Last week, I intended to write my reflections on President Obama’s speech at the commemoration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Instead, I offered my ambivalent thoughts on Obama on Syria. Summarized in my opening: “Two Cheers for Obama.” The potentially tragic decisions of the week overshadowed, in my mind, the enduring accomplishments and challenges of decades. Obama is not only threatening Assad. Assad is threatening Obama. A march to war overshadowed a poignant remembrance of this historic march of 1963.

I closed my reflections by expressing my fear that this overshadowing may become emblematic of the Obama presidency: significant work on jobs and freedom challenged by questionable military and national security adventures, including not only the potential attack on Syria, but also drone warfare and heightened domestic and international surveillance. Unlike the President’s full-throated critics on the left and the right, I am not convinced that his positions have been simply wrong. Yet, I too sense that there is a pattern here that is troubling, especially so since the ideals which Barack Obama embodies, symbolizes and has acted to fortify are of such crucial importance to the vigor and health of the American body politic, revealed in his speech commemorating the great civil rights march and its most powerful leader, Martin Luther King Jr.

Obama’s talk, like King’s, is not cheap. His words often act. He is the only man to have been elected President of the United States based on a speech, (William Jennings Bryant was nominated but not elected), and his speeches, in form as well as content, continue to be consequential. This was my hope when I watched and then read the text, despite recent events in Syria, and the possibility of an American attack. Obama’s words on jobs and freedom, and the people who marched on Washington, tell us something about who we are, where we are going, and by what means, and as I see it, even offer interesting insights into the Syrian dilemmas.

The speech revolved around an irony. While, Obama honored King and his eloquent rhetoric, he emphasized the more humble deeds of the many who came to Washington and gave the words substance.

“We rightly and best remember Dr. King’s soaring oratory that day, how he gave mighty voice to the quiet hopes of millions; how he offered a salvation path for oppressed and oppressors alike. His words belong to the ages, possessing a power and prophecy unmatched in our time.

But we would do well to recall that day itself also belonged to those ordinary people whose names never appeared in the history books, never got on TV. Many had gone to segregated schools and sat at segregated lunch counters. They lived in towns where they couldn’t vote and cities where their votes didn’t matter. They were couples in love who couldn’t marry, soldiers who fought for freedom abroad that they found denied to them at home. They had seen loved ones beaten, and children fire-hosed, and they had every reason to lash out in anger, or resign themselves to a bitter fate.”

The humble were in Obama’s telling the real heroes:

“Because they marched, a Civil Rights law was passed. Because they marched, a Voting Rights law was signed. Because they marched, doors of opportunity and education swung open so their daughters and sons could finally imagine a life for themselves beyond washing somebody else’s laundry or shining somebody else’s shoes. (Applause.) Because they marched, city councils changed and state legislatures changed, and Congress changed, and, yes, eventually, the White House changed. (Applause.)”

Leaders lead when they are pushed, Obama argues. The eloquence of leaders such as King, but also Obama himself, has power when it is empowered by social movement. Odd to hear the President argue this, a reading of leaders and activists that he also emphasized in his second inaugural, as he is preparing for acts of war that are not only unpopular, but seem to distract from his principal policy initiatives, as Robert Reich recently observed on his blog.

And in the speech, Obama argued the urgency of not being distracted, for, much is left to be done. From defending past gains, to completing the project:

“But we would dishonor those heroes as well to suggest that the work of this nation is somehow complete. The arc of the moral universe may bend towards justice, but it doesn’t bend on its own. To secure the gains this country has made requires constant vigilance, not complacency. Whether by challenging those who erect new barriers to the vote, or ensuring that the scales of justice work equally for all, and the criminal justice system is not simply a pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails, it requires vigilance.” (Applause.)

He highlighted the legacy of the March by pointing to two courses of action. On justice – there is an urgency to push back reaction, to fight against those who would again limit access to the ballot and who accept growing inequalities and incarceration, and on jobs, there is an equal urgency grounded in the pursuit of happiness:

“For what does it profit a man, Dr. King would ask, to sit at an integrated lunch counter if he can’t afford the meal? This idea — that one’s liberty is linked to one’s livelihood; that the pursuit of happiness requires the dignity of work, the skills to find work, decent pay, some measure of material security — this idea was not new. Lincoln himself understood the Declaration of Independence in such terms — as a promise that in due time, ‘the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance’.”

I have a dream, or at least I can imagine, a way out of the Syria dilemma, inspired by these words of the President. In terms of my last post moving from two cheers for Obama to three.

Under pressure of the social forces he celebrated in his address marking the fiftieth anniversary of the march on Washington, Obama works with world leaders to find a course of non-violent common action to responding to the atrocity of Assad’s chemical warfare. I admit that is probably a pipedream.

But alternatively, I can imagine very positive results of Congress turning down Obama’s request for authorization of the use of force in Syria. In his defeat Obama still will have expressed his strong response to the use of chemical weapons, and the need to find more diplomatic means to control Assad will become the order of the day.

It may cost Obama immediate political capital, but it may also help him more assuredly move American foreign policy in the direction he has long sought, that his words point to and can enable in the future. The state senator who spoke up against a stupid war, without democratic support, will have achieved his goal. The newly elected President who won his Nobel Prize for the perceived promise of changing the direction of the global hegemon, will get a boost from among others his most right-wing opponents. The Nobel Peace Laureate explained why war is a necessary evil to be avoided when possible, and this may come to pass. It will become harder for the President, as his aides now emphasize, to embark on military actions for the rest of his term, but it will also make it harder for future presidents to engage in such action without the approval of Congress and the American people. The result will be an American foreign policy that is more suited to the emerging global order, that is less militarized, and is more subject to democratic restraints. America will have turned an important corner: a tactical defeat for the President, but in the long run, a major strategic victory, a foreign policy that Martin Luther King Jr. and the marchers of ’63 would approve of, a foreign policy that makes it more likely that the struggle for jobs and freedom will move forward.

Coming out of my dream I still am deeply concerned, as is President Obama that those who would use chemical weapons against innocent civilians should not go unpunished and must be stopped. Obama’s obligation now, as he and his Democratic critics, such as Congressman Grayson, see it, is to make the case for military action against Syria disclosing all the purported evidence of its necessity. But those same critics, of the left and the right, must then work on effective non-violent action. I fear this is another pipedream.

