It is an example I have cited many times over the years, that Hubert Humphrey once said the 1964 Civil Rights Act was America’s single most effective foreign policy initiative.
It had nothing to do with foreign policy, but it told the world who we were and what we stood for, that our system was about fairness and equal treatment – and that it worked.
I thought about that when Barack Obama announced that torture would never be part of our national policy.
America has always been the most successful when it is leading by example, when we’ve practiced what we’ve preached.
America’s weapons did not win the Cold War; they kept the Soviet Union at bay. The war was won when the people on the other side looked across the Iron Curtain, saw a better way of life there, realized their system of government could not give it to them, and so the walls came down.
With a simple declaration, President Obama told the world our system of government is so strong we don’t need to torture people to survive. That is the way of those who would destroy us, but that is not us. We have found a better way.
That is what our message to the world must be. More importantly, that is what we want our children to know. When we are admired and respected by others, we are far more secure than any weapon can ever make us.
I would suggest that yet another thing Obama has done right was to allow California and 13 other states to proceed with their application for a Clean Air waiver. No more ignoring the science!!