The debate has seesawed back and forth in the press, in blogs, on the street. Will George W. Bush, prodded by his pitchfork-wielding vice president, bomb Iran before the end of his term? According to one camp, an attack on Iran is so last term. In fact, the whole “evil axis” thing is passé. The administration has already done a 180 on North Korea. And, along with sending a negotiator to the talks with Iran in Geneva last week, the administration is considering opening a U.S. interest section in Tehran. The Pentagon is dead set against an attack. Our allies would freak. The poll numbers suggest that even though Iran tops the list of “enemies,” few Americans support bombing the country or even threatening to do so.

The worst aspect of these scenarios – with climate, with financial services – is that the partying and the hangovers have somehow been separated from one another. The rich get to enjoy themselves, and the rest of us have to deal with the morning after.

We need to shift over from the hypermilitary approach to an economic development model, and quick. But that’s going to require a major, immediate, cessation of operations in that most dangerous province of all: the rogue fiefdom of Dickistan.

Look at how angry John Bolton and the congressional hawks are at the recent Bush administration decision to take North Korea off the Trading with the Enemy Act list and the State Sponsor of Terrorism list. Never mind that North Korea has served up an accounting of its nuclear programs and even destroyed the cooling tower of its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, as per agreement. The bottom line: this is what diplomacy smells like. Bolton and company, however, catch only the whiff of sulfur.

There’s a huge difference between acknowledging the U.S. role in behind-the-scenes manipulations around the world and asserting that Washington has pulled all the strings in a half-century-long global puppet show.

That’s the world that we should strive for — where people go hungry not because they lack enough food, but because they are doing so voluntarily in the cause of peace and justice.

I was on Wisconsin public radio last week, being interviewed on the state of U.S. foreign policy. All the callers were in perfect harmony. We all agreed that the last eight years have been a disaster for the United States, that we must move away from militarism and toward diplomacy, that we must, well, you get the drift. I commented to the host that the country would be in better shape if Wisconsin were in charge.

Although Iraq is the defining foreign policy issue so far in the presidential race, China will no doubt be smuggled into the election through this rather stark contrast between the Republicans and Democrats over trade.

As we approach the 2008 elections, let’s go big tent and put together a star-studded group to tour the swing states. Let’s also send these new Second Thoughters to college campuses in a political version of Scared Straight.

In our special Memorial Day edition, World Beat is publishing an obituary for Diplomacy, which died prematurely last week after an extended illness.