So first, our man in Kabul, Mr. Karzai, declares the U.S. one of his top three enemies, and now our man in Baghdad, Mr. Maliki, is publicly backing spiraling Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad as the U.S. slowly - too slowly in the opinion of some - backs away from Mr. Assad in disgust. Hell, even the Saudi king is condemning the Syrian leader. When the absolute monarch of the world’s only country in which women can’t even drive or appear in public alone says your regime is going too far, you’ve got problems.

We Americans really need to be zooming out and taking a long hard look at what exactly we’ve created in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sure, getting rid of the Taliban government in Afghanistan was a noble deed that dramatically changed the course of events in the region and even the world. But could we not have exerted a little more influence in the restructuring of post-Taliban Afghanistan so that its corrupt leader isn’t publicly calling the United States one of his top three enemies while we’re still there providing his security? Perhaps we could have insisted on more transparency within Afghanistan’s largest bank, now it’s most corrupt. Or perhaps we could have discouraged the creation of an “Islamic Republic” to replace the “Islamic Emirate” of Mullah Omar and the Taliban.

The same could also be said for Iraq. While the elimination of a brutal, bellicose dictator was also noble, even if we now disagree on whether it was ever necessary, allowing the creation of a corrupt and non-functioning Islamic government in Baghdad that is allied with Tehran to replace a corrupt but functioning secular government that hated Tehran might not have been the best course of action during the rebuilding of a post-Saddam Iraq. Since we basically built their new government from the ground up, writing many of their new laws and creating their new institutions ourselves, could we not have insisted upon a few things in the process - like maybe progress as opposed to regression?

Sometimes it feels like the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction in our conduct of international relations. Whereas we used to march around the planet and disregard local cultures, histories, and sensitivities, now it seems like we cater to them too much sometimes, especially to traditional patterns of behavior that are not truly endemic to a particular region or culture but rather to less developed societies generally (i.e., oppression of minorities, corruption, etc.).

When we defeated Germany and Japan after World War II, we occupied those countries, forcefully subdued their lingering insurgencies, reconstructed their governments, and set them on a course to become the dominant economic powers in their respective regions. Perhaps had our occupation and reconstruction strategies been a little less politically correct - with respect to both regional politics and domestic American politics - yet still respectful, both Iraq and Afghanistan might be in a much different place now - a better place. And perhaps, just perhaps, we’d be supporting our friends in Kabul and Baghdad instead of self-declared enemies.

As NATO continues to forcefully suppress Libyan leader Mohamar Qaddafi’s ability to slaughter his own people, the world is largely standing by and watching while Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad does exactly that to in Syria. If the Syrian people eventually succeed in overthrowing their dictator, what incentive do they have to ally themselves with Western nations that simply stood by and watched their slaughter from web browsers and cable television clips?

I’ve written before on the dangerous lack of a consistent U.S. foreign policy throughout the Arab world. While we encourage and incentivize democratic reforms in Tunisia, we tolerate the harshest denials of basic human rights, such as allowing women to shop and drive alone, in Saudi Arabia. While we fiercely oppose an Islamic government in Egypt, we help create one in Iraq. And while we intervene militarily in Libya when its leader only threatens to slaughter his people, we stand by in Syria while its leader actually does.

The Arab people are not blind to the West’s disparate treatment of the various Arab nation-states of the Middle East. In fact, they are much more aware of it than we are, and it is a cause of significant anger and resentment on the Arab street. It significantly erodes our moral authority and weakens our prominent stance in the international community when we engage in such blatant hypocrisy.

After the revolution in Egypt that overthrew long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak, many Egyptians took to the American television cameras on the streets of Cairo at the time to ask, “Where was the U.S.? Where was Barak Obama?” Of course it doesn’t matter who the current president is, but the inconsistent U.S. foreign policy and the lack of even an expression of strong moral support for the Egyptian revolution in the beginning are what those Egyptians were reacting to.

The U.S. is always in a precarious position when it comes to how much support to give to foreign protest movements. Almost certainly, we give covert support to most if not all of these pro-democratic movements, but that does not help the U.S. image abroad. Such help will be kept quiet even after a given movement has either succeeded or failed. But a balance must be struck, and we have not always succeeded in finding that proper balance.

There was a definite need to let the Egyptian people fight their own battle against their own dictator, and the first public trial of a former Arab leader by his own people is an historic accomplishment that the Egyptian people can be proud of. But perhaps the U.S. could have been a little more forthcoming with moral support for the revolution earlier in its development. That’s all the youthful Egyptian revolutionaries wanted, and it might have sped the end of the Mubarak regime and possibly saved some lives in the process. The U.S. eventually came around, but to many Egyptians it was too late for the U.S. to be given credit for actually helping.

We are at the same point now with Syria, except with much more dire consequences for the Syrian people. The pro-democracy, anti-Assad movement in Syria is being systematically slaughtered by the regime and its military forces, a step beyond what prompted us to intervene in Libya, yet neither the U.S. nor NATO is coming to their rescue. Will anyone blame the Syrians if they eventually succeed in overthrowing the Assad regime but are then sour toward the West for not being more helpful in that effort?

It’s a difficult position for the U.S. and the West to be in. We surely can’t get away with being involved in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria all at the same time. But nevertheless, our current hands-off approach to the escalating violence in Syria is not sufficient either, especially given our continued military aid to the Libyan rebels. Whatever the outcome of the Arab Spring in the end, our inconsistent policy toward the Arab states is sowing the seeds of yet another generation of anti-American and anti-Western sentiment in the region, but for a whole new set of reasons.

The vicious nature of major political election contests today is creating a dangerous pathology for American democracy - the expectation of a record of infallibility in our candidates for public office. This qualification is not only unrealistic and unattainable, but even if it were it would not be a characteristic that I would want my own representative or leader to necessarily have.

Good leaders make mistakes, and great ones have often made numerous wrong turns over the course of their lives and careers. Talk to any highly successful venture capitalist about this and you will surely hear from most that failure at one or even several points in one’s life can actually be an asset, sometimes even a criterion, in the quest to earn their respect, and ultimately their funding.

They key is what you do as a result of bombing. Do you get discouraged and never take risks again? Do you make the same mistakes again, not having learned anything from the previous crash and burn? Or do you wise up and become a better person and a better leader and decision maker as a result?

Pundits and even ordinary Americans love to find any obscure statement or mistake that a candidate has made in the past - or even one that his or her staff or associates has made - and hold it against that candidate in a consequential political contest. But I want neither my local leaders nor the leader of the free world to have never made a mistake. In all likelihood, such a scenario would be the result of luck rather than skill, leaving the person in question quite delusional in the end.

We need to bring back some honesty and integrity not only to political offices, but also to the political process. One way to start doing that is to stop holding candidates to impossible standards, and to analyze past mistakes in the context of subsequent patterns of behavior and accomplishment.