Trudy Rubin: Obama’s new security team must first rebuild America’s diplomatic machine

Bush administration derided soft power as "social work" — no substitute for the tough work of war-making, shortage of Foreign Service officers, and particularly of those with training in critical languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Hindi and Urdu, no capacity to interact with a global generation that uses the Internet & we Americans wonder why the rest of the world is angry at this country. In addition, that's why we end up going to war without obtaining truthful intelligence first. As for hiring outside contractors to do projects in places such as Iraq-that's because the Bush Administration contrary to their political correctness speeches don't think much of U.S. military solders-remember that comment from the previous Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about our American solders who were drafted into the military & bravely fought & died in WWI, WWII, Korea & Vietnam-"it's better to have the voluntary military we have now, they're competent not like our drafted solders", this is how the Bush Administration thinks that's why we have to hire outside contractors to do projects in Iraq that the American military solders are perfectly capable of doing & therefore, wasting American taxpayer money.