At its heart, Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech reveals that even this most eloquent and reflective of presidents cannot find a new vocabulary to describe America’s relationship with, and role in, the world.
The reason is clear: such a vocabulary cannot exist in the geopolitical framework in which Obama, whatever his intentions, feels constrained to operate.
Instead, the myth of American exceptionalism must be reasserted; it is the only way the president, and the American people with him, can imagine that the US will not ultimately suffer the same fate as the empires before it; that the iron laws of imperial rise and decay, and the violence attending both, simply will not apply to it.
Only then can it be imagined that the “evil in the world” has not touched us; that the “imperfections of man and the limits of reason,” as the president described them, apply to other men and ideas, and not to ours.
Only then can Obama mention human rights seven times in his speech while leaving unsaid what everyone sitting before him well knew: that US aid and support for regimes that systematically violate these rights would continue the next morning uninterrupted.
via Al Jazeera English – Focus – The end of American exceptionalism.
A scathing yet relevant critique from Mark LeVine of President Obama’s speech in acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize. The whole article is worth reading.
Only someone like Obama could present a speech that justifies war while accepting a peace prize…
What are your thoughts on the critique of the speech?
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