Obama in Oslo

 Matthew Rothschild throws in his two cents...

President Obama gave a thoughtful, meditative speech in Oslo to accept his Nobel Prize. But he also used sophistry to defend his actions in Afghanistan and to blur the U.S. record over the past 60 years. And his realpolitik justification for war was odd, to say the least, given the forum.

He was graceful and humble, though.

He acknowledged that he was not as worthy as Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela, since he was still “at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage.”

And he acknowledged that there were those “far more deserving of this honor than I,” citing “the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice; those who toil in humanitarian organizations to relieve suffering; the unrecognized millions whose quiet acts of courage and compassion inspire even the most hardened cynics.”

I agree with him there. That’s why I would have preferred that someone like Malaila Joya of Afghanistan had received the prize.

Obama also owned up to an obvious, unavoidable fact: “I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars.”

He said the Iraq War “is winding down,” and he pointedly did not endorse it as a “just war,” though he did say the first Iraq War was justified.

As for Afghanistan, he said it was “a conflict that America did not seek” and that was designed “to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.” But Al Qaeda has only 100 members in Afghanistan right now. Its leadership is actually in Pakistan. And the United States has been waging this war for eight years now. Leaving aside the question as to whether Washington could have persuaded the Taliban at the outset to hand over bin Laden, the current war is no longer a war against Al Qaeda. It’s a different war, and a war that Obama himself is escalating.

Posted via email from Jim Nichols