Listening to significant portions of his Nobel Peace Prize speech on NPR – last night? this morning? – I thought:
Wow. Give the man credit for saying what needed to be said when it mattered.
Was it perfect? Of course not. Former United Nations ambassador John Bolton was quite critical – perhaps because he (a) is so used to rubbish and/or (b) he does not think President Obama really means what he says? Fair enough – but I believe we should give credit for what he said.
Sometimes war is necessary? (As a Christian I should feel much more ambivalence about such statements. And I do. But as a human being who lives in a world broken by real injustice and evil – sometimes the way to deal with Sauron is with an army not an olive branch.) Even though the president quickly qualified that with “but it is much better if we have international support and follow international agreements” – the fact he would suggest such a possibility is remarkable. What America has done to foster peace and freedom since World War Two? You mean we are not the source of world evil? Human rights and peace go together – in fact human rights (which he seemed to equate with “freedom”) might be necessary for true peace? And positive mention of President Ronald Reagan?
Without taking the time and space to parse the whole speech basically it seemed a refreshing change from what we have heard so far from him which has been a kind of “we apologize for being America and you can take whatever you want from us because we have been so awful”.
Abe Greenwald at National Review Online finds much good in it.
Peter Wehner also defends the president’s speech.
Charles Krauthammer and Sarah Palin also praised it – which tells you a lot.
That the president skipped lunch with the king and chose not to visit the Peace Prize museum is unfortunate. And perhaps he said what he thought expedient to bolster his flagging approval ratings. Do I think he deserved it? Of course not – especially when one realizes the deadline was 2 weeks into his presidency. But having been offered the prize he rose to the occasion and accepted it well – even saying things that his Norwegian friends probably did not care for.
I think it was – along with his education speech to children – his greatest speech so far.
Well done sir. And thank you.
It was probably, word for word, the same speech that Pres. G.W.Bush would have given had pigs flown and the Norwegians had given him an award. Great speech. The content was very much out of character for Pres. Obama.