America the Dangerous ?

I found this excerpt from George Soros' Newsweek recent interview enlightening:

You say that the main obstacle to a stable and just world is the United States. That's a pretty strong statement.
George Soros: Yes, but it happens to coincide with the prevailing opinion in the world. And I think that's rather shocking for Americans to hear. The United States sets the agenda for the world. And the rest of the world has to respond to that agenda. By declaring a "war on terror" after September the 11th, we set the wrong agenda for the world. This is something that people in America find difficult to understand because war seems like the natural response.

Why is a "war on terror" the wrong response to the attacks on the United States?
First of all because when you wage war, you inevitably create innocent victims. When you wage war on terrorists who don't announce their whereabouts, the danger of hitting the innocent people is even greater. We abhor terrorists, because they kill innocent people for political goals. But by waging war on terror we are doing the same thing. And the people who are on the receiving end see us in the same light with the same negative attitude as we have towards terrorists. It's also a threat to our democracy. Because when you wage war, the president can appropriate for himself excessive powers. He can call anyone who criticizes his policies unpatriotic. That undermines the critical process of an open society and that is how we made this tremendous blunder of invading Iraq.

Polls indicate that American public opinion on Iraq has changed.
People in America now realize that the invasion of Iraq was a disaster. But we still think that the war on terror is the natural and obvious way to deal with the terrorist threat. But it's a counter-productive policy that has done untold damage to our standing in the world and to ourselves. No outside power, or alliance of powers could really endanger our dominant position, but our own stupidity can do it and has done [it]...