More from Ambassador Freeman's speech at the National Press Club. About the world's reaction to 9/11 he said"

On that day, the world felt our pain and stood with us. Le Monde famously proclaimed: “Nous sommes tous Américains!” The world’s solidarity with us reflected decades of goodwill for America, accumulated over the course of “the American Century” that Henry Luce had foreseen. But does anyone here imagine that a second 9/11 would draw the same global reaction today? By surrendering the aspirations for a higher standard of behavior that once endeared us to the world, we have lost much of our international followership. We have thereby compromised our capacity to lead. To regain our influence, we must rediscover our values and return to the practice of them.

The latest twist is a campaign by prominent Israeli politicians and their American flacks to persuade us to give Israel still more weapons to improve its ability to attack Iran. This, they say, is the price we must pay to persuade Israel to agree to delay a unilateral assault on Iran till after our elections. As an astute observer of this interaction has pointed out, this is a bit like a pyromaniac demanding more matches to distract himself from setting fire to his neighborhood. [Ambassador Freeman]

In February 2009, unnamed sources leaked to the news media, initially to The Politico, that Freeman was Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair's choice to chair the National Intelligence Council in the Barack Obama administration.[1] After several weeks of criticisms from prominent supporters of Israeli policy, he withdrew his name from consideration and charged that he had been the victim of a concerted campaign by what he called “the Israel lobby”. [Wikipedia]