From Richard Cohen’s
Imagined Snipers, Real Challenges in the NY Times:

“On issues that cross borders – terrorism, financial market volatility, global warming – and on Iran, Israel-Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq – three things are essential: a new moral authority in the White House, the capacity for original strategic thought, and a 21st-century understanding of the border-jumping networks that have knit humanity into new relationships.

Obama, in his speech on race, did important things. He confronted reality, thought big, probed division, sketched convergence. He took Americans and many people beyond U.S. shores to a different mental place. Imagine that capacity applied to GWOT, Iran, Russia, China and Israel-Palestine.

If you don’t like the sound of that, there’s always seasoned swagger of the sort that runs from imaginary snipers.”

More from Roger Cohen can be found at his International Herald Tribune blog.

Politics //