RSS Feed MenuPresident Obama’s speech at Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize has been surprisingly well received by the commentariat. Liberal pundit Mark Shields well summed up the conventional wisdom:
“I’m amazed,” he admitted this evening on the PBS NewsHour, “that, to this moment, I can’t find anybody who’s criticized the speech. I’ve never heard anybody give a speech of that complexity on that big a stage and go un-criticized.”
Obama’s Oslo speech has not been criticized, I think, because the bar for the president had been set so low. The Nobel committee, after all, clearly had awarded Obama its peace prize to disparage George W. Bush and to deprecate America’s use of military force abroad.
So simply by stating the obvious — that he is Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States, and that America is engaged in two wars — Obama seems even to have right-leaning pundits swooning. The otherwise sober military analyst Max Boot, for instance, hailed the Oslo ceremony as “Obama’s finest hour” and lauded the speech as “a masterpiece that deserves inclusion in compendia of the finest presidential speeches.”
This is ridiculous and hyperbolic praise — but fine. I certainly won’t begrudge the president a little social promotion. He is, after all, our president; and I want him to succeed. I also want Obama to embrace his role as the U.S. military’s top commander and top leader: because if Commander-in-Chief Obama is successful, then the U.S. military will be successful.
But let’s be honest. This was a substantively bad speech shrouded in cerebral and high-minded rhetoric. Obama talked about “just war,” but failed utterly to explain how the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan may be the most just wars — and the most justly waged wars — in human history. And, in so doing, the president failed to give proper recognition and credit to our military men and women, who now rank among the greatest peacemakers in human history.
I say this based upon my own experience as a marine in Iraq, but also based upon how the U.S. military is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Simply put, the United States is not fighting a conventional war aimed at destroying the nation-states in which we are fighting. To the contrary: we are waging counterinsurgencies aimed at building up and developing the nation-states and their governing institutions.
Consequently, our rules of engagement are quite strict and constraining; and our soldiers and marines incur great personal risk which no other nation’s military — including the militaries of most of our NATO allies — would ever dare to accept. And our soldiers and marines do this because they fight on behalf of a people and a nation, the United States of America, that everyone the world over knows — and certainly the villagers in Iraq and Afghanistan know — has no interest in conquest, plunder or pillage.
No, our soldiers and marines fight to serve and protect. They fight to serve and protect the innocent and the downtrodden, the weak and the vulnerable, the oppressed and the afflicted.
They fight to protect the young Afghan girls who cannot attend school without being viciously attacked by the Taliban. They fight to protect the Iraqi shopkeepers whom the extremist militias target with death and destruction should these shopkeepers dare to trade in Western goods and commerce. They fight to protect the Iraqi and Afghan soldiers and governmental officials who are bravely working to bring peace and opportunity to their peoples and their countries.
It’s the Marine Corps as Peace Corps and it works. In fact, I would argue that the Marine Corps does a much better job of providing aid and humanitarian assistance to oppressed peoples than the Peace Corps — and that’s because the Marine Corps, what with its warrior ethos and martial skills and spirit, commands the respect and admiration of friend and foe alike.
There’s also the reality that war and war-like conditions are still omnipresent in both Iraq and (especially) Afghanistan. So even if America wanted to send the Peace Corps there in lieu of the Marine Corps, it simply couldn’t do so. That wouldn’t work. Without protection from the Marine Corps, the Peace Corps volunteers would be targeted and quickly killed.
But that’s not the case with our highly trained and highly skilled soldiers and marines. They can and do fight back and deter evil. They can and do protect the people from the terrorists, the extremists and the insurgents. They truly do constitute a just and righteous force; and, despite our occasional mistakes and transgressions, everyone the world over knows it.
The warrior ethos reverberates especially in more conservative, patriarchal and tribal cultures that have a history of war and violence. Indeed, strong and able men who know how to fight, and who know how to wield guns and knives, command great respect and reverence in these cultures.
That’s why ordinary Iraqi and Afghan villagers typically hail U.S. soldiers and marines as heroes and liberators. And that’s why many of these same villagers dread the day our soldiers and marines leave, or might leave, their country.
Ordinary Iraqis and Afghans, of course, want to be a free and independent people who are part of a sovereign tribe or state. But by the same token, they don’t want the U.S. military to leave prematurely, before the violence and war which have wracked their countries has been righted and remedied with relative peace and opportunity.
President Obama, however, alluded to none of this in his speech at Oslo. The selfless service, the grace and humanitarianism of U.S. servicemen and women in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere was completely ignored. Instead, U.S. military intervention abroad, both past and present, was discussed in cold and calculating terms as necessary only to “underwrite global security.”
Oh, to be sure, the president did say that “we seek a better future for our children and our grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if others’ children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity… The soldier’s courage and sacrifice,” he added, “is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause, to comrades in arms.”
This is all true and important; but the soldier’s courage and sacrifice today in Iraq and Afghanistan involves so much more than that. It involves great acts of kindness and generosity, personal warmth and commitment, aid and assistance. Yet, about these heroic and unheralded acts by our fighting men and women, Obama had nothing to say.