Upwards of 100,00 people came to Washington last week to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. But they didn’t all come for the same event. Indeed there were so many things going on that there is no way to count how many people came for something. There were at least two marches and two celebrations at the Lincoln Memorial, as well as several exhibits, numerous conferences and conventions and a few protests. I went to many and took photos at several.

By August it seemed that everyone wanted a piece of the commemoration pie, but first out of the gate was an amateur without an institutional base. Van White is a civil rights attorney in Rochester NY whose late father frequently talked about going to the 1963 march. As much in memory of his father as anything else, early in 2012, White decided to replicate the march on the actual date, August 28, even though it was a Wednesday. That’s a hard day to draw a crowd, but about 10,000 people got up early to march 1.6 miles to the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

He filed for the ideal domain name in June of 2012 and requested the permits two months later. Once his webpage was up, he invited people to comment and get in touch; that’s how he found a couple dozen of the original marchers to lead his legacy walk the morning of August 28. He also ran a civil rights conference the day before, attended by about 150 people and staffed by a couple dozen students from Alabama State University (an HBCU in Montgomery) as a school history project.

White was going to do a presentation at the Lincoln Memorial, but the National Park Service nixed that idea. White eventually found out why; the White House wanted that spot on that day. He did get permits for his march, but only after the King Center did its best to kill it.

The King Center was created in Atlanta after Dr. King’s death to memorialize Dr. Martin Luther King and house some of his archives. As a family business, it has mirrored a lot of the family disputes. That may be why it didn’t file for a domain name until late in June of 2013, and had to settle for officialmlkdream50.com. For many months, anyone who googled variations of “March on Washington anniversary” to find out what was in the works got Van White’s webpage, not the “official” one.

To pull off an event the size of Reclaim the Dream, MLK III, the current CEO of the King Center, partnered with Brooklyn’s Al Sharpton and his National Action Network. NAN handled most of the logistics and the Rev. Al was the keynote speaker. While they wanted their event to be on Saturday, when ordinary working people could come, they didn’t want any competition. The old dogs didn’t like that new puppy, Van White, poaching on their territory. But he had his permits and wouldn’t go away.

As was true in 1963, organized labor provided major resources. Unions were about half of the official organizational sponsors and probably brought more than half of the participants to DC. All 500 bus parking spots at RFK stadium were filled on Saturday. The UAW alone paid for 106 buses. Other organizations sponsored buses, but their riders had to pay for their passage. Anyone who could get a spot on a union bus road for free and got fed along the way. Saturday’s speakers included a lot of union leaders. If a speakers list had been provided to the press or posted online I could do a count, but that never happened.

Since the speeches started early in the morning, anyone coming from far away had to travel all night or come early. Those that did found plenty to do. The DC Commemoration Committee held its own forum at the African-American Civil War Museum the preceding Tuesday. On Thursday and Friday the Coalition on Black Civic Participation held a two day training session for black youth at the National Education Association. Friday night an anti-war group lighted up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial until the U.S. Park Police made them move. That’s just a small sampling.

On Saturday both sides of the reflecting pool were packed with people. While there is no longer a count given out by any disinterested party, my guess is that there were about a hundred thousand people. A few hundred drifted across the street to see the exhibits at the “Freedom Festival,” but most just sat in the sun, watched the speakers on a large screen and waved their signs. Most of these came from the NAACP, whose logo appeared on at least half of the printed posters. Major themes were “End Racial Profiling” and “Justice for Trayvon Martin.” The march that began when the speeches ended was an anti-climax. Led by bigwigs and mounted US Park Police, the crowd walked pass Dr. King’s statue to disperse at the Washington Monument.

Wednesday’s commemoration was called Let Freedom Ring and featured a bell-ringing ceremony at 3:00, the hour of Dr. King’s 1963 speech. While bells were rung all over the country, the one placed at the Lincoln Memorial had once been at Birmingham’s 16^th St. Baptist Church, which was bombed on Sept. 15, 1963. President Obama spoke afterwards. In contrast to Saturday’s almost slapdash style, Wednesday’s event was carefully orchestrated and timed so that all the other speakers and entertainers finished right before 3:00. The weather was less predictable, with frequent light showers and only occasional sun. Despite the rain, people dribbled in. When the speeches began, there were only a few thousand members of the general public on either side of the reflecting pool. When the President spoke, both sides were full.

Those listed as sponsors of Wednesday’s “coalition” included more black organizations and few unions, but the Secret Service was the power behind them all. Access to the area between the reflecting pool and the Lincoln Monument was limited to press, staff and people with tickets. Press movement was severely restricted; audience tickets were given out to pre-selected people; umbrellas were removed when everyone went through the metal detectors; men stood on top of the Lincoln Memorial scanning the crowd with binoculars. For the final staging, when three Presidents and a first lady were on one side of the speaking level and members of the King family on the other, a three-panel bullet-proof screen was placed in front.

At this semi-centennial celebration of a protest march, there was something for everyone, from the President on down. The only thing I didn’t see, hear or read about were counter-protests.

Goin’ Fishing? Not quite, but things here at Deliberately Considered are slowing down for the summer, as I go to teach in the Democracy and Diversity Institute in Wroclaw, Poland, and then to take part in a research project on Regime and Society in Eastern Europe (1956 – 1989) in Sofia, Bulgaria. After three years of regular, often daily, publishing, posts will be less frequent until September. At that time, we will be presenting Deliberately Considered in a new form.

Here some quick thoughts on topics I would like to write about now, but don’t have the time or energy to do so thoroughly.

On Egypt: I am fascinated by the grayness of it all: the unbearable grayness of being? I don’t see heroic figures or villains. Rather I see mortals, tragic figures, facing huge challenges, beyond their capacity to address.

Most objective observers are labeling the latest turn of events as a coup, but that seems to me to be too simple. Equally simplistic is the view of those who see the events as a clear political advance. A democratically elected leader, President Morsi, was overthrown by the military, not a good thing. But there was a significant popular movement, perhaps representing more than fifty per cent of the public, demanding the resignation of Morsi and new elections, and a resetting of the political order, which didn’t include them and their opinions, and didn’t provide the mechanisms for recalling the President. Yet, a legitimate President, from the point of view of many of the over fifty percent that voted for him, has been removed by the military. While I am no fan of military interventions in politics, I know that there is a real danger when a party confuses its particular interests with the common good. Yet, while lack of inclusion was a key problem in the Muslim Brotherhood led regime, it continues to be a problem as reports today indicate a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.

