Nobel Speech Reaction

I admit to being a bit surprised at the response to President Barack Obama's speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. My own response was that it was a trenchant presentation but, as Andrew Sullivan wrote, "Nothing in it was very different from anything he has said before." I don't think it was Obama's best speech, and it was not as good (or as bold) as a speech he quoted from, President Kennedy's American University speech.

Nevertheless, this speech has been almost universally praised, even by GOPer and hardliners. "I am staggered that so many neoconservatives and conservatives seemed shocked and enthused by the address," Sullivan writes. "This does not, it seems to me, reflect on the address's novelty for Obama....Distilling it all in one 36 minute address may have clarified it for his opponents. But I have to say their welcome applause merely reveals that they have not been listening for so many months."

Joe Klein at TIME describes the speech's balancing act: "How does a rookie President, having been granted the Nobel Peace Prize, go about earning it? Well, he can start by giving the sort of Nobel lecture that Barack Obama just did, an intellectually rigorous and morally lucid speech that balanced the rationale for going to war against the need to build a more peaceful and equitable world."

But as Klein suggests, they're impressed with the justification for war, the statement that there is evil in the world, and Obama's assertion to the European audience in the room that their peace has been largely paid for by the U.S. military. But a lot of GOPers had to close their ears to other balances. Sullivan wrote: "The neocons are also trying to coopt Obama for Bush, while his speech, if you examine it closely, is, in fact, as brutal a debunking of Bush utopianism and incompetence imaginable. Just give the principled neocons time to save face and they'll understand (and appreciate) him in the end for how he is marshalling and rescuing American power from the Cheney wreckage."

Sullivan also quoted these two paragraphs by Peter Beinart :

"[Obama]...understands, in a way Cheney and Palin never will, that true moral universalism requires recognizing that Americans are just as capable of evil as anyone else. And that means recognizing that we are in just as much need of restraint. For Obama and Truman, the paradox of American exceptionalism is that only by recognizing that we are not inherently better than anyone else, and thus must bind our power within a framework of law, can we distinguish ourselves from the predatory powers of the past.

He didn’t just condemn human rights horrors in Congo, Burma, Zimbabwe and Iran; he acknowledged that an unfettered America is capable of moral horror itself—which is why we must ban torture and submit to the Geneva Conventions. He didn’t just praise US soldiers; he praised the peacekeepers of the United Nations, thus acknowledging that military force can occur within a framework of international institutions and international law."

Frankly I wish the public dialogue were mature enough for Obama to get beyond conclusions I came to in high school so he could envision and articulate practical steps towards creating peace--the skills of peace that are required. He could have given Europe more credit for creating institutions that have used the time and space American protection has provided to keep their continent--the focus of two devastating world wars--unthinkably peaceful.

But what he did say was worth saying. Especially having given the tragic justification for war he recognizes: "So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must coexist with another - that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy.

The soldier's courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause and to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.

So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly irreconcilable truths - that war is sometimes necessary, and war is at some level an expression of human feelings. Concretely, we must direct our effort to the task that President Kennedy called for long ago. "Let us focus," he said, "on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions."

Except that when I heard the speech, I didn't hear "human feelings" but "human folly."

I suggest (or will suggest) more in the post above. This one is getting too long.