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Instead moderates read boring essays from Richard Armitage, George Jr's former Under Secretary of State, published Sunday, 9 Dec 2007 in the Washington Post Page B03:

Stop Getting Mad, America. Get Smart.
... we put forward an angry face to the globe, not one that reflected the more traditional American values of hope and optimism, tolerance and opportunity. This fearful approach has hurt the United States' ability to bring allies to its cause, but it is not too late to change. The nation should embrace a smarter strategy that blends our "hard" and "soft" power -- our ability to attract and persuade, as well as our ability to use economic and military might. ...

Since 9/11, the war on terrorism has shaped this isolating outlook, becoming the central focus of U.S. engagement with the world. The threat from terrorists with global reach is likely to be with us for decades. But unless they have weapons of mass destruction, groups such as al-Qaeda pose no existential threat to the United States -- unlike our old foes Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

In fact, al-Qaeda and its ilk hope to defeat us by using our own strength against us. They hope that we will blunder, overreact and turn world opinion against us. This is a deliberately set trap, and one whose grave strategic consequences extend far beyond the costs this nation would suffer from any small-scale terrorist attack, no matter how individually tragic and collectively painful. ...

More broadly, when our words do not match our actions, we demean our character and moral standing. We cannot lecture others about democracy while we back dictators. We cannot denounce torture and waterboarding in other countries and condone it at home. We cannot allow Cuba's Guantanamo Bay or Iraq's Abu Ghraib to become the symbols of American power.

The United States has long been the big kid on the block, and it will probably remain so for years to come. But its staying power has a great deal to do with whether it is perceived as a bully or a friend. ...

The past six years have demonstrated that hard power alone cannot secure the nation's long-term goals.
... the United States used its soft power to rebuild Europe and Japan and to establish the norms and institutions that became the core of the international order for the past half-century. The Cold War ended under a barrage of hammers on the Berlin Wall rather than a barrage of artillery across the Fulda Gap precisely because of this integrated approach. ...

Specifically, the United States should renew its focus on five critical areas:
We should reinvigorate the alliances, partnerships and institutions ...
We should create a Cabinet-level voice for global development ...
We should reinvest in public diplomacy within the government and establish a nonprofit institution outside of it to build people-to-people ties ...
We should sustain our engagement with the global economy ...
We should take the lead in addressing climate change and energy insecurity ...

Leadership requires more than vision. It requires execution and accountability, two features in short supply in government today. ...

The United States might be in a better position today had it not walked away from Pakistan in the 1990s and if, as the 9/11 Commission suggested, it had broadened its engagement beyond military cooperation ...

How boring. No blood. No guts. No problems solved by big guns or 'big dic' diplomacy. No evil enemy to blame. It's more exciting to ignore intelligent solutions from the 9/11 Commission and the Iraq Study Group. Instead others believe propaganda in a article intended to promote war with Iran. Funny how the former general, instead, views a world using an officer's perspective. Solutions not based in big guns and violence. But then being a moderate requires, instead, using the head located on one's shoulders.

Soft power is what Thomas Barnett also discussed. Urbane Guerrilla never understood it even in the few chapters he actually read. Amazing how UG found an idol in Barnett's book and yet never understood the content. But again, it requires officer's material. Barnett was also boring as is the above logic (without 'big dic' excitement of war and death) from Richard Armitage.

Smart power? Like mimes mocking a White Power demonstration. There are no smarts in 'big dic' thinking promote by that article. A "Long War Journal" article of selected facts intended only to promote war with Iran. An article that fails to see the real threat as defined by Armitage and Nye.