A demonstrated weakness of character is hard to redeem

The United States once set a high standard for the rest of the world to aspire to.  You remember that, right?

And a tremendous amount of American power (influence) was due to that high moral standard.  Call it admiration or respect, whatever, much of the world (the developed world, certainly) let the US lead in nearly all great matters: war, technology, business, industry, because of the high standard Americans demonstrated to others.

It is my belief that, by changing themselves, by demonstrating an inability to stand by their own stated principles when it mattered most to do so, Americans demonstrated a huge weakness.  A weakness of character.

Forget America's abuses of others ... the real abuse is of those things that, for so long, defined "American".  

Americans betrayed their own stated principles – Americans betrayed themselves – before they ever waterboarded a single prisoner in a secret CIA prison or killed women and children in a robotic drone strike.  Before they ever betrayed another living soul, they betrayed themselves. And that is what other nations (like Canada) are trying to avoid.  Canada is trying to remember what being "Canadian" means.  To abandon that, without strong justification, is simply too expensive.  It's too high a price to pay.  Americans (and this is, really, just my own opinion) will realize that there is no reward worth the price they have paid to have their fears assuaged. To be stroked by liars.

The damage Americans did to their own nation's credibility abroad has been immeasurable, literally incalculable, and the loss of respect is irredeemable.

Suck it up.