On Obama, the NSA and Snowden: I am disappointed, dismayed and irritated. National security is the one arena in which I have been least satisfied with Obama’s Presidency. I had wanted a clear line to be drawn between the policies of Bush and Cheney, and Obama’s. The compromised civil liberties and the continued escalation of surveillance revealed by Snowden’s leaks, alas, indicate continuity rather than change. I think the leaks serve good purpose. I also think the arguments Obama presented in his national security speech provide reasonable grounds for the criticism of the administrations surveillance policies. There is, indeed, a need for a consequential national conversation on the continued ways the war on terror has compromised civil liberties in the United States and beyond. Obama seems to recognize this, but he has not facilitated the discussion, to say the least. On the other hand, I can’t stand the self-righteous, self-serving arguments of Snowden and his chief supporters, Glenn Greenwald and WikiLeaks. The demonization of the U.S. and Obama, the absolute certainty that all surveillance is about the projection of oppressive power – is not serious. As I felt after the attacks of 9/11, I find the critics of official policy as dismaying as the official policy itself. And the melodrama of Snowden’s search for asylum makes matters worse. Why didn’t he stand his ground on principle in the U.S.? Seeking asylum in countries with regimes with questionable human rights records is irritating and confuses important issues, as does the 24/7 news treatment of Snowden’s latest whereabouts and likely endpoint.

Politics and the social condition: I think the NSA revelations and the events in Egypt underscore the reasons for studying social dilemmas as they are knitted into the fabric of social and political life. Iddo Tavory and I are working hard on this over the “summer vacation.” I am leaning heavily on Hannah Arendt, he on Jean Paul Sartre. We believe that there is something missing in social science. It oversimplifies. Today I am thinking about the political significance of our project. If Obama and his critics would recognize, discuss and act upon complexity, perhaps the line between then and now, between Bush and Obama, would be drawn. Perhaps, if all parties recognized the problems of inclusion, democracy and social justice could be constituted in Egypt. I know this may sound naïve, another example of my easy hopefulness. But consider the alternative: without the recognition and understanding of dilemmas, the political challenges in Egypt and between Obama and his critics can’t be resolved.

The Ironies of Consequence: Daniel Dayan and I are talking about analyzing the interaction of what I call “the politics of small things” and what he calls “monstration.” We have had many discussions on this, public and private, in classrooms, at conferences, and in very pleasant meetings in our favorite cafes, and at our homes in New York and Paris. In our last meeting, in the spring, we agreed that our focus would be on what we are calling “the ironies of consequence.” Apparently trivial things sometimes have major consequences, while what appears to be of major significance, has little consequence. And there is also much in between. Take the recent surveillance revelations: it is striking how popular and elite European responses were strong, while the American public and political leadership responded quite weakly. The Americans responded as cynical world-weary cosmopolitans, apparently understanding the ways of the world and power, while the Europeans at least feigned outrage, appalled that a security apparatus uses state of the art methods to gather information on foreign and domestic citizens, and other states, both friend and foe. Media reporting, I believe, shapes this. I wish I had time to show it. I think as I did, I would also be showing how unstable these responses are.

This will have to wait for a couple of months. We will continue to publish pieces occasionally, deliberately, but less frequently, responding to the events of the day. In the pipeline: Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer’s “Reflections on Al Qaeda in Mali and Other Radicals at the Gates,” and Susan Pearce’s update on the cultural shutdown in Bosnia and Herzegovina and her report on the LGBT pride parade in Istanbul.

Today I explore the relationship between Obama’s national security address with his surveillance policies. Many see the distance between his speech and action as proof of their cynicism about Obama and more generally about American politicians. I note that the distance can provide the grounds for the opposite of cynicism, i.e. consequential criticism. But for this to be the case, there has to be public concern, something I fear is lacking.

I am an Obama partisan, as any occasional reader of this blog surely knows. One such reader, in a response to my last post on Obama’s national security address, on Facebook declared: “your endless contortions in support of this non-entity make you look increasingly ridiculous.” He wondered: “Is this really what a ‘public intellectual’ looks like today?” I am not profoundly hurt by this. I am enjoying the one time in my life that I actually support an American political leader in power. I was an early supporter of the State Senator from the south side of Chicago and find good reasons to appreciate his leadership to this day. Through his person and his words, he has changed American identity, to the pleasure of the majority and the great displeasure to a significant minority. Obamacare is his singular accomplishment. He rationally responded to the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, despite sustained opposition. Perhaps he could have done more, but powerful forces were aligned against him. He has carefully redirected American foreign policy, cooperating with allies and the international organizations, engaging enemies, working to shift the balance between diplomacy and armed force. Obama has worked to move the center left, as I analyze carefully in Reinventing Political Culture,  and I applaud his efforts even when he has not succeeded.

That said I have been disappointed on some matters, and I want to be clear about them here. In my judgment, the surge in Afghanistan didn’t make much sense. The escalating use of drones, without clear and public guidelines, has concerned me: the killing of innocents was not recognized, as drone warfare contributed to the long history of placing civilians and non combatants at increasing risk. (In this sense, drone warfare and terrorism are two sides of the same coin.) And now this week, there is the news about “Obama’s dragnet” (as The New York Times put it), Obama’s continued and even escalating mass surveillance. Although this was very much implied in news reports before the revelations (they are not really shocking to the informed), reading the details, particularly as reported by Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian,  underscores fundamental problems.

I wanted to see a “strong black line” drawn between the war on terrorism and the rule of fear after “9/11,” and the Obama era. I wanted to see national hysteria replaced by sensible policy, to bracket the governance of Bush-Cheney in the same way that McCarthyism was bracketed and criticized. The latest news underscores that in significant ways this has not happened. The line has been thinly sketched rather than clearly drawn. Some things have changed, much hasn’t.

This is why I thought Obama’s national security speech was so important. He was announcing a change in policy, moving from a “war on terror” to a struggle against terrorists, using normal law enforcement methods. This was a change I had been waiting for. But what then to make of the latest revelations?

Many have expressed outrage, with the editorial writers of The New York Times leading the way. Others see confirmation of their strong civil liberty criticisms of the President on national security, with Greenwald leading here, and a broad swath of media commentators following. I find myself in between these positions, not persuaded by either, but also crucially not convinced by those who suggest that the surveillance is no big deal and argue that it is legal and necessary. That is the reasoning which must be put to rest.

