Turning a Lemon into Lemonade

"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 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."

With those words, Obama aligned himself with conservatives, who believe in the fallibility of human nature and in an enduring moral order. At the same time, he left room for moral conundrum: the difficulty of reconciling two seemingly irreconcilable truths -- "that war is sometimes necessary, and war at some level is an expression of human folly."

Obama didn't mention his favorite philosopher, Reinhold Niebuhr, but Niebuhr's thoughts were woven throughout. Like Niebuhr, who during World War II abandoned his pacifist-liberal roots to become an advocate for war, Obama has left the comfortable world of consensus-building to become a war president....

Though the Oslo speech follows others that have inspired even his critics, this was Obama's most presidential. It marked the moment when Obama became a leader, defined as an individual who chooses the hard road because he believes it is the right one.

His Nobel Prize may have been all the things critics have listed, but Obama's response was a triumphant expression of American values and character.  [Emphasis added]

So writes Kathleen Parker, WaPo columnist and Obama conservative.

As I mentioned in my reaction to the Speech, Obama used the logic of Christian moral realism most often identified as Niebuhrian, after Christian moral theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.  Giving Obama his due, that is quite intellectually sophisticated.  I would love to know where he gained his familiarity with Niebuhr's thought.  It's not exactly common in the college curriculum these days.  And to my knowledge, Obama didn't take much religion in college.

Now that George Will, another anti-Palin conservative, has turned his back on the Afghan adventure, I'll be interested to see what he thinks of Obama's justifying our Afghanistan war in the Nobel Speech.  I'll let you know.

Anyway, it seems that Obama has taken what was a lemon (an unmerited Peace Prize) and turned it into political lemonade (entree to the Right).  Very shrewd.