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Obama Has Jay-Z on His IPod and The Moves To Prove It

Talk about a major Jay-Z move. People, we're talking about a seminal moment in the campaign, the merging of politics and pop culture: in which a presidential candidate -- a self-confessed hip-hop head and Jay-Z fan -- references a rap hit and a dance move.

Tags: Barack, Obama, Jay-Z, hip-hop, politics on 2008-06-01 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: Hip Hop and Politics

more fromwww.washingtonpost.com

Obama "I love the art of Hip-Hop;" Loses NH Primary

Senator Barack Obama is interested in utilizing rappers to educate youth with Hip-Hop, should he make it to the White House.

Tags: hip, hop, politics, hip-hop, barack, obama on 2008-06-01 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: Hip Hop and Politics

more fromallhiphop.com

Obama Brushes Off Debate Jabs

Video footage of Obama brushing his shoulder off ala Jay Z

Tags: Barack, Obama, hip, hop, hip-hop, Jay-Z on 2008-06-01 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: Hip Hop and Politics

more fromwww.washingtonpost.com

Barack Obama to guest on hip-hop album | musicradar.com

US presidential hopeful Barack Obama will make a guest appearance on Q-Tip’s new album.

Tags: Barack, Obama, hip, hop, hip-hop, politics, Q-Tip on 2008-05-22 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: Hip Hop and Politics

more fromwww.musicradar.com

Curious George publisher may sue over offensive anti-Obama shirts

When word came out that a conservative Georgia tavern owner was selling t-shirts with the image of cartoon monkey Curious George over the slogan "Obama in '08," initial reactions focused on the racial slur.

Tags: Barack, Obama, Curious, George, politics, election, 08 on 2008-05-18 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: Election 2008

more fromrawstory.com

Obama And The Hip-Hop Problem - Yahoo! News

How is the idea that poverty leads to pyscological violence - ludacris?

Tags: hip, hop, politics, barack, obama, jay, z, rap on 2008-05-07 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: Hip Hop and Politics

more fromnews.yahoo.com

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Speech on counter-terrorism

Barack Obama

Tags: Barack, Obama, terrorism on 2008-04-17 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.barackobama.com

We do need to stand for democracy. And I will. But democracy is about more than a ballot box. America must show -- through deeds as well as words -- that we stand with those who seek a better life. That child looking up at the helicopter must see America and feel hope.

As President, I will make it a focus of my foreign policy to roll back the tide of hopelessness that gives rise to hate. Freedom must mean freedom from fear, not the freedom of anarchy. I will never shrug my shoulders and say -- as Secretary Rumsfeld did -- "Freedom is untidy." I will focus our support on helping nations build independent judicial systems, honest police forces, and financial systems that are transparent and accountable. Freedom must also mean freedom from want, not freedom lost to an empty stomach. So I will make poverty reduction a key part of helping other nations reduce anarchy.
I will double our annual investments to meet these challenges to $50 billion by 2012. And I will support a $2 billion Global Education Fund to counter the radical madrasas -- often funded by money from within Saudi Arabia -- that have filled young minds with messages of hate. We must work for a world where every child, everywhere, is taught to build and not to destroy. And as we lead we will ask for more from our friends in Europe and Asia as well -- more support for our diplomacy, more support for multilateral peacekeeping, and more support to rebuild societies ravaged by conflict.

I will also launch a program of public diplomacy that is a coordinated effort across my Administration, not a small group of political officials at the State Department explaining a misguided war. We will open "America Houses" in cities across the Islamic world, with Internet, libraries, English lessons, stories of America's Muslims and the strength they add to our country, and vocational programs. Through a new " America's Voice Corps" we will recruit, train, and send out into the field talented young Americans who can speak with -- and listen to -- the people who today hear about us only from our enemies.
It's time to turn the page on Washington's conventional wisdom that agreement must be reached before you meet,

USA: Obama and the Democrats' Foreign Policy

Marxist website: But on the question of war and foreign policy, does Obama really differ from the current White House administration, or from his party mate Hillary Clinton, or for that matter, from the entire DC political establishment?

