Review of President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech
A fear of assassination runs through Barack Obama's latest collection.
The clash of literary traditions, the forking paths to which seemingly disparate strains tend, is an ongoing concern for the subtler poets of this generation. Of these, none combines quiet and noise more artfully than Barack Obama. In his newest volume, he directly confronts the contradictions literary forbears have left for him, like landmines in his road, and asks incisive questions of his own role as custodian of traditions, and finds, in the course of a bold and anguished exploration, a renewed freedom to create and control his own reality in the face of the other, the ever-contrary “real world.”
Informing his quest for self-discovery is the need to balance the demotic tradition of such radical peace advocates as past Nobel Peace Prize winners Gandhi, King, Mandela, etc. with the more baroque stylings of his immediate predecessor, George W. Bush. Gandhi was of the historical moment where it was possible to say, without irony, "I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent." Bush, forced by circumstance to take a more nuanced approach, could only hint at his real themes. We only heard delicious echoes, such as when he said in 2007 "the same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th."
For Obama, reconciling these apparently divergent approaches to the questions of war and peace, reality and perception, sincerity and irony is merely a matter of naming, of unpacking the different perspectives on the same central human dilemma. In Obama's programme, he'd invite Bush and Gandhi into the same room to have a beer and chat, and take it upon himself to lecture Gandhi on his lack of respect for the manly tradition that Bush represents, just as he tweaks President Bush that maybe he is a little too much like Gandhi in not accepting the total domination of war over all human affairs, thoughts and history. Obama’s moderate approach, however, is not a split-the-difference world view of a mere politician, it is a bold and poetic attempt to rewrite human history and ethical philosophy with a few well-turned phrases:
War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease - the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences.
Employing Derridian notions of différance, he critiques the facile notion that war and peace are epistemological distinctions. Ever the Hegelian syncretist, Obama fashions the real distinction as not between war and peace, but between the “glory” of war and its necessity:
So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly irreconcilable truths - that war is sometimes necessary, and war is at some level an expression of human feelings.
With perpetual human conflict as the only universal truth, it follows that the most efficient way to proceed is to do the difficult work of learning how to make war. This is the heart of Obama's speech. As a true military historian, he understands the biggest threat to armies is the power religion can wield in unifying people around a cause:
Most dangerously, we see it in the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam, and who attacked my country from Afghanistan. These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded. But they remind us that no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint - no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or even a person of one's own faith. Such a warped view of religion is not just incompatible with the concept of peace, but the purpose of faith - for the one rule that lies at the heart of every major religion is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
One may quibble that this basic statement of human values is dependent on a complete fabrication of historical reality vis a vis Islam and Afghanistan (unless one is willing, with certain post-absurdist schools, to conflate Islam with opium cultivation). But his generation has taught us that assertions need only be backed by perception, not actual evidence. It is simply the way he feels and needs no further justification. In this he gives homage to the American Protestant tradition, which bravely holds that history does not exist except as it is understood by a solitary individual. That by itself is not particularly notable, but the fact that this individual is the President of the United States makes it compelling, and in fact uniting.
In his intellectual rigor concerning warmaking, Obama reverses the normal calculus that war leads to hunger, disease and suffering to claim the exact opposite, hunger and suffering leads to war. He extends this line of thinking to global warming:
That is why the world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, famine and mass displacement that will fuel more conflict for decades. For this reason, it is not merely scientists and activists who call for swift and forceful action - it is military leaders in my country and others who understand that our common security hangs in the balance.
He may be thoroughly confused on the science of global warming, but he is dead-on in understanding that the fear provoked by the specter of widespread climate change is a great opportunity for further militarization.
In such a context, it is Dr. Martin Luther King and his philosophy of peace that is the true threat:
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.
We honor [armies] not as makers of war, but as wagers of peace.
He avoids here “the satisfying purity of indignation,” for he is fully aware of the entitlement given to him by Dr. King because of Marxio-racial hegemony structures:
As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life's work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence.
But he must make a clean break:
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 is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism - it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.