Although clearly Obama’s speech and action conflict, drawing the conclusion that he is just a hypocrite, another cynical politician administering American hegemonic power, I believe, is mistaken. This is how Greenwald responded to Obama’s national security speech, as I analyzed in my last post written before the publication of the Snowden revelations. We now know what Greenwald knew, but we didn’t. He had inside knowledge of Snowden’s leaks. Yet, as Greenwald explains his position now, I am uncomfortable. He is too sure that the only reason for secrets is to protect the prerogatives of the powerful: too fast to dismiss threats to national security.

On the other hand, I find Obama puzzling, even schizophrenic in his response to the Snowden leaks. He welcomes the debate we must have (especially now) about the need to balance security and civil liberties concerns, while he also denounces leaks and leakers who instigate discussion. He is obviously caught between his desire as a principled centrist to have all with opposing views discuss a pressing problem, and his belief that national security requires official secrets. He wants to have a full public debate, taking into account all reasonable points of view, but he worries that this may lead to giving “aid and comfort to the enemy.” Disciplined governance is pitted against democratic deliberations. And there is a clear political calculation. Public opinion is more moved by security than by civil liberty concerns.

Here is the significance of his speech at the National Defense University, remembering that the speech preceded the revelation for the public, but for Obama it was the other way around. The speech was a response to the overt and covert policies that together have made “the war on terror.”

Perhaps, if we are still in a post 9/11 “war,” the argument for official secrets and escalating compromises in civil liberties is justified. But, if in fact, the war is over, as Obama announced in his speech, the continuation of war policies has to be critically appraised. Obama suggested in his speech a logical conclusion: “We must define our effort not as a boundless ‘global war on terror,’ but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.” In these terms: how can the broad, not just targeted, surveillance by the National Security Agency be justified? Obama’s speech strongly suggests that it can’t. Obama’s words provide solid grounds for opposition to his administration’s policies, including those revealed about the NSA.

I still support Obama. I hope that under public pressure he follows the logic of the position he outlined in his national security speech. But I am concerned that the pressure may not be there.

I believe that the disclosures concerning the surveillance of phone records and internet communications in the Guardian and The Washington Post underscore the significance of President Obama’s recent speech on national security. His words provide the most cogent means to appraise his responsibilities for his administration’s actions. Today an analysis of the speech and the responses to it: in my next post, I will reflect on its significance in light of recent events. -Jeff

In his address to the National Defense University on May 23, 2013, President Obama set out to transform the common sense about terrorism and the proper American response to it. He continued what I take to be his major goal: the reinvention of American political culture, pushing the center left on a broad range of problems and principles, often meeting great resistance. In this particular instance, the change he sought at NDU, was apparently quite simple, moving from a war on terror to a struggle against terrorists, ending the prospect of total and endless war against an enemy whose power has been greatly and routinely exaggerated. The suggestion of the simple change understandably elicited strong and conflicting reactions. I think these reactions, along with the speech itself, illuminate the significance of Obama’s latest performance as “storyteller-in-chief.”

The editorial board of The New York Times declared:

“President Obama’s speech on Thursday was the most important statement on counterterrorism policy since the 2001 attacks, a momentous turning point in post-9/11 America.” 

Over on the op.ed. page a few days later, Ross Douthat presented a cynical alternative:

“President Obama’s speech national security last week was a dense thicket of self-justifying argument, but its central message was perfectly clear: Please don’t worry, liberals. I’m not George W. Bush.”

At The New York Review of Books, David Cole judged:

“President Barack Obama’s speech Thursday at the National Defense University (NDU) may turn out to be the most significant of his tenure,”

and observed:

“Obama might have chosen to speak more cautiously in his NDU speech. Instead, he went much further, outlining a way out of this ‘perpetual war,’ saying that ‘our democracy demands it.’ Whether he can make good on this promise will very likely define his legacy. If he succeeds in doing so, the Nobel Peace Prize committee will be seen not as naïve, but as remarkably prescient, in its awarding of the Peace Prize to Obama in 2009.”

I agree, but many observers, left, right and in between don’t, including, I suspect many Deliberately Considered readers. There have been strong dissenting positions, some quite cogent.

From the right

Newt Gingrich:

“I thought the president’s speech was astonishingly naïve and a sign that he hasn’t read much history…”[Obama] wants to somehow rise above the big government scandals that are gradually drowning his administration…He wants to look like he’s forward looking, engaged, etcetera … But the truth is, what he announced and explained was almost meaningless.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.):

“What do you think the Iranians are thinking? At the end of the day, this is the most tone-deaf president I ever could imagine, making such a speech at a time when our homeland is trying to be attacked literally every day.”

And Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) concluded Obama’s speech:

“will be viewed by terrorists as a victory.”

From the left

Glenn Greenwald is convinced that the speech said nothing:

“his speech had something for everyone, which is another way of saying that it offered nothing definitive or even reliable about future actions.”

Benjamin Wittes was even more critical:

“If there was a unifying theme of President Obama’s speech today at the National Defense University, it was an effort to align himself as publicly as possible with the critics of the positions his administration is taking without undermining his administration’s operational flexibility in actual fact. To put it crassly, the president sought to rebuke his own administration for taking the positions it has—but also to make sure that it could continue to do so.”

Oddly, Ron Paul seems to have judged Obama most harshly from the dovish side:

“The speech speaks of more war and more killing and more interventionism all masked in the language of withdrawal.”

His was libertarian reading:

“President Obama’s speech is not at all what it seems. It is a call for more empire and more power to the executive branch. The president promises that ‘this war, like all wars, must end.’ Unfortunately the war on the American taxpayer never seems to end. But end it will, as we are running out of money.” 

These are strong judgments, apparently determined more by the identity, interests and commitments of the judges than the judged speech. Then again, perhaps Greenwald is right, the alternative judgments could be a function of Obama’s qualities as a politician, able to fulfill the wishes of his supporters and opponents alike.

Yet, I think it is more than this. Obama’s speech is a part of his overall project. He is trying to move common sense away from the assumption of a permanent state of war. The relationship between rhetoric and action is at issue, i.e. our political culture, and the rhetoric clearly was being changed. It was not mere rhetoric.

This was not one of Obama’s beautiful speeches. Rather it was lawyerly, making a case, justifying his administrations policies to date, suggesting immediate and future changes. There are problems.

