American behaviors related to leadership on the global stage need to be underpinned by a recognition that terrorist attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon (how horrible they were) do not mean that it is time to throw the baby out with the bathwater on 225 years of American history and social development. 

Use of force in Iraq without a good justification for war in 2003 was opposed by a majority of states on the planet—including longtime allies of ours on many continents.  This invasion was opposed in the streets by nearly a million Americans and in their hearts by many more—including military personnel. 

This invasion was also opposed by a great number of American churchmen who knew the attack on Iraq matched no known concept of Just-War theory taught traditionally in the West. 

This invasion was also opposed by the United Nations, Mexico, and many European states, i.e. our closest allies.  They, too, claimed that there was neither enough evidence to see Iraq as an imminent threat nor had an invasion much benefit in a war against terrorists like Osama Bin-Laden. 

As a whole, American leadership did not listen to those many individuals who knew how the rules of international affairs needed to be played.  Like some Bolshevik takeover of Washington, D.C. they steamrolled a vote in Congress on trumped up charges and committed American taxpayers to give some 3-plus  trillion dollars in six years to support the War in Iraq and to take care of American soldiers & families when they returned home from such missions.

We did this against the opinion of so many in the international community and against the wishes of tens of millions of Americans.

This is not how a cognitivist government would approach global issues.

American leadership must apologize for this lack of recognition of the facts, rule-of-law among states, and research on the ground in relation to Iraq & turn our full attention to building real coalitions when moving forward and solving global problems in the 21st and 22nd centuries.

Apologizing is one of the good things that Bill Clinton did as president that brought reconciliation for so many generations. (No. I’m not talking about the apology to America given after his Monica Lewinski lies were uncovered.)  I’m talking about his apologies to the thousands of Americans who were misused and treated as human guinea pigs throughout the Cold War.  

Bill Clinton was not even president when those Cold War evils done-in-the-name-of-national-security began.  Yet, he used his presidential podium to apologize and to seek to atone the victims, including many USA military personnel and their families who had become handicapped, diseased or even died as a result of A-Bomb and H-Bomb testing from the 1940s through the 1970s.

Clinton also apologized for the horrible Tuscaloosa experiments carried out on unsuspecting black males during the same period. In short, a leader needs to be able to get on his knee as the former West German President did in Warsaw after WWII, indicating a  great sense of remorse and contrition by the German leadership at what had been done in Auschwitz and on the battlefields of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s under horrible German leadership.   .

Coinciding with the apologies abroad, the next U.S. President (Republican or Democrat or whomever) must apologize also to all Americans for failing to oversee a better development of society and economy of the USA over the several past decades. 

The policy or experiment of the Reagan-era to simply spend as much money on defense and cut taxes with no real social- and economic development by the beneficiaries of such cuts is a losing way to lead a country into a progressive era of development.  Likewise, it doesn’t serve the USA well to finance war or revolution around the world and not follow through financially.

The spending habits of the current U.S. administration is a horrible model of og-term investment, spending, and savings for individual Americans of all ages. 

If big-Papa Government can spend money as though he printed it himself (with little thought for tomorrow), how can the average American be encouraged to save and plan for his future any better than Americans are doing today?

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