Tags: Marxism, Barack, Obama, foreign, policy on 2008-04-17 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.marxist.com

Israel-US ties - JPost

In the run-up to the 2008 US presidential elections, The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition JPost.com has invited central presidential contenders to respond to questions on matters of importance to Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world.

Tags: Jerusalem, Post, Israel, US, foreign, policu, Obama, Clinton, McCain, president on 2008-04-17 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromcgis.jpost.com

S. 1430: Iran Sanctions Enabling Act (GovTrack.us)

Obama introduced...passed House

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more fromwww.govtrack.us

GovTrack: S. 433: Text of Legislation

The United States should use the redeployment of the Armed Forces under this section, and the possible suspension of such redeployment if the benchmarks set forth in subsection (b) are met, as a tool to press the Iraqi leaders to promote national reconciliation among ethnic and religious groups in Iraq in order to establish stability in Iraq.

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more fromwww.govtrack.us

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Remarks of Senator Barack Obama to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs - Council on Foreign Relations

Speech to CFR

Tags: Council, foreign, policy, Foreign, Affairs, Barack, Obama on 2008-04-16 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.cfr.org

A 21st century military to stay on the offense, from Djibouti to Kandahar.
Stronger alliances to share information, pool resources, and break up terrorist networks that operate in more than eighty countries.
We have heard much over the last six years about how America’s larger purpose in the world is to promote the spread of freedom – that it is the yearning of all who live in the shadow of tyranny and despair.

I agree. But this yearning is not satisfied by simply deposing a dictator and setting up a ballot box. The true desire of all mankind is not only to live free lives, but lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and simple justice.
Delivering on these universal aspirations requires basic sustenance like food and clean water; medicine and shelter.
As President, I will double our annual investments in meeting these challenges to $50 billion by 2012 and ensure that those new resources are directed towards these strategic goals.
We must maintain the strongest, best-equipped military in the world in order to defeat and deter conventional threats. But while sustaining our technological edge will always be central to our national security, the ability to put boots on the ground will be critical in eliminating the shadowy terrorist networks we now face. This is why our country’s greatest military asset is the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States.

This administration’s first Secretary of Defense proudly acknowledged that he had inherited the greatest fighting force in the nation’s history. Six years later, he handed over a force that has been stretched to the breaking point, understaffed, and struggling to repair its equipment.

Two-thirds of the Army is now rated “not ready” for combat. 88% of the National Guard is not ready to deploy overseas, and many units cannot respond to a domestic emergency.

Our men and women in uniform are performing heroically around the world in some of the most difficult conditions imaginable. But the war in Afghanistan and the ill-advised invasion of Iraq have clearly demonstrated the consequences of underestimating the number of troops required to fight two wars and defend our homeland. That’s why I strongly support the expansion of our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 Marines.

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Renewing American Leadership - Barack Obama

Barack Obama's essay on foreign policy for Foreign Affairs. Summary: After Iraq, we may be tempted to turn inward. That would be a mistake. The American moment is not over, but it must be seized anew. We must bring the war to a responsible end and then renew our leadership -- military, diplomatic, moral -- to confront new threats and capitalize on new opportunities. America cannot meet this century's challenges alone; the world cannot meet them without America.

Tags: Barack, Obama, foreign, policy, Middle, East on 2008-04-16 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.foreignaffairs.org

