Kenosha News

by Mark Silva

As President Barack Obama prepares to depart Tuesday for a trip that will carry him from Saudi Arabia to France -- with an address to the Muslim world from Cairo in the middle of the journey -- he is starting to aim his megaphone at a global audience.

In an interview with the BBC on the eve of the trip, the president was asked about delivering his appeal for peace to the Muslim world from a city, Cairo, where many political prisoners are being held, and how he can reconcile the two.

"The message I hope to deliver is that democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion those are not simply principles of the West to be hoisted on these countries, but rather what I believe to be universal principles that they can embrace and affirm as part of their national identity,'' Obama said in an interview airing this evening.

"Now, the danger, I think, is when the United States or any country thinks that we can simply can impose these values on another country with a different history and a different culture .. our job,'' Obama tells BBC interviewer Justin Webb.

"Absolutely we'll be encouraging ......and I think the thing that we can do most importantly is to serve as a role model, and that's why, for example, closing Guantanamo from my perspective -- as difficult as it is -- is important, because part of what we want to affirm to the world is that these are values that are important even when it's hard, maybe especially when it's hard -- and not just when it's easy."

Part of the interivew will be broadcast on BBC World News and BBC World Service radio at 9 pm United Kingdom time, and the full interview will air on Tuesday a 04:30 am UK time. The BBC Obama interview also will be shown online.

The president leaves Tuesday evening for Saudi Arabia, where he will hold private meetings with the king before traveling to Cairo for his public address on Thursday, and then on to Dresden, Germany, for a visit to the Buchenwald concentration camp, and finally to Paris for commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the Normandy landing.

A new FDU PublicMind poll in New Jersey confirms how most other polls see tomorrow's Republican gubernatorial primary: Chris Christie (R) leads Steve Lonegan (R) by a healthy 54% to 30% margin. Another 11% are still undecided.

About the Author: P.J. Crowley serves as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs.

Last week, I began my tenure as the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs.  I am humbled and exhilarated by the task before me and am grateful for the trust and confidence President Obama and Secretary Clinton have placed in me.

Almost 20 years ago, I was assigned to Germany, one of the highlights of my 26 years serving with the U.S. Air Force.  I have been contemplating those days as I prepared for this assignment.  During my time in Germany, the Berlin Wall ceased to divide East from West.  The people of East and West Germany literally pushed until the wall was breached and ultimately removed.

In the aftermath, when given a choice, the people of Eastern Europe rejected Communism and moved swiftly to associate themselves with the rule of law, market economies and responsible and accountable governments.  This success was due in no small measure to institutions like the United States Information Agency, Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, which helped foreign publics understand that they could have the rights and opportunities of free people.  This was public diplomacy at its best, and proved to be a cornerstone of our policy of containment.  Now, Secretary Clinton’s focus on using smart power – the full compliment of diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal, and cultural tools is leading us back to a balanced approach to foreign policy that served us well throughout our history.

As we know, global challenges hardly disappeared with the end of the Cold War.  Today, we continue to combat extreme ideologies in an expanding conflict in Afghanistan while dealing with festering violence in Iraq.  Success in this current struggle will require the same kind of patience, determination and skill that we demonstrated during the Cold War – identifying a clear, peaceful and modern alternative to the people of the world, reinforcing our strategic narrative while diminishing that of extremist insurgents.  As Secretary Clinton stated in her recent testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the State Department is seeking the resources to deploy a new strategic communication strategy to buttress our foreign policy.  Ultimately, we cannot succeed unless we build and sustain public support at home and around the world.

Today’s global communications environment is dramatically different than it was even a few years ago.  A digital image can be transmitted from anywhere in the world at an instant, as we saw with the cell phone image of the execution of Saddam Hussein and its impact.

One of my goals is to have the State Department communicate its message more strategically.  In order to do this, we must be dynamic and use all available means both old and new media - traditional methods such as the Daily Press Briefings as well as experimenting with new media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and video through the Internet.  The culmination of this effort will be a virtual presence that is engaged in a global dialogue, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in all corners of the world.

Given the expanded nature of the communications environment, Secretary Clinton decided to restructure the Bureau of Public Affairs.  I will serve as the Assistant Secretary, but not as the every day spokesman for the department.  One of my foremost responsibilities will be to ensure that public affairs informs public policy.  This is why you’ll hear me repeatedly coming back to the idea of a strategic communications plan.  My task, working with Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith McHale and the newly designated spokesman, Ian Kelly, will be to serve as the senior advisor to the Secretary, contribute to the administration’s interagency strategic planning and lead the Bureau of Public Affairs and the dedicated public affairs professionals at the State Department and around the world.  I am an avid Red Sox fan.  Judith is a Yankees fan and Ian, a Cubs fan, but we are united by a higher calling and significant challenges.

Tackling these global challenges – extremism, nonproliferation, climate change, global health and food security just to name a few – will require, as Secretary Clinton has said repeatedly, coordinated, international partnerships at the government-to-government and people-to-people levels and all variations in between.  In order to build and sustain such partnerships, we must communicate effectively.  Effective communication is a two-way street, so as much as I look forward to keeping you informed on new initiatives, I’m even more eager to hear your ideas.

As both Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch argued last week, commenting on this article in The Weekly Standard, we are seeing the "last gasp of a losing argument" from opponents of gay marriage. A few days later, former Solicitor General Ted Olson, who argued Bush v. Gore for the Bushies, joined forces with liberal lawyer (and former Gore council) David Boies and filed a legal challenge to California's Prop. 8. Now former Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking at the National Press Club, affirmed his support for a federalist approach to same-sex marriage, telling assembled journalists that "people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish."

The question of whether or not there ought to be a federal statute to protect this, I don't support. I do believe that the historically the way marriage has been regulated is at the state level. It has always been a state issue and I think that is the way it ought to be handled, on a state-by-state basis. But I don't have any problem with that. People ought to get a shot at that.

Via RealClearPolitics, which also has the video.