Barack Obama is in Oslo, Norway this morning, and he accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace and gave a speech:
President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize today by asking “difficult questions” about war and peace, while acknowledging he is a first-year president and a superpower commander-in-chief who is sending more troops to Afghanistan.
“I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated,” Obama said during his acceptance speech in Oslo, Norway. “In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage.”
The president devoted most of his 40-minute address to the ancient but ever-present twin challenges of war and peace.
There are can and have been “just wars,” Obama said, but world leaders should also work for peaceful alternatives that can include tough economic sanctions, negotiating with enemies, and eliminating global poverty.
“We can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace,” Obama said. “We can do that, for that is the story of human progress; that is the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth.”
Obama expressed “deep gratitude and great humility” for the Nobel Peace Prize, which “speaks to out highest aspirations … For all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate. Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.”
When war is necessary, the U.S. and others should abide by a code of conduct, Obama said. He drew applause when he mentioned his decision to ban torture of prisoners and to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war,” Obama said.
Obama is the fourth U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He cited one of his predecessors, Woodrow Wilson, honored in 1919 for creating the League of Nations even though the Senate rejected membership in it.
The other presidential winners were Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and Jimmy Carter in 2002, more than two decades after his term in office.
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