Abe Greenwald: Obama Goes Neocon in Norway
[Abe Greenwald is policy adviser and online editor with the Foreign Policy Initiative in Washington.]
During his Nobel Peace Prize–acceptance speech today, Barack Obama said, “For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world.” He cited the historical example of Adolf Hitler and the present-day example of al-Qaeda. This rounds out a year that has seen a succession of real-world object lessons that bear out the claims of the intellectual tendency known as neoconservatism: Iran has rejected a torrent of American obsequiousness and will not be charmed out of pursuing nuclear weapons; its population, meanwhile, is clamoring for a robust American defense of democracy; a far-left American president has determined that a significant surge of American troops is the only way to win a faltering war effort in a far-off Muslim land; that same president has acknowledged that “we’ve achieved hard-earned milestones in Iraq” and is using the basis of those achievements as the model for his new ramp-up strategy.
In these, three convictions often linked with neoconservative thought have been affirmed:
1. No matter how technologically advanced and interconnected the world becomes, there will be bad actors, and their obstinacy will remain intact. Every regime cannot be made to acquiesce through appeals to common humanity. Some can only be made pliant through threat and, if necessary, force.
2. Populations living under despotic leadership are at all times engaged in a desperate struggle for liberty. Moreover, these populations look to America, the world’s longest-running constitutional democracy, for moral and material support. All the shallow resentment of the arrogant “world police” evaporates when truncheons start coming down on the heads of dissidents. America needs to be there when support is requested.
3. A willingness to apply overwhelming and innovative military force remains critical to America’s wars — regardless of their asymmetric natures. Similarly, America cannot afford to abandon or wind down her military efforts as a response to solely temporal considerations. Short wars have to be won; long wars, more so.
While recent developments in global conflicts have authenticated these notions, there remains a fundamental tension between their logical policy implications and the foundational political bearing of Barack Obama. The president has not yet implemented a “phase II” approach — that is, an effective sanctions regime — to motivate an intractable Iran; he has not offered unwavering support to Iranian democrats; he has not spoken plainly of victory in Afghanistan; he has purposefully created an air of confusion over his commitment there; and he has not embraced American success in Iraq.
Why not?
The answer is no less connected to neoconservatism than are the international realities that now give rise to the question. Irving Kristol said, almost too memorably, “A neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality.” With that definition in mind, an eminent national-security personage put this perfectly phrased query to me over the summer: “Is Obama too arrogant to get mugged by reality?”
An excellent question. What the president calls his “philosophy of persistence” looks increasingly like the vice of conceit. The new White House imperiousness explains Obama’s inability to offer full-throated praise for the Iraq War — an undertaking he staunchly opposed. It also explains his devotion to de-fanging Iran through the voodoo of his personal allure (and to his correspondent obtuseness on Iran’s democrats).
It does not explain his purposefully jumbled message of surge and recoil in Afghanistan. On the uncompromising reality of war, Obama has sought a particularly Obamaesque solution: compromise.
The president has been partially mugged. Reality has accosted him and shaken him down for concessions, but it is only a temporary arrangement. Obama’s “persistence” is, for the time being, intact. That explains the contradictions contained within his war speech.
However, by invoking evil in his peace speech, he has obligated himself to a more decisive course of action and perhaps a new moral seriousness. For there is a deeper neoconservative concern that serves as the foundation upon which the architecture of democracy promotion and hawkishness are built. This is the belief in good and evil, reality’s parting gift to the mugged. Sometimes thought of as a quaint and outdated proposal, the assertion that virtue and wickedness are real is at the heart of neoconservative support for American power in the world. The Taliban — which beheads innocents, chops off voters’ hands, and subjects women to lives of brutal servitude — is evil. So, too, are Iran’s mullahs, who sentence teenagers to hangings for the “crime” of homosexuality. Defeating these parties is its own reward. As evil is now part of Barack Obama’s war lexicon, he must make this point, and he must speak of victory. For once evil is invoked, compromise is off the table. Evil demands defeat...
