During the Democratic leadership campaign, I followed Senator Barack Obama to a speaking stump in South Carolina, where he appeared before an audience of servicemen and women. On that occasion, I had strong doubts that this candidate could ever wear with comfort or inducement to allegiance the presidential mantle of commander-in-chief.
Yes, he can.
It may not fit easily over top of Obama's signature asset as the un-Bush, nuanced and diplomatically collaborative; indeed might come as a revelation even to him, that cherished ideals must sometimes be recalibrated and reconciled to harsh, irrefutable realities.
"I face the world as it is," he said Thursday, accepting his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, "and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world."
It was Obama's finest oratorical hour since he assumed office 11 months ago.
There is a weariness of war in America, as there is in Canada – and our share of the burden, while proportionately heavy in Afghanistan, is still so much lighter than what has been undertaken by the U.S. This fatigue, reflected in numerous opinion polls, has fostered an attitude of defeatism south of the border quite at odds with a core American characteristic: A buoyant can-do assuredness, the historical willingness to fight battles when others have ceased caring, given up, or judged the sacrifices insupportable.
Doubts are entirely legitimate. There is no guarantee – far from it – of even modest success in so contorted a dilemma as Afghanistan, and that's against the restrained agenda as reformulated by the Obama administration: Concentrating on the threat of Al Qaeda and allied radicals in the petri dish of terrorism along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
Yet Obama, who now has access to intelligence the rest of can only fearfully imagine, has clearly been convinced the threat is real and the counter-strategy achievable.
That is also the hopeful assurance that Gen. Stanley McChrystal has been selling, and as the individual who also brought Iraq to heel, he has credibility as tactician-in-chief.
Obama clearly longs to be a man of peace, but that could also describe many of his predecessors in the Oval Office who likewise found the necessity to wage war as the means to that end. I believe Obama bleeds with every American casualty and has ample room in his heart for the innocent civilians who lose their lives in conflict. But he is president of the United States and that means protecting, as best he can, the security of his own nation first and foremost.
It was brashly attacked in 9/11 and Obama has to be mindful of how much harm can be inflicted by even small cabals of the self-righteously militant who seek to kill as many Americans as is within their capacity, because that is the sole triumph available to those with crazed ambitions of a clawed-back caliphate.
The pacifist resistance championed by the likes of Martin Luther King and Gandhi has little traction in a world turned upside-down by asymmetrical warfare, a state of vulnerability more complicated than even the nuclear threat of the Cold War era.
"There will be times when nations acting individually or in concert will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified," said Obama, even as he recognized the "moral force of non-violence" preached by King and Gandhi.
" As a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone ... 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 recognition of history, the imperfections of man and the limits of reason."
No contradiction exists in Obama delivering what was essentially a treatise on justifiable war while accepting the global community's highest recognition of peace. These two seemingly irreconcilable concepts have always been entwined. Somebody with delusions of power or a grand cause pushes; somebody else is forced to push back. Obama's challenge is to do so within conventions of honour and moral integrity.
To his mind, that means, for example, dismantling Guantanamo and cleaving to the Geneva Conventions, though not always in the details – such as rendition of terror suspects to countries where they might be tortured – which he's taken pains not to discuss.
"America cannot insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don't, our action can appear arbitrary, and undercut the legitimacy of future intervention, no matter how justified."
That was an implicit criticism of the Bush administration's justification for invading Iraq. Yet the two presidents don't differ that much in their creed of justifying military intervention – only on when it should be triggered.
"I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That is why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace."
Many, including some in Oslo who selectively withheld their applause, will feel betrayed by Obama. But it takes guts to speak unpopular truths.
Obama is not and never was a soldier. He is, however, a brave man.
Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
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