After thousands of lives lost and billions
of dollars spent, many Americans may be tempted to turn inward and cede our leadership
in world affairs. But this is a mistake we must not make. America cannot meet the
threats of this century alone, and the world cannot meet them without America. We
can neither retreat from the world nor try to bully it into submission. We must
lead the world, by deed and by example.
the security and well-being of each and every American depend
on the security and well-being of those who live beyond our borders. The mission
of the United States is to provide global leadership grounded in the understanding
that the world shares a common security and a common humanity.
To see American power in terminal decline is to ignore America's
great promise and historic purpose in the world
The best chance we have to leave Iraq a better
place is to pressure these warring parties to find a lasting political solution.
And the only effective way to apply this pressure is to begin a phased withdrawal
of U.S. forces, with the goal of removing all combat brigades from Iraq by March
31, 2008 -- a date consistent with the goal set by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.
To gain credibility in this effort, we must make clear that we seek
no permanent bases in Iraq. We should leave behind only a minimal over-the-horizon
military force in the region to protect American personnel and facilities, continue
training Iraqi security forces, and root out al Qaeda.
Changing the dynamic
in Iraq will allow us to focus our attention and influence on resolving the festering
conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians -- a task that the Bush administration
neglected for years.
In recent years, they have
all too often looked in vain. Our starting point must always be a clear and strong
commitment to the security of Israel, our strongest ally in the region and its only
established democracy.
Now more than ever, we must
strive to secure a lasting settlement of the conflict with two states living side
by side in peace and security. To do so, we must help the Israelis identify and
strengthen those partners who are truly committed to peace, while isolating those
who seek conflict and instability.
Tough-minded diplomacy,
backed by the whole range of instruments of American power -- political, economic,
and military -- could bring success even when dealing with long-standing adversaries
such as Iran and Syria.
Although we must not rule out using military force, we should not hesitate
to talk directly to Iran. Our diplomacy should aim to raise the cost for Iran of
continuing its nuclear program by applying tougher sanctions and increasing pressure
from its key trading partners.
At the same time, we
must show Iran -- and especially the Iranian people -- what could be gained from
fundamental change: economic engagement, security assurances, and diplomatic relations.
Diplomacy combined with pressure could also reorient Syria away from its radical
agenda to a more moderate stance -- which could, in turn, help stabilize Iraq, isolate
Iran, free Lebanon from Damascus' grip, and better secure Israel.
A strong military
is, more than anything, necessary to sustain peace.
We must use this moment both to rebuild our
military and to prepare it for the missions of the future.
We should expand our ground forces
by adding 65,000 soldiers to the army and 27,000 marines.
We must recruit the very best and invest in their
capacity to succeed. That means providing our servicemen and servicewomen with first-rate
equipment, armor, incentives, and training -- including in foreign languages and
other critical skills.
I will not
hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary, to protect the American people
or our vital interests whenever we are attacked or imminently threatened.
We must also consider using military
force in circumstances beyond self-defense in order to provide for the common security
that underpins global stability -- to support friends, participate in stability
and reconstruction operations, or confront mass atrocities. But when we do use force
in situations other than self-defense, we should make every effort to garner the
clear support and participation of others
Finally, we must develop a strong international
coalition to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and eliminate North Korea's
nuclear weapons program. Iran and North Korea could trigger regional arms races,
creating dangerous nuclear flashpoints in the Middle East and East Asia. In confronting
these threats, I will not take the military option off the table. But our first measure
must be sustained, direct, and aggressive diplomacy -- the kind that the Bush administration
has been unable and unwilling to use.
We must refocus our efforts on Afghanistan
and Pakistan
We should
pursue an integrated strategy that reinforces our troops in Afghanistan and works
to remove the limitations placed by some NATO allies on their forces. Our strategy
must also include sustained diplomacy to isolate the Taliban and more effective development
programs that target aid to areas where the Taliban are making inroads.
To defeat al Qaeda, I will
build a twenty-first-century military and twenty-first-century partnerships as strong
as the anticommunist alliance that won the Cold War to stay on the offense everywhere
from Djibouti to Kandahar.
Finally, we need a comprehensive strategy
to defeat global terrorists -- one that draws on the full range of American power,
not just our military might. As a senior U.S. military commander put it, when people
have dignity and opportunity, "the chance of extremism being welcomed greatly, if
not completely, diminishes." It is for this reason that we need to invest with our
allies in strengthening weak states and helping to rebuild failed ones.
To empower forces of moderation, America
must make every effort to export opportunity -- access to education and health care,
trade and investment -- and provide the kind of steady support for political reformers
and civil society that enabled our victory in the Cold War. Our beliefs rest on
hope; the extremists' rest on fear. That is why we can -- and will -- win this struggle.
But today, NATO's challenge in Afghanistan has
exposed, as Senator Lugar has put it, "the growing discrepancy between NATO's
expanding missions and its lagging capabilities." To close this gap, I will rally
our NATO allies to contribute more troops to collective security operations
and to invest more in reconstruction and stabilization capabilities.
I will work to forge a more effective framework
in Asia that goes beyond bilateral agreements, occasional summits, and ad hoc arrangements,
such as the six-party talks on North Korea. We need an inclusive infrastructure
with the countries in East Asia that can promote stability and prosperity and help
confront transnational threats, from terrorist cells in the Philippines to avian
flu in Indonesia.
To that end, the United Nations requires
far-reaching reform. The UN Secretariat's management practices remain weak. Peacekeeping
operations are overextended. The new UN Human Rights Council has passed eight
resolutions condemning Israel -- but not a single resolution condemning the genocide
in Darfur or human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. Yet none of these problems will be
solved unless America rededicates itself to the organization and its mission.
People around the world have heard a great
deal of late about freedom on the march. Tragically, many have come to associate
this with war, torture, and forcibly imposed regime change. To build a better, freer
world, we must first behave in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of
the American people. This means ending the practices of shipping away prisoners
in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, of detaining thousands
without charge or trial, of maintaining a network of secret prisons to jail people
beyond the reach of the law.
We need to invest in building capable, democratic states that
can establish healthy and educated communities, develop markets, and generate wealth.
Such states would also have greater institutional capacities to fight terrorism,
halt the spread of deadly weapons, and build health-care infrastructures to prevent,
detect, and treat deadly diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and avian flu.
As president, I will double our annual
investment in meeting these challenges to $50 billion by 2012 and ensure that those
new resources are directed toward worthwhile goals.
I will couple our support with an insistent call
for reform, to combat the corruption that rots societies and governments from within.
I will do so not in the spirit of a patron but in the spirit of a partner -- a partner
mindful of his own imperfections.
Confronted by Hitler, Roosevelt said that
our power would be "directed toward ultimate good as well as against immediate evil.
We Americans are not destroyers; we are builders." It is time for a president who
can build consensus here at home for an equally ambitious course.

