I’m sorry…WHAT…?!

Turkish warplanes bombed separatist Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq on Saturday, a statement posted on the military’s Web site said.

The military vowed to continue operations on both sides of Turkish-Iraqi border “no matter how the conditions are.” More

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The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world’s largest computer database of peoples’ physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.

Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are already flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement here. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.  More

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Barack Obama suggested Friday that he has more foreign policy experts from the Clinton administration backing his candidacy over Hillary Rodham Clinton’s, but lists provided by both campaigns show hers is nearly twice as long.

Clinton’s campaign provided more than 80 names of her husband’s former foreign policy advisers who are publicly backing her, while Obama’s campaign provided 47. More

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To be clear at the outset, I’m not a partisan of either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton and think both would take the country in the right direction. But this whole debate over “foreign policy experience” seems misplaced. If we chose a president on that basis, clearly Joe Biden or Bill Richardson should be the nominee.

But policy competence is not the issue. The main issue in American foreign policy now is repairing America’s image in the world. There would be no greater asset in that task than a leader like Obama, who by his very multicultural hybrid biography, renews the fundamental promise of America to the world as a society where every individual is considered worthy enough to get a chance in life. That speaks volumes, far more than a full set of Foreign Affairs magazines on his bookshelf.

In the times ahead, we don’t need so much a seasoned diplomat of the already past post-Cold War moment as someone with an intuitive grasp of global politics in a world of hybrid cultures. Dashing a clash of civilizations and making globalization work are the tasks at hand, not negotiating this or that treaty in Geneva.

To “lead by example,” as Obama has argued — instead of the Bush will to power policies — is the fundamental shift that needs to take place in our foreign policy.

There are plenty of foreign policy experts he can bring along into his team if he wins, including Joe Biden or Bill Richardson. If Hillary doesn’t win I’m sure Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke and, for that matter, Bill Clinton and even Joe Wilson would magnanimously lend their patriotic hands to refurbishing America’s role in the world.

Finally, a small footnote about Bill Clinton’s remark that choosing Obama is “a roll of the dice.” That is certainly what I thought of Bill Clinton when I first met the future president, then governor of Arkansas, at a small dinner at Stanley Sheinbaum’s home in Los Angeles in honor of Flora Lewis, the legendary foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times. Hillary was also there. Both of the Clinton’s sparkled with intelligence and energy, and most important, a sense that the time for change was right and they were the right people to lead it.

But, seemingly intimidated by Flora’s vast foreign policy experience, I recall that both Clinton’s talked mostly about education, only listening intently on foreign policy subjects. In fact, Bill Clinton was so quiet that someone said afterwards, “Boy, Hillary is really smart. Was that other guy
her bodyguard?”

Could this governor from a marginal state who undoubtedly intuited what the American public wanted at that moment really competently replace George H. W. Bush, the man who was ending the Cold War with a whimper instead of a bang, who ran the CIA and was the envoy to China, not to speak of Vice-President?

Well, it turned out that Clinton’s expansive, embracing American nature won the hearts and minds of much of the world as it was leaving the Cold War behind and entering the age of globalization. Once he got a handle on it, Clinton understood that American leadership was about making the world safe for interdependence. He was the right guy at the right time.

The question now about Obama is if he is the right guy at the right time now. The issue is not his diplomatic experience, but whether he is the best person to command America’s global battle for hearts and minds. More

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Onion Radio News - with Doyle Redland More

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