Filibuster Cartoons
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The controversy surrounding Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize took on a new dimension this week, with the President using his acceptance speech in Norway as an opportunity to give a rather Bush-like defense of war as an appropriate tool of American foreign policy.
Said the President:
I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. 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.
Such rhetoric was necessary, of course, in light of the fact that Obama had just a few days prior authorized the deployment of some 30,000 additional US troops to Afghanistan. In his speech he alluded to that war as an example of a just one, and at one time that would have been a fairly mainstream position to take. Increasingly, however, America is going it pretty alone in A-stan. Non-American NATO troop targets are almost certainly not going to be met, showing Obama’s charisma has limited appeal when the cause he champions has fallen out of favor.