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Robert Kagan - Obama the Interventionist

Kagan on Obama's speech to the CFR

Tags: Robert, Kagan, Barack, Obama, foreign, policy, interventionism on 2008-04-16 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.washingtonpost.com

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Democracy Now! | Barack Obama's Senior Foreign Policy Adviser Samantha Power on Obama's Call to Increase the Pentagon's Budget, Hugo Chavez, Funding the Iraq Occupation and Attacking Pakistan

Samantha Power discusses Obama’s foreign policy platform and why she temporarily left her post at Harvard University to advise the presidential candidate. [includes rush transcript]

Tags: Barack, Obama, Samantha, Power, foreign, policy on 2008-04-16 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.democracynow.org

Ralph Nader accused Obama of switching his view on the Israel-Palestine conflict once he became a US senator.
Do you think there’s much difference on the issue of foreign policy between Clinton and Obama?
I think Obama, when he talks about changing the mindset that gave rise to Iraq, he’s talking about changing the driver, the car and the road we’re on.
he has argued to sharply increase the size of the US military, I think, by 90,000 troops, when this country already has a military budget that is equal to the rest of the world combined. Why does the United States need more military troops?
Obama has also said is that “we’re going to go through the books, because I’m not dependent on federal lobbyists and I’m not dependent on PAC money, and we’re going to purge our reliance on these obsolete weapons systems that are more about rewarding campaign contributions than they are about protecting national security and actually dealing with twenty-first century challenges.
how broken the military is right now, at its bending or its breaking point, from the standpoint of overstretch,

The War Over the Wonks

A list of the national security and foreign policy advisers to the leading presidential candidates from both parties.

Tags: John, McCain, Hillary, Clinton, Barack, Obama, foreign, policy, Middle, East on 2008-04-16 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.washingtonpost.com

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Bzezinski supports Obama

Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the most influential foreign-policy experts in the Democratic Party, threw his support behind Barack Obama's presidential candidacy, saying the Illinois senator has a better global grasp than his chief rival, Hillary Clinton.