Moreover, the president insisted that:
in a world in which threats are more diffuse, and missions more complex, America cannot act alone. America alone cannot secure the peace. This is true in Afghanistan. This is true in failed states like Somalia, where terrorism and piracy is joined by famine and human suffering. And sadly, it will continue to be true in unstable regions for years to come.
In fact, the exact opposite is true: In a complex and dangerous world rendered much smaller by technology, America sometimes must act alone. America sometimes must assume the lonely mantle of leadership. America must lead if even other countries will not follow. And this is true in Afghanistan (although fortunately, and in fairness, many other countries are following our lead there), as well as in other failed states like Somalia, which, Obama rightly notes, are plagued by terrorism and piracy.
The president also insisted that “War itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.” At the risk of sounding scandalously and politically incorrect, let me disagree. War itself can be glorious, and we must recognize it as such.
This doesn’t mean that war is desirable or good; it’s obviously not. After all, war can be murderous and barbaric, too. We absolutely, of course, should studiously try to avert war. But the fight for freedom and justice is never wrong; it is always right. And sometimes, as George Orwell explained, the tyrannical and the wicked can only be brought to heel by “rough men [who] stand ready to do violence on [our] behalf.”
There is great glory in this effort. There is great glory in the fight for freedom and justice. And all glory and honor is due to those men and women, our fellow countrymen, who take up arms on our behalf — and not just because they are undergirding “global security”; and not just because they are “expressing devotion to country, to cause, [and] to comrades in arms.”
No, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are somewhat glorious because the United States has liberated oppressed peoples and devoted itself to giving these oppressed peoples a chance to live better and more peaceful lives. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are somewhat glorious because our fighting men and women are serving abroad as missionaries for hope and opportunity. They are comforting the afflicted and afflicting the powerful. They are aiding the dispossessed and the powerless and fighting evil and wicked men.
Yet, instead of heralding their accomplishments — the great works and good deeds of our fighting men and women — President Obama referenced his favorite subject: himself.
And even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, I believe the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different from those whom we fight. That is a source of our strength.
That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America’s commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. (Applause.) And we honor — we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it’s easy, but when it is hard.
But the Nobel Peace Prize is not all about Obama; it is about the United States of America – our country, our culture, and our people. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, likewise, are not all about Obama; the Judeo-Christian ethic that undergirds U.S. foreign policy did not begin and end with him. Indeed, for 99% of U.S. servicemen and women, Obama did not “prohibit torture”; their moral consciences did.
Oslo was the place for Obama to recognize all this — all that was and is great and glorious about the United States and the United States military. But unfortunately, the only thing that Obama recognized is his own sense of moral rectitude and his own deep-seated belief that he stands on a moral plane above us all.
Chekote // Dec 13, 2009 at 12:36 pm
#65
I think we are on our way to the Iraq you outlined. Thank God we did not listen to Biden and his plan to divide Iraq into three ethnic based nations!!!! Also, I really don’t like it when people talk about “well it is tribal society and it will never change”. The reality is that Europe at one time was tribal, then feudal so I don’t buy into this “it can never happen in the Middle East” or anywhere else where you still have a tribal based society. At the end of the day, we are all human beings with the same capability to move towards self-government. Saying that some ethnic or racial group makes it sound like there is a genetic code that prevents them from embracing self-determination.
rbottoms // Dec 13, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Also, waterboarding a terrorist for the purpose of saving innocent civilian lives (and I don’t mean just America lives) is moral in my book.
It may be moral, but it is also torture and illegal under the Geneva Convention. So if you do it, expect o face the consequences from committing a war crime. I’ll take that deal.
The United States doesn’t get to announce it’s changing the Geneva Convention as there’s that little thing of a few hundred other countries who have a say. But then that was the problem under George Bush, using a horrific act to flaunt laws we badgered our much smaller countries for violating. But we’re different and special and our 3,000 matter more than anyone else’s 30,000. While it is true, we do care more about our own than others, it doesn’t negate the law.
Admit what was done.
Stop doing it.
Thank you.
sinz54 // Dec 13, 2009 at 5:31 pm
sdspringy: Wonder if France, Poland, and the rest of Europe would follow your line of thinking, freeing all of Europe being just sick side effect of those fascist nannies.
The U.S. did not declare war on Nazi Germany until after Nazi Germany declared war on the U.S. first.
That was another one of Hitler’s many blunders in which strategy gave way to ideology. The Non-Aggression Pact he signed with Japan obligated him to come to Japan’s aid if Japan had been attacked. It did NOT obligate him to assist Japan in an act of naked aggression (as the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor clearly was).
But he did anyway, and the rest is history, as they say.
Newt Gingrich (!!!) wrote “1945,” an alternate-history SF novel in which Hitler fails to declare war on the U.S., depriving FDR of the excuse he wanted to declare war on Hitler. As the result, the U.S. still defeats Japan in the war, but Nazi Germany remains intact, in an uneasy post-war stalemate with the U.S.
sinz54 // Dec 13, 2009 at 5:36 pm
txanne: I think someone did realize the perils of invading Iraq.
