Did I Just Get the President I Voted For?

[Update: OK, this is just wrong.]

The award of a Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama was as good a reason as any to ridicule Europeans, but I can’t help thinking, with malicious delight, how much the shallow, vapid, cynical pacifists in attendance must have hated his acceptance speech — for the award itself was a cynical act, as Obama probably knows.

I’ve made no secret of my skepticism that President Obama was prepared for the office he has since assumed, and there are certainly aspects of his agenda — economic, mostly — that I believe could do our country lasting harm. But I also believe that in a democratic society, patriotic citizens owe their elected leaders the presumption of good faith whenever that’s appropriate. It has given me some unease that President Obama has felt the need to apologize for every perceived slight or grievance of the last century, and his lack of confidence in our ideals has led to some missed opportunities to support the protesters in Tehran, or dissidents in China (much less the ajummas of North Korea).

With Obama’s Nobel speech, he has finally done something to earn that prize by pushing back against the moral retardation that saps the will of free societies to persist, and which equates terrorists with the greatest force for peace and freedom in world history:

To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism ““ it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

I raise this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter the cause. At times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world’s sole military superpower.

Yet the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions ““ not just treaties and declarations ““ that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms.

The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest ““ because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples’ children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.

So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must coexist with another ““ that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldier’s courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause and to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.

For the first time in his adult lifetime, he actually seems proud of his country. A wartime president needs that understanding of what we are defending. I hope he meant it. I hope we will hear more like this. It needed saying, and it’s sad that it did.