With his critics, I worry about his drone policies, about lethal attacks outside of war zones. I note that the drone attacks have decreased of late, and that in this speech, he gives a more restricted account of when and how the attacks should proceed, significantly with oversight. But I also note that this was all pretty vague.

I believe with his critics, including Medea Benjamin, the Code Pink activist who disrupted the speech, that the President could probably have done more to realize his stated goal of closing the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and it is far from clear, after the speech, how hard he will push now.

And I worry about the administration’s relationship with the press and its policies on leaks. As a father of a journalist, it was good to hear the President declare: “Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs.” Yet, I am still concerned by the Obama administrations aggressive policies toward leaks.

Yes, there are reasons to not just applaud the speech. But applaud, I will, because of the fundamental turn Obama made in the speech. He clarified how he understands the threat we now face, and he drew the logical conclusion. The era of permanent war is now over. The post 9/11 Orwellian Winter is coming to an end. Thus spoke the President:

“[T]he current threat — lethal yet less capable al Qaeda affiliates; threats to diplomatic facilities and businesses abroad; homegrown extremists. This is the future of terrorism. We have to take these threats seriously, and do all that we can to confront them. But as we shape our response, we have to recognize that the scale of this threat closely resembles the types of attacks we faced before 9/11.

In the 1980s, we lost Americans to terrorism at our Embassy in Beirut; at our Marine Barracks in Lebanon; on a cruise ship at sea; at a disco in Berlin; and on a Pan Am flight — Flight 103 — over Lockerbie. In the 1990s, we lost Americans to terrorism at the World Trade Center; at our military facilities in Saudi Arabia; and at our Embassy in Kenya. These attacks were all brutal; they were all deadly; and we learned that left unchecked, these threats can grow. But if dealt with smartly and proportionally, these threats need not rise to the level that we saw on the eve of 9/11.

We must define our effort not as a boundless “global war on terror,” but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.”

This is prose not poetry, but crucial. For those on Obama’s left, the significance of this change in official policy may not be perceptible. Obama is trying to get done what they take for granted. But he knows, what they ignore, that a broad fearful public has been convinced by the war metaphor of “the war on terrorism” and that a significant faction of the political establishment is committed to the metaphor. They have to be moved if we are really to move beyond a dark moment in American history, epitomized by the claim that torture was effective “enhanced interrogation.” Obama is doing the moving.

Gingrich, Saxby and Graham, et al, see what Obama is up to, and as with much else, they are engaging in a counterattack. They recognize that big changes are being initiated, and they will do all they can to stop them from happening.

Although there are good reasons to wonder about the detailed connection between the promise of Obama’s speech and the practice of the Obama administration, it is important to nonetheless recognize that a big political change is going on. I think this is a way to understand and criticize recent revelations concerning government surveillance.

Before the peace process, during the peace process, and after the peace process appears to have collapsed, the conflict between Israeli Jews and the Palestinians has persisted. Try as the principals may to imagine a solution, often with considerable agreement about its basic contours, as was envisioned in the Geneva Accord, there seems to be no way to get from here to there, no alternative to the injustice of the way things are, no exit.

It is within this maze that we respond to the latest news: the surprising results of an election, in which the ruling party has been humbled, and once again a centrist party has emerged from nowhere, followed by Obama giving a moving speech on his first official visit to Israel, also once again, one of his best. The more things change, the more they stay the same?

It does indeed seem that nothing changes. I, thus, especially appreciate how Deliberately Considered contributors, Michael Weinman, Hilla Dayan and Nahed Habiballah have pushed themselves to provide independent critical perspective (see here , here, and here). Though they hold different positions, I am struck more by their common sensibility, their pursuit of the normal as a realistic though perhaps utopian project. Their differences are marked, but of less significance. I think that perhaps it is their common sensibility that might be the basis for common political thinking and acting against despair.

Weinman observed the most positive side of the election. He doesn’t approve of “the winner,” Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid (“there is a future”) Party, but he thinks there was hope in the election results, a suggestion of a possible future:

“Let me be clear: I am no fan of Lapid, I wouldn’t have voted for him in January had I had the chance, and I haven’t liked him on Facebook, either. But I do recognize that he represented and represents the hope of many young and youngish people that Israel can be ‘a normal country.’”

This may be clear to Dayan, but she takes exception. On my Facebook page, she noted; “my biggest disagreement with Michael Weinman is that I do not believe Israel could ever ‘go back’ to being a normal liberal democracy, since it never was. From it’s inception it had the twin pillars of democracy and dictatorship…” For her the election was profoundly disheartening. The radical promise of the Israeli protests of 2011 was lost:

“The summer of 2011 was a moment when hundreds of thousands poured to the streets to demonstrate against … Israel’s business oligarchy. This seemed to have the potential to lead to an even broader, more threatening mobilization against the existing order. It didn’t happen. No serious opposition to the reign of the neoliberal hawkish right emerged from this outburst. The 2011 protest did not generate any visible crack in the tectonic structures of Israeli politics.”

Dayan demonstrates in her post how political freedom and repression are the two sides of the Israeli polity. “The irrelevance of the occupation to the Israeli voter in these free and democratic elections must be understood as being painstakingly manufactured. The occupation grinds on as if taking place in an unrelated, autonomous universe.”

This is harsh stuff, so harsh that I misunderstood it. I read Dayan’s post as implicitly supporting a one state solution as the only way out. But she corrected me: “I am not for ‘one state’ but for democratisation, in whatever form (be it federal, bi-national, power sharing, what have you).” A wise position: I fully agree, and I imagine so would Weinman.

Habiballah might also, although her view of the conflict comes from a very different place, as she put it in her title, it is “from both sides of the wall” and really up close and quite personal. She views Israeli politics as a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, living in Amman, visiting her parents home bi-weekly, just on the wrong side of the Wall (very much a wall and not as it is sometimes euphemistically called by apologists as a separation fence), a wall and separation that has fundamentally disrupted the normality of her life as she precisely describes. As she moves from her present residence to visit family, and as she thinks about her family home cut off from Jerusalem and her native grounds in the Nazareth area, she is constrained, with her dignity compromised each way she turns.

Habiballah on the elections:

“Palestinians living in Israel might have been perceived by many during the election period as apathetic, but I think what could be more appropriate is a state of alert. They have lost confidence in the democratic nature of the state. This feeling is strengthened with proposing new laws by government officials and sometimes passing such laws in the Knesset (such as the law of allegiance which requires all citizens to pledge allegiance to the state as a Jewish one). This result is the further alienation of Palestinians living in Israel from the rest of the society and jeopardizes their right to exist in their home country.”