Yep, this gentleman:
“I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We’d be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home….
”Once you’ve got Baghdad, its not clear what you do with it. It’s not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one thats currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime, or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists? How much credibility is that government going to have if its set up by the United States military when its there? How long does the United States military have to stay to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave?”
— Dick Cheney, SecDef under Bush 41, 1992
He sure changed his mind in the intervening 9 years.
And we have a pretty good idea who changed it.
txanne // Dec 13, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Sinz54,
That’s quite a remarkable quote and change of heart. Somehow it makes things, as they turned out, seem all the more sad.
sinz54 // Dec 14, 2009 at 9:27 am
txanne: That’s quite a remarkable quote and change of heart. Somehow it makes things, as they turned out, seem all the more sad.
In world history, it’s interesting when we can see some intellectual’s political theory actually put to actual test, rather than just ending up in some stuffy journal somewhere.
In the 1990s, the small band of neo-conservative thinkers like Mylroie, Kristol, Kagan, and Codevilla had theories about terrorism, Saddam, and Iraq. Through Wolfowitz and Perle, they sold their ideas to Cheney and then to Bush. On the right-wing talk-show circuit, they sold their ideas to worried Americans. And the Bushies put those theories into actual use.
And most of those theories were since shown to be wrong.
It would be great if some college course on political science, or even some Advanced Placement high school course, went back over their writings and analyzed where they went wrong, in light of subsequent events.
sinz54 // Dec 14, 2009 at 11:11 am
Mr. Guardiano has done us a service in reminding us all–even us CONSERVATIVES–what bothered us about the neo-conservative worldview.
Mr. Guardiano approves of the idea that the U.S. military should go marching into the Middle East to “transform” it by force. But any “transformation” that eliminates terrorism in countries that have known it for centuries must necessarily involve a radical remaking of their societies, NOT just decapitating their regimes. (Because as we learned the hard way, terrorism does NOT have to come from regimes, as the neo-conservatives believed.)
And that philosophy is starting to sound uncomfortably close to the so-called “White Man’s Burden” of the 19th century, in which Western empires would conquer and rule the less civilized parts of the world for their own good.
That’s a far cry from what traditionalist American conservatives believed was the proper use of American military power. We expended much of our own imperialist fervor on conquering the Western territories here in America. But we NEVER pretended we were doing it for the AmerIndians’ own good.
The Left frequently (and incorrectly) accuses the U.S. of being an “imperialist” world power. (Actually we gave up our last colony, the Philippines, long ago.)
But Mr. Guardiano really does want the U.S. to be imperialist, establishing protectorates in the Middle East by armed force, remaking their societies in our own image.
I don’t like it.
I am not THAT kind of right-winger.
txanne // Dec 14, 2009 at 12:38 pm
The neoconservatives seem to be alternating between the Guardiano view that Obama exhibits antipathy to the military that gives aid and comfort to our enemies, and others like Greenwald who claim Obama has “seen the light” and has come to their way of thinking.
Both arguments are ridiculous.
Why all this histeria? Larison makes the case that the neoconservatives are in survival mode.
“It is understandable why some neoconservatives would want to treat Obama’s liberal internationalism as a result of “going neocon,” because as long as Democratic leaders adhere to something close to a pre-1968/post-1992 liberal internationalist foreign policy neoconservatism has no reason to exist, except perhaps as the distorted echo of liberal internationalism that it has always been.”
http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2009/12/12/yes-obama-is-a-liberal-internationalist/
John Guardiano // Dec 14, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Sinz54,
You are on to something, but you miss the mark. I do not want the United States “to be imperialist, establishing protectorates in the Middle East by armed force, remaking their societies in our own image.” That’s nonsense.
The point is not to “remake societies in our [American] image”; it is to give the moderate forces within Islamic countries the opportunity to build their societies as they see fit, without being murdered by the extremists, the fanatics, and the radicals.
The point is not to establish Western or American “protectorates”; it is to protect the moderate minded people and villagers so that they can establish a peaceable and workable society which is relatively free of violence and mayhem.
The United States and our allies do not need to “radically remake” these Islamic societies; we need only to keep the radicals at bay so that the moderate minded people and villagers can gain the upper hand.
In the wake of 9/11, and given the state of modern technology and the consequent interdependence and interconnectedness of our world, we simply cannot let countries fester as breeding grounds for violent extremists and Islamic radicals. That’s we did for decades before 9/11, and we Americans paid a horrific price for our worldly neglect.
This problem will intensify and get worse if we fail to act. I am not prepared to risk the destruction of New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, et. al, and neither should you. Nor should any American political leader or president. We either side with the moderates and the reformers now — and yes preemptively — or we risk catastrophe later on.
To my way of thinking, it’s a no-brainer and an easy call. It’s the wise and prudent thing to do; and it’s the right and just thing to do.
V/R
John
Barack Obama: Narcissist-in-chief | The Daily Caller – Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment | PhotoAllan // Nov 11, 2010 at 11:07 pm
[...] what I wrote about Obama’s Oslo speech holds true still today: The Nobel Peace Prize is not all about Obama; it is about the United States [...]