Tags: Zbigniew, Brzezinski, Barack, Obama, foreign, policy on 2008-04-16 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.bloomberg.com

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Jeff Taylor: The Foreign Policy of Barack Obama

Fascinating critque of Obama's foreign policy vision of multilateral imperialism. Some great points here.

Tags: Barack, Obama, foreign, policy, imperialism on 2008-04-16 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.counterpunch.org

In November 2006, he telegraphed
his "safe" imperial mindset to the powers that be when
he said, "There is one other place where our mistakes in
Iraq have cost us dearly--and that is the loss of our government's
credibility with the American people. According to a Pew survey,
42% of Americans now agree with the statement that the U.S. should
'mind its own business internationally and let other countries
get along the best they can on their own.' We cannot afford to
be a country of isolationists right now. 9/11 showed us that
try as we might to ignore the rest of the world, our enemies
will no longer ignore us. And so we need to maintain a strong
foreign policy, relentless in pursuing our enemies and hopeful
in promoting our values around the world."
In a second speech, in April
2007, Obama told the CCGA, " I reject the notion that the
American moment has passed. I dismiss the cynics who say that
this new century cannot be another when, in the words of President
Franklin Roosevelt, we lead the world in battling immediate evils
and promoting the ultimate good. I still believe that America
is the last, best hope of Earth. We just have to show the world
why this is so. This President may occupy the White House, but
for the last six years the position of leader of the free world
has remained open. And it's time to fill that role once more."
Yes, the dream of Pax America must continue, only under
better management--management that is more savvy in handling
international public opinion.
"No President should ever
hesitate to use force--unilaterally if necessary--to protect
ourselves and our vital interests when we are attacked or imminently
threatened. But when we use force in situations other than self-defense,
we should make every effort to garner the clear support and participation
of others--the kind of burden-sharing and support President George
H.W. Bush mustered before he launched Operation Desert Storm."
"In order to advance our national security and
our common security, we must call on the full arsenal of American
power and ingenuity. To constrain rogue nations, we must use
effective diplomacy and muscular alliances."
He evoked the
names of beloved figures of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment:
Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Richard Lugar, George Marshall,
and Harry Truman.
The American
moment has not passed. The American moment is here. And like
generations before us, we will seize that moment, and begin the
world anew."
Kagan is the man who coauthored the 1996 Foreign Affairs article
"Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy" with William
Kristol in which he told us that the "appropriate goal"
of U.S. foreign policy is the preservation of "American
hegemony" so we can continue to fulfill our "responsibility
to lead the world.
Exchanging the Bush-Kristol-Kagan neoconservative approach
of unilateral imperialism for the Clinton-Schlesinger-Brzezinski
approach of multilateral imperialism yields nothing positive.

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Obama's policy team loaded with all-stars

A lot of great stuff here - about the difficulty of interpreting future policy, about what Bush's adviser said about him, some general conclusions drawn as well.

Tags: Barack, Obama, foreign, policy on 2008-04-16 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.chicagotribune.com

On foreign policy alone, some 200 experts are providing the Obama campaign with assistance of some sort, arranged into 20 subgroups. On the domestic front, more than 500 policy experts are contributing ideas, campaign aides said. Veterans of previous election campaigns say the scale of the policy operation resembles the full-blown effort candidates typically undertake for a general election campaign rather than the more stripped-down versions common for the primary season.
Anthony Lake, Clinton's original national security adviser, is helping coordinate foreign policy. So is Susan Rice, a Clinton assistant secretary of state and protege of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Eric Holder, a former deputy attorney general, is among those providing expertise on legal policy.
The campaign policy team gathered around Obama is hardly a shadow Cabinet. If he wins the nomination, other Democratic policy experts who now are neutral or allied with a different candidate will gravitate toward him. If he's elected, still more will join his circle.
But the makeup of the group, and the way in which Obama deliberates with its members, offers a window onto how he might operate as president. Many of them surely would graduate to influential roles in an Obama administration. Their discussions of the broad range of issues a presidential candidate must address provide an early if imperfect drill for decision-making in the Oval Office.
The worldviews of the advisers candidate George W. Bush gathered around him turned out to predict his foreign policies better than his campaign rhetoric that America should be "humble" in the world and avoid commitments to nation-building.

