IT'D BE NICE TO THINK SO...:

Armed for reality: The president's foreign policy shift (Robert Kagan, December 13, 2009, Washington Post)

The shift in rhetoric at Oslo was striking. Gone was the vaguely left-revisionist language that flavored earlier speeches, highlighting the low points of American global leadership -- the coups and ill-considered wars -- and low-balling the highlights, such as the Cold War triumph. Obama pointedly reminded his European audience of America's central role, with "the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms," in helping to "underwrite global security" since World War II. Instead of treading gingerly around the issue of democracy and the imposition of our values on other peoples, he squarely rejected the "false suggestion that these are somehow Western principles, foreign to local cultures or stages of a nation's development." He went further than he ever had in arguing that for the United States, advancing democracy is not only a moral but also a strategic imperative, because "peace is unstable where citizens are denied the right to speak freely or worship as they please; choose their own leaders or assemble without fear." Nor did he shy away from the Manichaean distinctions that drive self-described realists (and Europeans) crazy, insisting that "Evil does exist in the world" and can neither be negotiated with nor appeased.

The Oslo speech was important not just because it broke rhetorical ground. Obama was following in a great tradition of hawkish Democrats fighting wars both hot and cold: Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy, as well as that one-time Democrat, Ronald Reagan. More important, though, the speech heralded a course adjustment, a different approach by the Obama administration to the problems that have bedeviled it this year.

Obama's lengthy discussion of war, and his defense of America at war, obviously grew out of his months-long deliberation over whether to send more troops and expand the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. The speech revealed a man who has armed himself with all the necessary moral and practical arguments to justify his decision for as long as necessary.

...but, let's face it, if the teleprompter had accidentally displayed a Shakespearean soliloquy written in Klingon, the UR would have at least tried to deliver it.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 13, 2009 6:56 AM