Living with dignity in ones home country, (Habiballah), seeking democracy by any means possible: one state, two states, federated states or anything else (Dayan), living a decent middle class life, the aspiration of the typical Lapid voter, “Riki Cohen,” the Israeli Jane Doe (Weinman), but also the aspiration of the typical Palestinian who wants to securely be at home in her own land (Habiballah), these are struggles for normality. This is the common sensibility that cuts across the Palestine – Israel divide.

Sometimes the normal appears as the utopian. This is when it is of critical importance, something I came to know in Central Europe in the good old bad days of the Soviet empire. I think an open publicly shared commitment to and struggle for this utopia, among Palestinians and Israelis, is the precondition of a “Peace Writ Small,” perhaps the only way out of the maze.

Suspecting that Michael, Hilla and Nahed don’t see themselves as holding a common view, particularly as I have suggested it, I look forward to their responses.

To skip this introduction and go directly to read Zachary Metz’s In-Depth Analysis, “Peace Writ Small: Reflections on  “Peacebuilding” in Iraq, Burma, Israel and Palestine, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, the Balkans and Beyond,” click here.

In today’s “in-depth post,” Zachary Metz, a veteran conflict resolution practitioner, reflects on his vast experience exploring the potential of “peacebuilding.” He notes that, in recent years, the concern among practitioners has turned away from the simple cessation of violence, toward “positive peace,” a term advocated by Johan Galtung, working for “peace writ large,” in which peace includes a focus on long term, large scale, social change. Metz appreciates this move and has applied it, but he also recognizes its limits. Conflict is embedded in everyday social practices, he notes, in the small interactions that lead toward or away from violence, which promote conflicts or understandings. He thus focuses this piece on what he calls “peace writ small.” After explaining how his close focus on interaction responds to problems of the day and problems among conflict resolution practitioners, and after he draws on relevant theoretical developments, Metz illuminates how his approach looks like in practice. He describes and analyzes a moving example of “peace writ small” in a group he led in Iraq in 2005. In Iraq in 2005!

I am first impressed by the bravery involved, but even more significant is that Metz clearly illuminates the type of work that needs to happen for the Iraqis to have any chance in the aftermath of this tragic war. In miniature, I think I see in Zach’s account the only way for an alternative to the again escalating strife in that long-suffering country. In the ten year anniversary post mortem of the war, reflections have all been writ large, too often repeating thread worn partisan positions. Metz shows how we see and can do much more when we pay attention to everyday experience and concerns, and respond accordingly.

P.S. As the author of The Politics of Small Things, from which Metz draws insight, I find his approach quite compelling. I believe it has broad significance. Thus, as I was reading and preparing this post for publication, I was trying to understand the remarkable success of President Obama’s trip to Israel. The response in Israel was surprising. In a country where the Obama magic had not played well, it has finally arrived. Even as Obama continued to push hard for a two state solution and said things that no Israeli leader dare say, about understanding the Palestinian experience and the righteousness of their claim for a state of their own, there is confidence in Obama across the political spectrum, and a sense that something fundamental has changed.

Palestinians were not thrilled with the speech. It got a decided two thumbs down in a piece in Al Jazeera, “Obama’s Israel visit is an insult to the Palestinians.” “Obama’s visit to Israel endorsed their narrative and was a slap in the face to Palestinians.” Yet, it is interesting to note that forceful leftist critics of the occupation and the Israeli right, including the governing coalition, saw in Obama’s visit a real basis for hope. Gideon Levy: “Barack Obama has a dream and we should listen.” Bradley Burston: “After Obama this year for Passover I am burning my cynicism.”

I think the Israeli enthusiasm was based upon the fact that Obama’s speech to Israeli people clearly spoke to their experience, and dared to link an understanding of their story and insecurities with an aspiration for a lasting peace with their Palestinian neighbors. It was the “peace writ small” dimension of his address that enabled him to move in a “writ large” direction.

In order to broker a deal between the Palestinians and the Israelis, Obama needed to have the Israeli people more or less behind him. They needed to trust that he understands their concerns. Now he has to do the same with the Palestinians. No small task, or should I say a small task just like Zach’s in Iraq.

To read Zachary Metz’s In-Depth Analysis, “Peace Writ Small: Reflections on “Peacebuilding” in Iraq, Burma, Israel and Palestine, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, the Balkans and Beyond,” click here.

I have long been intrigued by the distance between principle and practice, how people respond to the distance, and what the consequences are, of the distance and the response. This was my major concern in The Cynical Society. It is central to “the civil society as if” strategy of the democratic opposition that developed around the old Soviet bloc, which I explored in Beyond Glasnost and After the Fall. And it is also central to how I think about the politics of small things and reinventing political culture, including many of my own public engagements: from my support of Barack Obama, to my understanding of my place of work, The New School for Social Research and my understanding of this experiment in publication, Deliberately Considered. I will explain in a series of posts. Today a bit more about Obama and his Nobel Lecture, and the alternative to cynicism.

I think principle is every bit as real as practice. Therefore, in my last post, I interpreted Obama’s lecture as I did. But I fear my position may not be fully understood. A friend on Facebook objected to the fact that I took the lecture seriously. “The Nobel Address marked the Great Turn Downward, back to Cold War policies a la Arthur Schlesinger Jr. et al. A big depressing moment for many of us.”

He sees many of the problems I see in Obama’s foreign policy, I assume, though he wasn’t specific. He is probably quite critical of the way the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have continued, critical of the drone policy, disappointed by the fact that Guantanamo prison is still open, and by Obama’s record on transparency and the way he has allowed concern for national security take priority over human and civil rights, at home and abroad. The clear line between Bush’s foreign policy and Obama’s, which both my friend and I sought, has not been forthcoming. And he draws a logical conclusion: “a great turn downward.”

My friend sees a familiar failure: militarism wrapped in an elegant intellectual package (the reference to Schlesinger). In the distance between perceived principled promise and practice, “the best and the brightest” seem to be at it again: sophisticated rationalization for militarism reminiscent of the Cold War and its ideology, He sees the distance between the ideal and the practice as proof that the professed ideal was a sham. Perhaps he even makes the cynical move that the fancy words are but a mask for narrow self-interest (election and re-election) serving the interest of the powerful (the neo-liberal corporate elite). Is Obama’s advancement just about serving the interests of the hegemonic corporate order? Is their advancement linked directly to his serving their interests. Are the two primary cynical observations I studied in The Cynical Society all there is? It’s not what you know but who you know, and they’re all in it for themselves.

