Condoleeza Rice advises 2012 Candidates to Beef Up on Foreign Policy

MoonHowler

 

From Politico:

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the Republican presidential candidates can – and must – learn about foreign policy basics while on the campaign trail.

Asked in an interview aired Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” about the basic foreign policy gaffes that Republican presidential candidates Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann have made, Rice asserted that a potential president needed – at a minimum – to master the basics of foreign policy.

“I would say to the candidates, you don’t have to know the ins and outs of foreign policy because nobody would expect that kind of exposure. But the basis of foreign policy, you can – you can master those during the campaign. And it’s important for the American people to know that you care enough about these issues to do that,” Rice said.

The former Bush Cabinet official noted that it was crucial for Republican presidential candidates to know the historical role America has played on the world stage.

“A potential president has to know the role of the United States of America and that it’s an exceptional role, that we have, in fact, been willing to bear a lot of burdens over the last 60 plus years in order to promote a balance of power favor – that favors freedom,” she said.

Some of the ones we have seen seem to know nothing and are proud of it.  How can we be a world super power if the president has no knowledge of foreign policy?  Even as candidates, these people are being watched around the world.  Especially to those who don’t understand the democratic process fully, those who are unprepared simply embarrass the United States when they refuse to learn the basics. 

A candidate has to be more than a set of sound bytes and cutesy expressions.  A presidential candidate has to be able to communicate that he or she has a clear understanding of America’s role in world affairs and where the rest of the world is coming from.  Right now our focus is on domestic policy but that is not to say that next week, month or year the focus will not switch drastically.  All our candidates will have to pass muster.  Some clearly are not ready to do so.

Sieg Heil the Pepper Spray King

MoonHowler

From the Washington Post:

SAN FRANCISCO — Protesters sitting on the ground supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement on the campus of the University of California, Davis took a face full of pepper spray at close range from an officer in riot gear in an incident that was captured on cellphone video and spread virally across the Internet Saturday.

UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi described the video images as “chilling” and said she was forming a task force to investigate even as a faculty group called for her resignation because of the Friday police action.

However, a law enforcement official who watched the clip called the use of force “fairly standard police procedure.”

In the video, an officer dispassionately pepper-sprays a line of several sitting protesters who flinch and cover their faces but remain passive with their arms interlocked as onlookers shriek and scream out for the officer to stop.

“The use of the pepper spray as shown on the video is chilling to us all and raises many questions about how best to handle situations like this,” Chancellor Linda Katehi said in a message posted on the school’s website Saturday

 

The pepper spray was way over the line in this video.  One has to wonder how the availability of cell phone cameras and video will impact how much campus and municipal police will get by with.  In this video it is easy to pick out which officers enjoy the brutality end of law enforcement.  It isn’t many but those who do abuse their power are obvious. 

There was one in this video who I thought for a minute was going to pepper spray his own officers. 

There is a thin line here. There has to be law and order on campuses.   But you just don’t pepper spray people who are not being violent.    If that is standard police behavior then the standard needs to change.