"No Victor. No Vanquished".

[CJCRANE]

Obama said this phrase a few times in his interview with Thomas Friedman at the NYT.

It's an interesting phrase worth thinking about.

I found Obama to be thoughful and considered, something you don't always get from the sound bites on TV or the bleatings of the pundits.

Obama on the World
President Obama Talks to Thomas L. Friedman About Iraq, Putin and Israel

President Obama’s hair is definitely grayer these days, and no doubt trying to manage foreign policy in a world of increasing disorder accounts for at least half of those gray hairs. (The Tea Party can claim the other half.) But having had a chance to spend an hour touring the horizon with him in the White House Map Room late Friday afternoon, it’s clear that the president has a take on the world, born of many lessons over the last six years, and he has feisty answers for all his foreign policy critics.

Full transcript and video: NYTimes

[Laelth]

1. Excellent interview.

I liked this part:

The president said that what he is telling every faction in Iraq is: “We will be your partners, but we are not going to do it for you. We’re not sending a bunch of U.S. troops back on the ground to keep a lid on things. You’re going to have to show us that you are willing and ready to try and maintain a unified Iraqi government that is based on compromise. That you are willing to continue to build a nonsectarian, functional security force that is answerable to a civilian government. ... We do have a strategic interest in pushing back ISIL. We’re not going to let them create some caliphate through Syria and Iraq, but we can only do that if we know that we’ve got partners on the ground who are capable of filling the void."

-Laelth