I, when I wrote my book and now, judge the ideal more independently, connected to practice to be sure, but connected not only in a cynical way, but also connected to the possibility of critique, a way to empower critical practice. Cynicism is the opposite of criticism, a major theme of my book. And now I read the Nobel lecture with this starting point. The lecture provides a guide to critically appraise Obama and his policies, and it provides the grounds upon which to critically respond to the shortcomings of the policies. As I put it in the post: “The Nobel Laureate Obama as critic of President Obama.”

I see no reason to take the flawed actions of the Obama administration as being somehow more real than the professed complex ideals expressed in the Nobel lecture. Action and ideal interact in an important and consequential ways that suggest future possibility.

Yesterday I read a piece, “Obama’s Drone Debacle.” It reports that the drone policy has been more determined by career bureaucrats in the national security establishment than by the President and his White House. “It’s clear that the president and the attorney general both want more transparency,” says Matthew Miller, a former senior Justice Department official. “But the bureaucracy has once again thrown sand in the gears and slowed that down.” This does not relieve Obama of the responsibility for his policies, but it suggests an ongoing battle within the administration that may yield a change in direction. The article cynically highlights that Rand Paul outmaneuvered Obama in his filibuster of John Brennan’s nomination to lead the CIA. This is “Obama’s debacle.” The Nobel lecture reveals the thought behind possible change.

Am I again just apologizing for the politician I admire? Perhaps, but I think there is more to it than that. For even as I am critical with my friend of directions Obama has taken, I see a leader trying to move the public and not just making empty gestures of change. I see a complicated ideal being kept alive and shaping foreign policy to a degree, if not enough for my friend and others with similar criticisms. The U.S. surely is disengaging from the disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq more quickly with Obama, than we would have with either McCain or Romney. American foreign policy is moving away from extreme militarism that Obama’s Republican opponents proposed as a matter of principle. Principles matter.

And lastly the general point, without the ideal publicly visible, there is next to no chance that it will be acted upon. I saw and reported how this animated practice in the Polish underground. It explains why I think America is not only “the cynical society” but also a democratic society, simultaneously, with democratic ideals moving action, even as manipulation and cynicism are rampant. And more close to my intellectual home, it is why The New School for Social Research is a very special institution of higher education and scholarship, even when it has faced profound challenges and has been undermined by less than enlightened leadership for long periods of time. That will be the subject of my next “Principle and Practice” post.

In today’s “in depth” post, I use a close reading of Barack Obama’s Nobel Lecture to examine peace and the social condition. It is a continuation of a lifetime exploration. Over the years, I have been impressed by the specific promise and limitations of the force of arms and of non-violent collective action

When I was a young man, I tried to be a pacifist, as I reported here. I was strongly opposed to the war in Vietnam, didn’t want to take part, explored the possibility of being a conscientious objector, but perceived the limits of nonviolent resistance. I couldn’t convince myself that it was possible to effectively fight against Nazism without the force of arms. I couldn’t become a pacifist.

Yet, as an adult, and as an eyewitness to the successful democratic revolutions in Central Europe, I was just as impressed by the way non-violent action could be more effective than violence, seeing the success of my friends and colleagues in the so called velvet revolutions around the old Soviet bloc, as being greatly influenced by the character of their non-violent collective action. The non-violent democratic means had a way of constituting the end, imperfect, but nonetheless, truly functioning democracies. This insight informed my explorations of “the politics of small things” and “reinventing political culture.” in the midst of the disastrous “war on terrorism.”

The means have a way of determining the ends. This is a key proposition, which has informed my political reflections in recent years, concerning the transformation of Central Europe, and also concerning the attempted transformations in the Middle East and North Africa, and to politics of Occupy Wall Street. The proposition also informs my review and analysis here of President Obama’s Nobel Lecture (Obama, 2009) as an exploration of the topic of peace and the social condition. I think Obama confronted the complexity of the social condition, though the situation of his winning the prize was both awkward and rightly controversial from a variety of different points of view. The controversy reflects the complicated relationships between violence and non-violence, war and peace, and, ironically, given the depth of Obama’s speech, his response to the controversy have confirmed that Obama earned his prize. This is my tentative conclusion in my latest analysis of Barack Obama as the American storyteller-in-chief.

To read “Peace and the Social Condition: Barack Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize,” click here.

Obama’s Peace Prize was exciting, strange and provocative. There was political poetry and hope in it: the better part of America and its relationship with Europe and the world were being celebrated, as there was the hope that the dark side of American hegemony had passed. But there was also confusion: exactly why did Obama win the prize?

Obama’s critics saw in the prize confirmation that Obama was a cult figure, an eloquent player, but with no substance, winning the Nobel Prize for Peace before he accomplished anything on the global stage. Even his supporters were not sure exactly what to make of it. I was more convinced than most, but I understood my argument approving of his winning the Nobel Prize, published in Poland’s leading newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, as a provocation. Clearly, even Obama understood that there was a problem. As he noted in the opening of his lecture:

“I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated. (Laughter.) In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage. Compared to some of the giants of history who’ve received this prize – Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela – my accomplishments are slight.”

But he turned this to his advantage, at least in giving his speech. The speech became an exploration of the complex relationship between war and peace, as he put it: “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.” He further reflected upon the role of political leadership, particularly his. It was a speech about the social condition and peace and his confrontation with this.

Obama understood the larger issue. Although rightly appreciated for his dissent from the geo-political and military policies of his predecessor, and clearly more reluctant to engage in military aggression, less unilateral in his orientation and deeply critical of the war in Iraq from the beginning, all good reasons to identify him with peace, he was still the leader of the premier military power in the world.

“But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars.”

The leader of the global hegemon as the Nobel Peace Laureate – he understood that there is a problem and made this the topic of his lecture.

The dilemmas as he saw them in his lecture:

“I come here with an acute sense of the costs of armed conflict – filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other.”

He reviewed arguments for just wars, as he recognized that the need for such justification has been ignored for much of human history. Central values he identified were the fight for human rights and the struggle against human degradation, and also the need to minimize civilian causalities. But problems result. He observed:

“And while it’s hard to conceive of a cause more just than the defeat of the Third Reich and the Axis powers, World War II was a conflict in which the total number of civilians who died exceeded the number of soldiers who perished.”

