I would start with humility. In my view, we need to start by acknowledging that we have made some real errors -- that we were badly frightened after 9/11, and we overreacted in many ways. We're not alone as a nation in doing that; many nations respond that way. But we have to own up to that. We have to take responsibility for our actions and acknowledge our errors, and acknowledge that in many cases we actually should have been listening to other countries. That kind of humility is needed to give us enough room to start to do some very positive things.
There are four concrete things we need to do right away. The first is to close Guantanamo and declare that we will not engage in torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. We must go back to the standards that we have always set and we continue to set for our military. We must embrace them across the board.
Second, we must withdraw our troops from Iraq in a way that leaves Iraq as stable as possible, while building regional institutions at the same time. It cannot be just a unilateral withdrawal. Rather it must be a declared policy of, "We are now withdrawing our troops and working to make that a safe and stable withdrawal," rather than figuring out how to stay in.
Third, we need to work on leading a serious global effort to combat climate change. Our current nonchalant posture is probably the most important global symbol of how the United States effectively doesn't care that the decisions we make affect others. You can't be a leader if you're that irresponsible. We're going to have to ask other countries to make sacrifices, too, so we're going to have to start. And the fourth is to be really serious about nuclear nonproliferation, which means living up to our part of the bargain. It means cutting our nuclear weapons. In my view it means declaring that our ultimate aim is to go to zero, although it could take decades to get there.