A continuity in Obama's thought

On the occasion of Osama bin Laden's death, David Remnick recalls some  thoughts from Obama in the immediate wake of 9/11 about the terrorist threat, published in the Hyde Park Herald on September 19, 2001:

“We will have to make sure, despite our rage, that any U.S. military action takes into account the lives of innocent civilians abroad,” he went on. “We will have to be unwavering in opposing bigotry or discrimination directed against neighbors and friends of Middle Eastern descent. Finally, we will have to devote far more attention to the monumental task of raising the hopes of embittered children across the globe—children not just in the Middle East, but also in Africa, Asia, Latin American, Eastern Europe, and within our own shores.”

To me, this immediately evoked a most remarkable passage in Obama's defining 2008 campaign speech outlining his approach to foreign policy - delivered on March 19, just a day after his famous speech on race:

What lies in the heart of a child in Pakistan matters as much as the airplanes we sell her government. What's in the head of a scientist from Russia can be as lethal as a plutonium reactor in Yongbyon. What's whispered in refugee camps in Chad can be as dangerous as a dictator's bluster. These are the neglected landscapes of the 21st century, where technology and extremism empower individuals just as they give governments the ability to repress them; where the ancient divides of region and religion wash into the swift currents of globalization.