So this is utterly delicious:
Newly enshrined among the world's great peacemakers, President Barack Obama offered a striking defense of war. Eleven months into his presidency, a fresh Obama doctrine. Evil must be vigorously opposed, he declared as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday. At the same time, he made an impassioned case for building a "just and lasting peace."
"I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people," Obama told his audience in Oslo's soaring City Hall. "For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world."
Pronouncing himself humbled by such an honor so early in "my labors on the world stage," Obama nevertheless turned his Nobel moment into an unapologetic defense of armed intervention in times of self defense or moral necessity. The hawkish message was an inevitable nod to the controversy defining his selection: an American president, lauded for peace just as he escalates the long, costly war in Afghanistan.
Well I'll be a ...
Evil exists, he told the Euros. And America will fight it. President Obama just flashed his Norwegian license to kill.
Huh.
Funny, he doesn't look Neoconish.
Seriously, I salute the president. I reserve the right to mock the Norwegians for giving the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama and to mock his supporters for fervently believing he earned it.
But the president took what could have been a ridiculous moment that accepted the constraints the Norwegians tried to place on our foreign policy and instead defended America and our motives for fighting.