He noted that real enemies continue, even with the demise of the totalitarian threats of the twentieth century:

“The world may no longer shudder at the prospect of war between two nuclear superpowers, but proliferation may increase the risk of catastrophe. Terrorism has long been a tactic, but modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale.”

And he drew the tragic observation:

“We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”

Obama’s opponents accused him of making vacuous promises in his first Presidential campaign. We hear in his lecture quite the opposite. He was confronting the central difficulty. The pursuit of peace often includes the willingness to engage in military struggle, but that means peace, as an ideal, will, therefore, not be realized.

Note: this paradox, in his cogent account, is not the result of some fundamental innate aggressive drive, and there is no need to posit evil or sin as the cause of the paradox. Obama shows that we are locked into a dilemma. Peace includes the fight for rights and dignity, but in engaging in the fight, peace can and often is undermined. Aggressive and sinful drives do not explain this. It is woven into the fabric of social interaction. But Obama’s response to this suggests why his Nobel Prize may have had justification.

Meeting the Challenge

He started with humility, trying to stand on the shoulders of giants:

“I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war. What I do know is that meeting these challenges will require the same vision, hard work, and persistence of those men and women who acted so boldly decades ago [referring here to the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights]. And it will require us to think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace.”

The humility is based on his sense of who he is and how he came to be delivering his lecture:

“I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: ‘Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.’ As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there’s nothing weak – nothing passive – nothing naïve – in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.”

Yet, he also knows this is in tension with his present responsibilities:

“But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. 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 may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”

Informed by President John F. Kennedy, he explored the possibilities for achieving peace not through a radical reform of human nature, but “a gradual evolution of human institutions.”

“To begin with, I believe that all nations – strong and weak alike – must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I – like any head of state – reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation. Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to standards, international standards, strengthens those who do, and isolates and weakens those who don’t.”

In light of recent events, specifically: the failure to close the prison at Guantanamo, the drone program, secret operations and the like, these words seem to stand as an indictment of Obama’s own policies. I think the remainder of the speech confirms this. Obama’s words stand as the basis of criticism of his own deeds, as his deeds suggests possible answers to the criticism informed by his words.

“Furthermore, America – in fact, no nation – can insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don’t, our actions appear arbitrary and undercut the legitimacy of future interventions, no matter how justified.”

He understands that there have to be rules governing the conduct of military force in order for that force to have any chance to provide the basis of peace. Yet, he oversees and expands the unilateral use of drone warfare without clearly articulated and generally agreed upon rules of this deadly military game.

The Nobel Laureate Obama as critic of President Obama:

“Where force is necessary, we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct. And even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, I believe the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different from those whom we fight. That is a source of our strength. That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America’s commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor – we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it’s easy, but when it is hard.”

But the Nobel Laureate would not be surprised by the President’s actions as he observed: “Even those of us with the best of intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us.” He presents guidance about how he should proceed, suggesting specific ways that we can build a just and lasting peace, with the different ways built upon a single vision. He explained in detail his position but then summarized:

“Agreements among nations. Strong institutions. Support for human rights. Investments in development. All these are vital ingredients in bringing about the evolution that President Kennedy spoke about. And yet, I do not believe that we will have the will, the determination, the staying power, to complete this work without something more – and that’s the continued expansion of our moral imagination; an insistence that there’s something irreducible that we all share.”

… if we lose that faith – if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace – then we lose what’s best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass.

Like generations have before us, we must reject that future. As Dr. King said at this occasion so many years ago, “I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the ‘isness’ of man’s present condition makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal ‘oughtness’ that forever confronts him.”

Obama’s position is nuanced, thoughtful and political (in both the good and the bad sense). He identifies with radical peace advocates, those who present a principled opposition to violence, but as a responsible politician he cannot live by their principles alone. Thus, the tension between his stated ideals and his policies.

There are two ways of interpreting this. Either he is a hypocrite or a statesman. He is able to depict ideals in his speech, and to declare commitment to their pursuit, but he is also committed to dealing with difficult realities in consequential ways in his actions.  How we judge the relationship between the ideal and the reality is a matter of political opinion, more or less informed.

Some are sure that Obama’s Peace Prize was undeserved and that his subsequent actions confirmed this. Not only did he do little before he won the prize. Subsequently, he has not acted as a Nobel Peace Laureate should. He escalated the war in Afghanistan. The U.S. drone program has been greatly expanding during his watch, without clear justification and without a public specification of its limits. And under his leadership the U.S. played a key role in the war in Libya. In many ways, he has continued Bush’s policies and directions.

Others will counter that Obama actually has helped de-militarize American foreign policy, winding down two wars. He has publicly and clearly affirmed U.S. commitments to respect the Geneva Agreements and ended the American use of torture, so called “enhanced interrogation.” And under Obama’s leadership, American military engagements have been multilateral and debated in and supported by the United Nations. This was noteworthy Libya, and is being repeated right now in Mali. His policy of “leadership from behind” which is much ridiculed by his militaristic critics, certainly appears as a step in the direction of a more peaceful world order. The term refers to a change in the use of American force in the world. It suggests that the U.S. will not use military force on its own without international support.  Rather than imposing American will with America’s overwhelming power, he seeks to embed American power within internationally legitimate concerted actions.

I actually appreciate both this support and criticism of Obama. Both are consistent with Obama’s lecture. On the positive side, in a threatening world, he has somehow managed to work for the ideal of peace, but he has also fallen short of the very ideals that he has publicly embraced. His lecture illuminates both the criticism and the appreciation, worthy of careful consideration by those concerned with the issue of peace in our times. The commander in chief of the world’s most powerful military force struggling with the dilemmas of the power at his disposal, an intriguing exercise, worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, as he confronts the social condition.

Goldfarb, Jeffrey C., December 3, 2012, “Lincoln:Art and Politics,” Deliberately Considered.

Goldfarb, Jeffrey C., December 13, 2012, “The Social Condition,” Deliberately Considered.

Makiya,, Kanan, 1998, Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq, University of California Press.

Michels, Robert, 2008, Political Parties, A Sociological Study of The Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, Kessinger Publishing, LLC (originally 1915).

Obama, Barack, 2009, “A Just and Lasting Peace,” Nobel Lecture.