Such architects of the Iraq war as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice and Richard Perle all were influential policy advisers to Bush's presidential campaign. Colin Powell made important public appearances on behalf of candidate Bush but remained distant from the campaign's foreign policy deliberations, foreshadowing the role he would play in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Among the early additions to his circle was Samantha Power, a Harvard professor who wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning book criticizing U.S. historical failures to act against genocides. She took a leave from her faculty position to help the new senator with foreign policy and remains an influential adviser.
Other top campaign advisers on national security include Gregory Craig, a Clinton impeachment defense attorney and former director of policy planning in the Clinton State Department, and Clinton Navy Secretary Richard Danzig, who has written on the potential dangers of terrorist strikes using biological weapons.
Sarah Sewall, a Harvard Kennedy School professor and former Clinton Defense Department official who wrote the introduction to the University of Chicago edition of the new counterinsurgency manual Gen. David Petraeus revised for the military, is advising on counterinsurgency strategy.
But they tend to be people who, like Obama, were early critics of the Iraq invasion. Many also share a conviction that the foreign policy mistakes of the Bush administration are so serious that the next president must give a clear signal of a new direction.
They are not necessarily foes of military action. Lake was an advocate within the Clinton administration of military intervention in Haiti and Bosnia.

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The Obama Doctrine | The American Prospect

A discussion with/of Obama's foreign policy team and what it could mean for Obama's fp doctrine

Tags: Barack, Obama, foreign, policy on 2008-04-16 and saved by2 people -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.prospect.org

ne of his advisers, recalling the fallout from Obama's comments about pursuing al-Qaeda in Pakistan, says, "He takes policy positions that are a break from both rigid orthodoxy and the Bush administration. And everyone says it's a gaffe!
"This election is about ending the Iraq War, but even more it's about moving beyond it.
Sarah Sewall, a Harvard professor and another of Obama's closest advisers,
Her impact on the thinking about the war and the conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been significant and not without cost,"
Other liberal foreign-policy types, such as Thomas Carothers and Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, insist the administration is sincere but too focused on elections without supporting the civil-society institutions that sustain democracy.
Obama's advisers argue, national security depends in large part on dignity promotion.
"His policies deal with root causes but do not misconstrue root causes as a simple fix. He recognizes that you need to pursue a parallel anti-terrorism [course] in its traditional form along with this transformed approach to foreign policy."
November's election could be, for the first time in a very long time, a choice between two radically different visions of U.S. global engagement. "We want to have this debate with John McCain," a close Obama adviser says. "[Obama] will offer this clear contrast."
In the popular imagination, based on the "Come home, America" line from his nomination acceptance speech, McGovern pivoted from a striking critique of the immorality of the Vietnam War to an indictment of U.S. involvement abroad. But McGovern purposefully left this broad criticism out of most of his campaign. "I concentrated on Vietnam," McGovern says in a phone interview, "because I thought it would be difficult to sell a comprehensive rewriting of American foreign policy."
If the press had paid better attention, the country would have seen through Bush's pitch about a humble foreign policy and realized that many of his advisers, including Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, were conspiracy-minded warmongers.)
bama's foreign-policy advisers come from diverse backgrounds. They are former aides to Democratic mandarins like Tom Daschle and Lee Hamilton (Denis McDonough and Ben Rhodes, respectively); veterans of the Clinton administration's left flank (Tony Lake and Susan Rice); a human-rights advocate who helped write the Army's and Marine Corps' much-lauded counterinsurgency field manual (Sarah Sewall); a retired general who helped run the air war during the invasion of Iraq (Scott Gration); and a former journalist who revolutionized the study of U.S. foreign policy (Samantha Power).
Yet they form a committed, intellectually coherent, and surprisingly united foreign-affairs team.
They also share a formative experience with each other and with Obama. Each opposed the Iraq War at a time when doing so was derided by their colleagues, by journalists, and by the foreign-policy establishment