Playing the cards he was dealt

We all have to play the cards we are dealt.

High principles and hypotheticals are fine as far as they go.

Our guess is that Barack Obama the professor would have delivered a very different speech in Oslo at the Nobel ceremonies last week. But he isn't a professor. He's president, and the way our system is constructed that also makes him the civilian commander of our military.

In many ways, the job itself is as full of inherent contradictions as the philosophy the president was trying to articulate. Civilian commander of the military? Military forces used as an instrument to build peace?

Talk about contradictions and complexity.

But the speech was both thoughtful and reassuring. It demonstrated serious thought behind government action. It recognized paradox. It acknowledged reality.

Reaction from folks involved in conservative "advocacy journalism" was as distorted as ever. These are the same people who nailed President Obama for "apologizing," "bowing," and kissing up to our enemies. Those pronouncements were a gross oversimplification, and the comments on the Nobel speech were just as oversimplified.

Reaction from the left was equally off the mark.

Despite what you may have heard on talk radio, this wasn't a case of a "maturing" president suddenly seeing the wisdom of GOP policy. And despite what you may have heard from the anti-war left, this wasn't a president betraying his core principles.

It was, instead, a case of presidential policy being articulated in a way that belied the earlier distortions and misperceptions.

In other words, this is a nuanced policy aimed at addressing complicated problems.

No one who paid close attention to candidate Obama during the campaign should have been surprised by the Nobel speech.

The man, in essence, is a pragmatist, playing the cards he's been dealt. When it comes to foreign policy, his closest equivalents would be JFK, the first President Bush, and Eisenhower.

Will his Afghanistan/Pakistan policy work? We don't know.

But we do know that it represents a far more coherent policy than our leadership had in Vietnam or Iraq.

We are not thrilled by the prospect of more troops in Afghanistan. But we are comfortable with the idea of those troops focusing on protection of the civilian population and increasing the stability of government.

That's different from waging war, and because the president has set a withdrawal timetable it's also different from occupation.

This hand has yet to be played out, but so far we think our president is on the right track. - J.R.[[In-content Ad]]