Here’s the plot of Pirates of the Caribbean 4. The film opens with Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow dropping anchor in New York harbor. He descends on Wall Street with his mates and, after a quick costume change at Brooks Brothers, storms the boardrooms of Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, and other major firms. They don’t need sabers to rake in the haul. Jack’s a clever pirate. He takes advantage of the tools at hand. Applying mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations, Jack seizes billions of dollars in booty. He distributes huge bonuses to his crew for a job well done. And just before the government steps in to clean up the mess, the pirates scramble back to their ship and set sail.

Even if Obama holds to his word on torture, closes Guantánamo within the year, applies the same yardstick to detainees at Bagram and in Iraq, and eliminates the Clinton-era policy on extraordinary rendition, the death of the “global war on terror,” as Mark Twain once said of his own prematurely published obituary, is greatly exaggerated.

Let’s pretend that we’ve simply gotten off on the wrong foot with this century. In a friendly round of golf, if you make a lousy tee shot, you can declare a “mulligan” and do the shot over. We’ve certainly sent the ball into the woods this time around. So let’s call a “mulligan” and start over.

And what better time for a new start than Inauguration Day 2009? Millions have descended on Washington, DC to witness something they didn’t think they’d see in their lifetimes: an African-American president, a moment to be a proud American, or simply a measure of hope for the future.

Early on in his administration, George W. Bush decided not to focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Did the president consider the problem too difficult to solve? No, that wasn’t quite it. Too much of a domestic hot potato? Wrong again.

If Secretary of State Clinton does nothing except push costly military solutions, then her cabinet appointment may turn out to be Obama’s biggest “d’oh!” so far.

In the fervency of these Lennon-lovers, who could tell their own stories of loss, I heard that same bittersweet balance found in Huong’s art or the drawings from Laos, a balance between the memory of tragedy and the desire to move forward, a balance between truth and reconciliation.

After the attacks in Mumbai last week, should the United States bomb suspected terrorist cells in India? Send the Marines to Kashmir where one of the suspected groups behind the attacks — Lashkar-e-Taiba — originates? Or initiate regime change in Pakistan, which has provided support for several terrorist outfits operating in South Asia?

Do appointments shape their office or does the office shape the appointment? Imagine what would happen if, improbably, President-elect Barack Obama appointed Dennis Kucinich to head the Pentagon. If he tried to implement any of his excellent plans for demilitarizing the United States, Kucinich would encounter enormous pushback, non-compliance, outright insubordination. To get anything done, even as the head of this powerful institution, Kucinich would have to play by the rules.