Obama 2005 Trip To Russia, Ukraine And Azerbaijan Detained

\u201cI didn\u2019t
know Lenin was a player,\u201d Obama said, cracking a wide smile.

As the
tour moved forward, the senator pondered how much the world had changed since
he studied international relations in college. It\u2019s hard to fathom, he said,
that the Soviet Union and the United States invested so much into trying to
destroy the other.

\u201cIt\u2019s a
good reminder of the fact that highly rational people can be engaged in a
highly irrational purpose,\u201d Obama said. \u201cI\u2019m reminded what Einstein said: Our
wisdom has not caught up with our technology.\u201d

Trips like
this are successful if they evoke such big-picture sentiments, Lugar said, in
addition to providing a \u201cprofound, gut feeling about the place of the United
States in the world\u2014 strength and vulnerability.\u201d

\u201cHe has profited from it. It becomes
capital in the bank, in terms of knowledge,\u201d Lugar said, reflecting on Obama\u2019s
first foreign trip as a senator. \u201cI hoped he would be on the Foreign Relations
Committee. This was an important deci