Peacenicked
- 0 Comments
Barack Obama has finally found royalty to snub. Seeing no need to
bow before the powerless King of Norway and a chance to repair
his image domestically, he used his trip to Oslo as a kind of
Sister Souljah moment.
Norwegians, according to press reports, felt a bit used.
Obama breezed into the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony without
attending the customary lunch with Norway’s king. But the real
snub was his Nobel speech itself.
As Bill Clinton taught the Dems, if you have to “confront”
a liberal audience about some obvious truth, be sure to choose a
hapless or unappealing one. Clinton bravely took on rappers;
Obama took on Scandinavian pacifists.
It wasn’t very gracious, but the speech wowed the press
mightily, as they cooed over its unexpected tone. Reporters
eagerly said that conservatives would find it hard not to cheer
this one. Actually, it is not that hard. The speech was the usual
collection of truths, half-truths, and deceptions.
Obama seemed at first to be endorsing the concept of a just
war: force can be “morally justified,” and “the instruments of
war do have a role to play in preserving the peace,” he
said.
But whatever he gives with one hand he usually takes back
with the other. Soon he was offering up meditations on the
intrinsically evil character of war: “war itself is never
glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such” and “war at some
level is an expression of human folly.”
Obama can’t decide if he is a hard-headed realist or
Wilsonian idealist. Last year, he said that only a very narrowly
defined concept of self-defense ever justifies war. Now he says,
“I believe force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it
was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by
war.”
It is measure of the comically low expectations liberal
presidents enjoy that the press expects Americans to be gratified
to hear that Obama rejects the possibility of a peace conference
with Osama bin Laden: “Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s
leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may
sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a
recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits
of reason.” What a brave and anguished conclusion!
But, wait, it turns out that America can negotiate with
terrorists and tyrants: later in the speech, Obama said, “I know
that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying
purity of indignation. But I also know that sanctions without
outreach — condemnation without discussion — can carry forward
only a crippling status quo.”
So maybe a peace conference with Bin Laden is possible
after all, if Americans can just set aside their anger. Maybe if
Bin Laden lives long enough and wins a democratic election in an
Islamic country, he can one day crawl into Arafat’s old bunk at
the White House.
In the meantime, America’s military should be treating
terrorists a lot more nicely. Obama once again implied that
America has been violating its “ideals” in the war on terrorism.
The somnolent crowd perked up at the line, “We lose ourselves
when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to
defend.”
Obama took pride in subtly slurring his own military by
informing the audience of what he has done lately to rein it in:
“That’s why I prohibited torture. That’s why I ordered the prison
at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that’s why I have reaffirmed
America’s commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions.”
And then there was the obligatory reference to Islam as a
“great religion.” Has he ever called Christianity a great
religion? If so, I missed it. He is, of course, disappointed to
see the “murder of innocents” in the name of Islam, but let’s not
forget “that these extremists are not the first to kill in the
name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply
recorded.”
Why does he need to recall the Crusades in the context of
“the murder of innocents”? There are fresh examples closer to
hand in his own administration. One of his first acts as
president was to free up tax dollars for the murder of innocents,
unborn children, by international groups abroad. But that kind of
violence is fashionable and signaled to the enlightened
international community that Obama meant peace.
