Obama Nobel Peace Speech Analysis

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When President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the United States was in the odd predicament of fighting two wars. Obama noted the apparent strangeness of this, but didn’t outright say war was bad or unnecessary. Instead, Obama claimed that war was in fact necessary in order to attain lasting peace, (3). He stated that while non-violent intervention is ultimately the desired solution instead of armed conflict, it is sometimes impossible to secure peace from non-violent actions, (3). He further stated that in order for lasting peace to be attained, war must be fought justly and that peace must encompass all rights, not just civil or political, (7). In Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Speech, he argued that just and lasting peace cannot …show more content…
Obama stated, “A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms,” (3). Obama, however, was not discounting the legitimacy of the work of Gandhi or Dr. King, (3), but instead reasoned that there is a point where non-violent intervention no longer works; especially when faced with an enemy unwilling to surrender to a unified international community. Obama continued to state, “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,” (3). Obama made this statement in order to convey the importance of recognizing how much one idea can accomplish. Non-violence is ideally the answer, but not necessarily the one needed now. Ultimately it is the goal for war and violence to be obsolete, but as Obama stated, “We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes,” (3), this goal is far from being attained. Obama reasoned that while peace is the ultimate goal of any war, and desirably that peace would be attained through non-violence, currently, wars must be fought and those wars must be conducted justly and with a clear mandate of just conduct,

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