During his first term in office, President Obama has sent mixed messages and tried to appease his implacable critics on the right while greatly disappointing many of his friends on the left. It's no secret: Obama's indecisiveness and failed attempts to woe the rabid right (in the deficit debate debacle, for example) has disappointed moderates and progressives, as well as his liberal base. So far, Obama has appeared in the guise of a tragic figure, would-be leader who lacks the mettle to lead. Many hoped that the 2008 election would be a turning point, that Obama would abandon an over-reliance on military muscle in favor of a more traditional reliance on diplomacy, one that would restore our badly damaged reputation in the world. Here are six keys to a more sane and sensible - and less self-defeating - foreign policy.

First, give peace a fighting chance before chancing a fight. Leading with fists is the way large brawlers with little brains settle disputes. We have tried that approach for the past eight years. It worked out very well if you happened to be a friend of George Bush or one of Dick Cheney's cronies. If so, chances are you were also a big defense contractor, beltway bandit, or revolving door lobbyist on the most corrupt corridor in America, otherwise known as K-Street. For the rest of us, whether we know it or not, it was an unmitigated disaster.

Second, avoid unilateralism like the plague because that what it is. The United States was plagued by the protracted war in Vietnam as the old Soviet Union was plagued by the war in Afghanistan. As we know, that "plague" killed (or contributed greatly to the demise of) the once-mighty Soviet empire. The perpetrator became the victim of its own misguided use of force. A formidable arsenal of nuclear weapons could not save the patient. And it was the economic, as well as the social and political consequences, of unilateral armed intervention ...

On May 29, The New York Times published an extraordinarily in-depth look at the intimate role President Obama has played in authorizing US drone attacks overseas, particularly in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. It is chilling to read the cold, macabre ease with which the President and his staff decide who will live or die. The fate of people living thousands of miles away is decided by a group of Americans, elected and unelected, who don’t speak their language, don’t know their culture, don’t understand their motives or values. While purporting to represent the world’s greatest democracy, US leaders are putting people on a hit list who are as young as 17, people who are given no chance to surrender, and certainly no chance to be tried in a court of law.

Who is furnishing the President and his aides with this list of terrorist suspects to choose from, like baseball cards? The kind of intelligence used to put people on drone hit lists is the same kind of intelligence that put people in Guantanamo. Remember how the American public was assured that the prisoners locked up in Guantanamo were the “worst of the worst,” only to find out that hundreds were innocent people who had been sold to the US military by bounty hunters?

Why should the public believe what the Obama administration says about the people being assassinated by drones? Especially since, as we learn in the New York Times, the administration came up with a semantic solution to keep the civilian death toll to a minimum: simply count all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants. The rationale, reminiscent of George Zimmerman’s justification for shooting Trayvon Martin, is that “people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good.” Talk about profiling! At least when George Bush threw suspected militants into Guantanamo their ...

Let's get one thing straight from the start. Gov. Rick Perry is no blow-dry George Bush clone, even though he owes his stellar political career about 75 percent to Bush and maybe 25 percent to Osama bin Laden. So what is the political profile of the Texas Governor, now officially in the race as a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination? A Rasmussen poll this week of likely Republican primary voters, has him with 29-percent support, against his current rivals, Romney with 18 percent, and Bachmann with 13 percent.

Inside Texas, he's the most successful politician in the entire history of the state. George Bush lost his first congressional race. In a lifetime career of ten elections since 1984, Perry has never lost one. He has an acute sense of political timing. His defeated opponents readily attest to Perry's relentless self-discipline as a campaigner, his skills at raising campaign cash — he already has a huge prospective war chest for his first national foray. They all emphasize the fatal consequences of underestimating him.

But above all, Rick Perry is one lucky son of a b*tch. Not just once or twice, but at almost every decisive fork in the road fate has given him a benign tap on the shoulder. Napoleon said, "give me lucky generals." Looking at Perry's CV, he'd have made him Grand Marshall of France on the spot.

In 1998, Perry ran for Lieutenant Governor. Victory would put the first Republican in the slot since Reconstruction. Bush was already planning his 2000 presidential run, which would mean quitting the gubernatorial chair. Bush had no desire to see a Democrat step up from the Lieut. Gov.'s office, and so, Karl Rove took a close strategic and tactical interest in Perry's bid. The Bush clan ran ...