He spent four years as a child in Indonesia and attended schools in the Indonesian language, which he still speaks.Kristof puts the fuller interview on his Times blog. An excerpt of interest:�I was a little Jakarta street kid,� he said in a wide-ranging interview in his office (excerpts are on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground). He once got in trouble for making faces during Koran study classes in his elementary school, but a president is less likely to stereotype Muslims as fanatics -- and more likely to be aware of their nationalism -- if he once studied the Koran with them.
Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it�ll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as �one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.�
Moreover, Mr. Obama�s own grandfather in Kenya was a Muslim. Mr. Obama never met his grandfather and says he isn�t sure if his grandfather�s two wives were simultaneous or consecutive, or even if he was Sunni or Shiite. (O.K., maybe Mr. Obama should just give up on Alabama.)
Q. Tell me about Iran. I saw some sort of hawkish quotes that you gave, I think in 2004, to The Chicago Tribune. [He was quoted then as saying, �My instinct would be to err on not having those weapons in the possession of the ruling clerics of Iran.�]Our current discussion of foreign policy is so parched that it's hard for people to wrap their minds around the fact that most of the Democratic presidential contenders are both hawk and dove, and that this is as it should be. Obama is also so different than most of the men who have run for president in the past that it's hard to see how he manages to negotiate all the complications that arise from that difference. So far he's managing, but I suspect it's going to get very tricky.A. Yeah. You know, they -- I have to say they got painted as much more hawkish than they were intended. I mean essentially what is said, which I think would be incontrovertible, is that, you know, Iran�s a developing country. A nuclear weapon is a problem for the future. And that we should preserve our military options. And I think the exact quote at the time was, you know, If there was a way of disabling a nuclear facility without any collateral damage, then that would certainly be an option we�d want to take into account. You know, I don�t think that�s a particularly controversial statement. But the -- but those options don�t exist. And I said in the very same article that every assessment that I�ve seen suggests that even if you are predisposed to military action, those options are extraordinarily dangerous ... More to the point, in light of what�s happening in Iraq, I would hope that the administration has learned its lesson. I certainly hope Congress has learned its lesson -- that being trigger happy or having a quick trigger finger when it comes to military actions without having exhausted our diplomatic options, and without, you know, I think, having a very clear sense of what outcomes we�re looking for is a recipe for disaster. So I�ve been consistent throughout this process in saying we should talk to Iran. I think we should talk to Iran without conditions�.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
