Inside the Nobel Speech: Trust Me on War & Peace

President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech is a fine example of what has become a trademark of the President's approach to many issues: He likes to embrace all sides of an issue even when they are in tension. He's known by friend and foe alike for wanting to engage both sides. There is merit in this. Certainly "there is a time for war and a time for peace." What I don't find often, however, is a guiding principle than resolves the matters clearly and definitively. I get the distinct impression from the President's various speeches that the subtext is: "These are very complex issues with many sides, and I appreciate all the points of view. I can give no bottom line that you can walk away with and use, but having shown you that I see both sides—obviously more clearly and with more nuance than the others—I trust that you will trust my wisdom in dealing with these things as they arise."

But then are other things that are said that really are confusing:

And most dangerously, we see it in the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam, and who attacked my country from Afghanistan.  These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded.  But they remind us that no Holy War can ever be a just war.  For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint -- no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or the Red Cross worker, or even a person of one's own faith.  Such a warped view of religion is not just incompatible with the concept of peace, but I believe it's incompatible with the very purpose of faith -- for the one rule that lies at the heart of every major religion is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

There are so many things that could be said here. But really, "if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint -- no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or the Red Cross worker, or even a person of one's own faith"? This is just bizarre: the idea of just war, which he cited earlier, suggests that it could be a matter of justice (and the Divine Will) to defeat, say, the Nazi regime--without killing medics. Further, the purpose of faith is the Golden Rule—and the Golden Rule lies at  the heart of ... Islam?  Islam hardly grants the same rights to Christians or Jews (or to Muslims who convert to Christianity) as it accords to Muslims or those who convert to Islam.

Then this:

But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected.

Clever, this. Yes, no one believes human nature is perfect. But can it be perfected? He's not saying it can be. He's saying the general human condition can be perfected. So who's going to do that? The only way to do this is for some arrangement of human affairs and institutions that in the aggregate allows for a perfection of condition in which imperfect human beings can live without spoiling that condition. And the only way for such a condition to be arranged is for people who are specially gifted to make those arrangements on the behalf of the imperfect, people who see and understand the complexity of the issues, wiser men whom we can trust. Mark well: "The human condition can be perfected." If that isn't a utopian dream, I don't know what is. Those who disagree are obstacles to utopia and will be treated as they have been in the past.

This is an elitism that leads not to the abolition of war by a man of peace, but to the abolition of Man, which violates the Golden Rule, to put it mildly.

Comments

[Emil]

You have very clearly spelled out what was initially puzzling for me. The President can articulate both sides, listeners feel heard, feel reassured, but then are surprised that he does something unexpected. The critical point is that we are to trust him to tell us what to do.

[Steve Skeete]

President Obama seems not to  ever pass up an opportunity - nor miss a beat, in any of his speeches, to lower the cross and raise the crescent. Here he skillfully compares the "extremists" of modern-day terror with the crusaders of the Middle Ages. For those who know nothing about the crusades, they were, for the most part, attempts at recapturing territory once Christian that fell to the forces of Islam. Mostly they ended in failure. Were they cruel? Yes! Those were cruel times. However the crusaders did nothing to compare with the present day kidnapping and beheading of journalists, the hijacking and destruction of airlines, the razing of buildings with the loss of thousands of innocent lives, the wholesale slaughter of women, children, and people going about their normal day to day business.President Obama does his best whenever the opportunity arises to portray Islam as his most favoured religion. The way he sees it Muslims are victims of some "phobia", some dislike, of which the origin is both sinsister and unknown. Christians, on the one hand, must be constantly reminded of events that took place centuries ago, but all of us are to forget Muslim atrocities that are going on every day in Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia, India and wherever else there is Islam.Moslems worldwide could not ask for a better propagandist. Truly the president deserves a prize -for his unswerving loyalty to and support for Islam.  

[greyone]

Good call on the utopia idea.
Hasn't history taught us that anything touched by imperfect man will be imperfect? Those who stand in the way will have to go... which was very effectively done by people like Stalin. Stalin is the one who made communism work, as far as it could work. It requires a lot of killing.
I can never stand to listen to the President. I can read transcripts of speeches afterward. In all the stuff I have read from him, nothing stands out as a great line, showing conviction and wisdom. Many times we hear him say something that is a clear misrepresentation of historical facts. The latest was claiming that there were many requests for troops to the Afghan mission that were ignored. Rumsfeld called him on that lie, but it fizzled out quickly with the media that is very Obama friendly.

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