary Clinton's Russian re-set policy gave Moscow permission to go from privately challenging U.S. foreign policy to publicly moving military hardware into Syria to prop up Bashar al-Assad and annexing Crimea from Ukraine. And Donald Trump seems to support the idea that Putin will be Putin. It's enough to leave America's allies confused.
I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president - with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln - just in terms of what we've gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we've got a lot more work to do. And we're gonna keep on at it.
I think most of the Washington foreign policy establishment exists in a fantasy world when it comes to Syria. They fundamentally don't understand that Russia and Iran, from the beginning, had much more at stake in Syria than the United States did. Russia and Iran were going to do everything possible in order to keep Bashar al-Assad in power.
Americans need to educate themselves, from elementary school onward, about what their country has done abroad. And they need to play a more active role in ensuring that what the United States does abroad is not merely in keeping with a foreign policy elite's sense of realpolitik but also with the American public's own sense of American values.
Even before September 11, there was a debate in the administration about whether or not military force should be used to oust Saddam Hussein. You're not going to find one person in the top echelons of the foreign policy and national security establishment in the U.S. government who's going to say that Saddam Hussein should not be out of power.