OTHER VIEW: Obama's address recognized world as it really is

A sense of irony and not a little skepticism surrounded the announcement that President Barack Obama had been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

After all, he had been in office as president less than nine months when he was announced as the winner and hadn’t accomplished anything particularly notable in terms of bringing stability to the world.

What’s more, he was and is the president of a nation that is engaged in not one, but two wars in the Middle East, and has shown no inclination to abandon either of those military interventions.

The irony was heightened recently when on the eve of his trip to Oslo to receive the Nobel Prize, he announced he was increasing U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan by more than 30,000 troops and launching a more aggressive strategy there to battle insurgents.

The president arrived in Oslo last Thursday fully aware of the awkward contradictions. To his credit, he acknowledged that he didn’t deserve the honor at this early point in his career as a world leader, although he hoped he might earn it over time.

And then, in accepting the Peace Prize, he went out and delivered a deft, eloquent defense of war as a necessity in the real world and the United States’ measured use of military power.

“We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes,” Obama said to a gathering that no doubt expected the usual pieties about the boundless possibilities for peace. “There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”

Europeans and others who like to look down on America’s supposed belligerence must have been shocked to have the president throw out the line, “For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies.”

It was, after all, American might that saved them from Nazi tyranny. There would be no Nobel Peace Prize were it not for the United States’ willingness to go to war in defense of freedom and principle. ...

Obama maintained, in defiance of politically correct wisdom about the cultural supremacy of modern man, “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.”

Nor has the threat diminished in our own era, much as we continue to hope and strive for peace, the president warned in a couched but unmistakable rebuke to those who harbor the delusion that peace is always an option.

“Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms,” Obama said. “The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it.” ...

Pacifists and others on the left who had hoped this president would precipitously renounce the use of military force had to be disappointed by this declaration which some observers are labeling “The Obama Doctrine.”

His willingness to confront their peace-at-any-price fantasies head on was courageous and most welcome.

It’s fitting, as well, that the rest of the world heard it, lest those touchy-feely world leaders so sensitive to the concerns of thugs and terrorists mistake the president for some like-minded appeaser.

And fair-minded critics on the right, such as Newt Gingrich and House Minority Leader John Boehner, who have blasted almost every administration initiative thus far, were quick to praise the president’s candor and bluntness, especially in such an extraordinary forum. (It remains to be seen whether his professional defamers can bring themselves to approve of his address.)

Best of all, the president demonstrated his willingness to depart from the cherished doctrine of many of his base supporters and provide the kind of strong leadership Americans hoped for when they elected him.

He went to Oslo as a president who admitted he didn’t deserve an award that was clearly intended as an incentive for him to abide by the edicts of “the international community” and then, subtly, elegantly, rejected the false and dangerous tenets of fatuous “global-village” ideology.

The greatest irony of all: His blunt 36-minute acknowledgment of the world as it really is and his firm declaration of U.S. intentions may do more for world peace than a five-day conference full of blithe rhapsodies about world harmony.

He’s had a shaky 11 months up until now, but his triumph in Oslo could mark a turning point.

— The Staten Island Advance

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