Discriminations

When Hillary Clinton criticized Obama during the primaries for having a campaign built on little more than speechifying, for a candidacy that is “about words” (often not his own) and little else, Obama replied, either feeling or feigning anger: “Don’t tell me that words don’t matter!”

Now that he’s going to be president, apparently they’re going to matter more than ever — not because of speeches, but because they may represent the core of our new national security policy. This shift in policy, supported by Obama’s formerly hawkish national security team (Hillary at State, James Jones as national security advisor, Gates at Defense) is described in today’s International Herald Tribune:

The shift, which would come partly out of the military's huge budget, would create a greatly expanded corps of diplomats and aid workers that, in the vision of the incoming Obama administration, would be engaged in projects around the world aimed at preventing conflicts and rebuilding failed states.