adding to the list of questions ... James Traub at Foreign Policy has a piece on the US no longer being free. I wrote about a Chinese perspective on US as a model for modernity - that if a couple thousand lives a month is the cost of doing business, what does that say about US concern for human rights? http://chinareflections.com/index.php/105-comments-on-policies-and-programs/449-what-do-you-think-of-western-civilization American "soft power" is certainly devalued. What impact on US, foreign and domestically?