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More than four decades after Nixon met Mao, the relationship between the U.S. and China has reached a pivotal moment. To date, even as China has become more powerful and present in our lives, Americans have generally found it to be an unsatisfying 'enemy.'

Without a clear picture of where the military's covert forces are operating and what they are doing, Americans may not even recognize the consequences of and blowback from our expanding secret wars as they wash over the world.

World War II, the atomic bomb, the Cold War, made it hard for Americans to continue their optimism.

America won the Cold War by protecting our strategic resources from the threat of foreign control. We must bring the same attitude to our trade relationship with China.

There's a tendency on the part of Americans, all of us, to say, 'Hey, the Cold War is over, the Soviet Union is gone, we don't have to worry about these guys again.' We always have to be worried about them, we always have to be concerned about them, and we have to be well-informed.

The jealousy and resentment that animate the terrorists also affect many of our former cold war allies.

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon shook our nation to the core. Americans were deeply frightened, sad, and angry, and they rallied around a President who, at the time, showed impressive certitude and calm.

The fact is that Americans were sent to Russia that have not been returned.

The Americans invaded a country without understanding what eight years of a war with Iran had meant, how that traumatized Iraq. They didn't appreciate what they support for a decade of sanctions in Iraq had done to Iraq and the bitterness that it created and that it wiped out the middle class.