Tam Hunt: The Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech Obama Should Have Given
http://www.noozhawk.com/noozhawk/article/122009_tam_hunt_the_nobel_prize_acceptance_speech_obama_should_have_given/
By Tam Hunt
A true path to peace is a world of shared power and responsibilities — and the immediate end to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Distinguished Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Citizens of America, and Citizens of the World:
I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility. It is an award that speaks to our highest aspirations — that for all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate. Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.
Justice and peace are irrevocably intertwined. Some would say they are synonymous. Too often in practice they are not, because of the imbalances of power that prevail in the world today. All informed and conscientious people would agree that peace is the preferred state of affairs, within nations and between nations. Nonetheless, we cannot ignore the fact that we, as human beings, come from an often brutish past, vestiges of a time when nature was indeed red in tooth and claw.
But times change. And people change. I stand before you, and the world, as a testament to change. I stand before you as a testament to the nonviolent struggles of my forefathers. It is only through the tireless, loving and peaceful actions of the civil rights movement in America and other countries that I could have earned the privilege to lead the world’s last remaining superpower. I will not — I cannot — forget the debts I owe to those who preceded me.
Martin Luther King reminded us that “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.”
There are many who say the nonviolent ideals of Martin Luther King or Gandhi are simply not practical in a world where the use of force is still so common, in a world where America clearly still has many enemies. They say that America must be willing to use force to protect our nation and to protect our ideals. What these critics miss is the reasonable middle ground that respects our ideals and allows us to survive and thrive in an often bewildering and dangerous world. We can follow a foreign policy that lives up to the ideals of King and Gandhi, while still remaining a strong nation. We can, and we must.
I offer today a hard truth. It is a truth that must be said and I can see no better stage upon which to say these words than this one.
America has over-reached. We have over-reached our ideals. We have over-reached the defensive mandate that 9/11 brought upon us. We have over-reached our economic strength in terms of our massive military expenditures that rival the combined spending of all other nations combined.
America, it is time to pursue a more humble foreign policy and to work vigorously toward a world of shared power and responsibilities.
With the arrival of China and India on the world stage of regional powers, we see the future. These great nations have joined Japan, the United States and Europe as thriving centers of commerce and culture. The 21st century will not be dominated by one country, as America dominated the 20th. The 21st century will be the century of international cooperation and mutual respect. This is the future, whether we like it or not.
It is time then — for moral, military, economic and geopolitical reasons — for America to correct our over-reach. This is why I ordered the responsible end to both the war in Iraq shortly after I took office and, just a week ago, the war in Afghanistan. There is no military solution in either of these nations. I repeat: there is no military solution in these nations.
We will, however, remain engaged in these nations. We will support our friends and work tirelessly toward creation of functioning democracies in these two nations. But we will no longer lead with the mighty but blunt hammer of military action, in these nations or elsewhere. We will, instead, lead with the power of our ideals and our example.
We will not leave our great nation open to attack. We will shore up our domestic defenses, using all legal tools within our grasp. We will remain vigilant and will vigorously pursue our enemies abroad, in cooperation with our allies. We will use existing law enforcement mechanisms and international treaties to achieve these goals, not the unilateral military or covert action we have too often practiced.
Is there a connection between the spiritually guided idealism of King and Gandhi and our foreign policy? I answer with a resounding “yes.” That connection is peace. By relentlessly striving toward peace, we live the universal spiritual teachings. There is no peace in the barrel of a gun, no matter how finely we rhetorically slice our arguments. There is only death in the barrel of a gun, which breeds more violence and more death. And so on.
Through the changes I have outlined, we will truly be putting King’s ideals into action. This is the reasonable middle ground that recognizes the better angels of our nature. This is the reasonable middle ground that we must adopt, for the many reasons I’ve described. This is the reasonable middle ground that will allow peoples of all nations to strive toward better and more just lives. This is the reasonable middle ground that is the path to peace.
— President Barack Obama, 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate
— Tam Hunt is a lecturer at UCSB.
http://www.noozhawk.com/noozhawk/article/122009_tam_hunt_the_nobel_prize_acceptance_speech_obama_should_have_given/