The poignancy of this cannot be overstated. He shares a prize with King, whose vision of the autonomy and dignity of each individual in the face of seemingly insurmountable social pressures seems directly at odds with Obama’s current role as the chief empowerer of agents of chaos (such as Hitler and al Qaeda) to further the ambitions of the financial elites he serves. While King was free to condemn such things as evil, Obama must simultaneously serve them and condemn them. This is a far more difficult and noble role to play, and it allows Obama the freedom to indulge in a pointed criticism of his distinguished father figure:
The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible.
We see the same insouciance before power in his choice of venue to make this speech. Understanding Norwegians are people for whom even discussions of teenage hissy-fits or the proper role of government are too painful to be broached except in the softest tones, Obama pokes boisterous fun at his audience by spending the bulk of his “peace” speech as a full-throated, go-for-the-jugular love poem to the God of War, with a zest that would make Metternich blush:
Even as we make difficult decisions about going to war, we must also think clearly about how we fight it…
Terrorism has long been a tactic, but modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale…
Somewhere today, in the here and now, a soldier sees he's outgunned but stands firm to keep the peace…
In beating the drums so incessantly for the greater beauty of war in front of an audience disinclined to such thinking, he makes a poignant hymn against the terrors of definition. Following in the steps of John Lennon, who, when accepting the MBE, famously sneered “for those of you in the cheap seats I'd like you to clap your hands to this one; the rest of you can just rattle your jewelry,” Obama challenges the smug paternalism of the Norwegians by saying, in effect “I shit on your Nobel Peace Prize, and I leave my feces behind to give you something warm to contemplate.”
This is not to say his work is flawless. At times he’s derivative, sounding like a George Bush mini-me in his mendacious defense of fascism:
The world rallied around America after the 9/11 attacks, and continues to support our efforts in Afghanistan, because of the horror of those senseless attacks and the recognized principle of self-defense. Likewise, the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait - a consensus that sent a clear message to all about the cost of aggression.
At times, his flexibility with the truth veers into lunatic surrealism:
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 that 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 those ideals by upholding them not just when it is easy, but when it is hard.
Obama is sophisticated enough to understand that no educated reader believes a word of this. His larger point, here and elsewhere, is that he is strong enough internally to create a reality in his mind completely at odds with the world as it is, even though he bears the awesome responsibility of being the President of the United States, who many claim is the most powerful person in the actual world of fact. Here, the pathos and the zeal of his irony is a bit too heavy-handed for this reader's tastes, compared to the subtlety of phrases such as:
For peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict.
This radical redefinition of the traditional concept of peace takes it out of the grasp of fashionable New Age shibboleths like “evil has no true nature” and re-aligns it with traditional Christian thinking. War is, in this view, a synecdoche for the devil, who is always lurking, tempting, no matter how much one feels joy or love for another.
Obama has been praised often for his rhythm and pacing, and we see this work marvelously as the following passage unfolds:
America will always be a voice for those aspirations that are universal. We will bear witness to the quiet dignity of reformers like Aung Sang Suu Kyi; to the bravery of Zimbabweans who cast their ballots in the face of beatings; to the hundreds of thousands who have marched silently through the streets of Iran.
This straight-faced ribbing of Americans (who, of course, have no clue about any of these things) is immediately followed by the most poignant line of the whole speech:
It is telling that the leaders of these governments fear the aspirations of their own people more than the power of any other nation.
And immediately one is given to peer into the dark heart of the American soul. For as much as Obama fears being assassinated by the banking establishment, he must balance that with a fear of being dismembered in a peasant revolt as well. Even though he is the President of the United States, he feels somehow naked to the rage of a people who do not even know who Aung Sang Suu Kyi is!
Berthold Brecht wrote “One cannot write poems about trees when the forest is full of police.” Obama’s recent work reconfirms that he is one of the important voices speaking power to truth in contemporary American poetry. Although his work is assuredly of our moment, its contents will undoubtedly be scrutinized for generations to come. This reviewer feels very privileged to be given the opportunity to witness the full flowering of a unique imaginative voice as he displaces and effaces our comfortable suburban notions of reality and identity.
