1. The human race will not eliminate war in this century, but we can
reduce the brutality of war - the level of killing - by adhering to
the principals of a "Just War," in particular to the principal of
"proportionality".
2. The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons
will lead to the destruction of nations.
3. We are the most powerful nation in the world - economically, politically
and militarily - and we are likely to remain so for decades ahead. But
we are not omniscient.
If we cannot persuade other nations with similar interest and similar
values of the merits of our proposed use of that power, we should not
proceed unilaterally except in the unlikely requirement to defend
directly the continental U.S., Alaska and Hawaii.
4. Moral principals are often ambiguous guides to foreign policy
and defense policy, but surely we can agree that we should establish
as a major goal of U.S. foreign policy and, indeed, of foreign policies
across the globe: the avoidance in this century of the carnage - 160
million dead - caused by conflict in the 20th century.
5. We, the richest nation in the world, have failed in our responsibility
to our own poor and to the disadvantaged across the world to help them
advance their welfare in the most fundamental terms of nutrition,
literacy, health and employment.
6. Corporate executives must recognize there is no contradiction
between a soft heart and a hard head. Of course, they have
responsibilities to stockholders, but they also have responsibilities
to their employees, their customers and to society as a whole.
7. President Kennedy believed a primary responsibility of a president
- indeed "THE" primary responsibility of a president - is to keep the
nation out of war, if at all possible.
8. War is a blunt instrument by which to settle disputes between or
within nations, and economic sanctions are rarely effective. Therefore,
we should build a system of jurisprudence based on the Interational
Court - that the U.S. has refused to support - which would hold
individuals responsible for crimes against humanity.
9. If we are to deal effectively with terrorists across the globe,
we must develop a sense of empathy - I don't mean "sympathy", but
rather "understanding" - to counter their attacts on us and the
Western World.
10. One of the greatest dangers we fact today is the risk that
terrorists will obtain access to weapons of mass destruction as a
result of the breakdown of the Non-Proliferation Regime. We in the
U.S. are contributing to that breakdown.
These lessons are as published in "The Fog of War", a DVD worth
seeing regarding history where he and curtis Lemay come out and
make the point that had the US not won WWII, they would all have
been charged with crimes against humanity. In this regard, the
honesty is somewhat refreshing, as well as the still-appearant
dishonesty.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0001L3LUE/qid=1113963475/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/002-1076635-0783206?v=glance&s=dvd&n=507846