Read entire article at National Review
During his Nobel Peace Prize–acceptance speech today, Barack Obama said, “For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world.” He cited the historical example of Adolf Hitler and the present-day example of al-Qaeda. This rounds out a year that has seen a succession of real-world object lessons that bear out the claims of the intellectual tendency known as neoconservatism: Iran has rejected a torrent of American obsequiousness and will not be charmed out of pursuing nuclear weapons; its population, meanwhile, is clamoring for a robust American defense of democracy; a far-left American president has determined that a significant surge of American troops is the only way to win a faltering war effort in a far-off Muslim land; that same president has acknowledged that “we’ve achieved hard-earned milestones in Iraq” and is using the basis of those achievements as the model for his new ramp-up strategy.
In these, three convictions often linked with neoconservative thought have been affirmed:
1. No matter how technologically advanced and interconnected the world becomes, there will be bad actors, and their obstinacy will remain intact. Every regime cannot be made to acquiesce through appeals to common humanity. Some can only be made pliant through threat and, if necessary, force.
2. Populations living under despotic leadership are at all times engaged in a desperate struggle for liberty. Moreover, these populations look to America, the world’s longest-running constitutional democracy, for moral and material support. All the shallow resentment of the arrogant “world police” evaporates when truncheons start coming down on the heads of dissidents. America needs to be there when support is requested.
3. A willingness to apply overwhelming and innovative military force remains critical to America’s wars — regardless of their asymmetric natures. Similarly, America cannot afford to abandon or wind down her military efforts as a response to solely temporal considerations. Short wars have to be won; long wars, more so.
While recent developments in global conflicts have authenticated these notions, there remains a fundamental tension between their logical policy implications and the foundational political bearing of Barack Obama. The president has not yet implemented a “phase II” approach — that is, an effective sanctions regime — to motivate an intractable Iran; he has not offered unwavering support to Iranian democrats; he has not spoken plainly of victory in Afghanistan; he has purposefully created an air of confusion over his commitment there; and he has not embraced American success in Iraq.
Why not?
The answer is no less connected to neoconservatism than are the international realities that now give rise to the question. Irving Kristol said, almost too memorably, “A neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality.” With that definition in mind, an eminent national-security personage put this perfectly phrased query to me over the summer: “Is Obama too arrogant to get mugged by reality?”
An excellent question. What the president calls his “philosophy of persistence” looks increasingly like the vice of conceit. The new White House imperiousness explains Obama’s inability to offer full-throated praise for the Iraq War — an undertaking he staunchly opposed. It also explains his devotion to de-fanging Iran through the voodoo of his personal allure (and to his correspondent obtuseness on Iran’s democrats).
It does not explain his purposefully jumbled message of surge and recoil in Afghanistan. On the uncompromising reality of war, Obama has sought a particularly Obamaesque solution: compromise.
The president has been partially mugged. Reality has accosted him and shaken him down for concessions, but it is only a temporary arrangement. Obama’s “persistence” is, for the time being, intact. That explains the contradictions contained within his war speech.
However, by invoking evil in his peace speech, he has obligated himself to a more decisive course of action and perhaps a new moral seriousness. For there is a deeper neoconservative concern that serves as the foundation upon which the architecture of democracy promotion and hawkishness are built. This is the belief in good and evil, reality’s parting gift to the mugged. Sometimes thought of as a quaint and outdated proposal, the assertion that virtue and wickedness are real is at the heart of neoconservative support for American power in the world. The Taliban — which beheads innocents, chops off voters’ hands, and subjects women to lives of brutal servitude — is evil. So, too, are Iran’s mullahs, who sentence teenagers to hangings for the “crime” of homosexuality. Defeating these parties is its own reward. As evil is now part of Barack Obama’s war lexicon, he must make this point, and he must speak of victory. For once evil is invoked, compromise is off the table. Evil demands defeat...