What would Thomas Jefferson have said?

Today I took the time to watch Pres. Obama's eulogy all the way through. It certainly will go down as one of the great American speeches.

On the other hand, it felt odd to have the Emperor lecturing us on theology of Grace. If he had been talking about the evils of icons, just at the time when a caliphate is being established, we might have to wonder if we were on our way back to the 7th century.

Image: Paine, not Jefferson -- Mr. Age of Reason

Thought for the 4th

From TomDispatch.com, on the non-withdrawal from Afghanistan:

"It’s increasingly apparent that our disastrous wars are, as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kerry recently admitted, “unsustainable.”  After all, just the cost of providing air conditioning to U.S. personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan -- $20 billion a year -- is more than NASA’s total budget."

Update: The more I think about this the more I realize that what I said once is literally true: the USA could have built a new world on Mars but settled instead for blowing up Iraq.

The end of American exceptionalism

Mark LeVine says:

The awarding of the Peace Prize to Obama reads like a desperate attempt to resuscitate the discredited idea of a "Great Man" of history ushering in a new era. It is an understandable fantasy, given the magnitude of the problems the world confronts.

But it distracts from the reality that it will be movements from below, however imperfect and irrational they can be, that will create, in Obama's words, "the world that ought to be," not leaders from above, however audacious their rhetoric.

In that regard, perhaps the most historically significant aspect of Obama's speech is its irrelevance on the ground.

Around the world people who once looked to the US for inspiration or support are taking matters into their own hands. No one is waiting for the US to save or even support them anymore.

More here.

Obama's Nobel Speech and Just War theory

Matthew Gabriele at Virginia Tech, who knows a thing or two about Crusading ideology, has a great analysis of Obama's Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

It's a fascinating speech in many ways. Agree or disagree on its merits, it's a learned speech -- one that understands its subject and that subject's history. All in all, it's a speech that some might say is positively medieval. I don't throw that term around lightly.

President Obama: just another post-WWII president, late antique Roman bishop, or the new Pope Urban II? If those were the choices, which would you opt for?

More on the war

Yes, there's a war on -- more than one!

Juan Cole at his most optimistic has an article in Salon,
Obama's foreign policy report card.

Matthew Hoh, an American official and ex-Marine with extensive experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, resigns. Why? The war in Afghanistan makes no sense. See his letter of resignation and the Washington Post article describing his background.

Obama's Nobel

When something big (or at least noisy) like this happens, I don't feel obliged to add an opinion that has already been expressed, more or less.

However, if anyone actually cares what I as an individual think, here are two posts that are close to my take:

Juan Cole, Obama as Nobelist, Obama as game-changer.

Nashville fan at Daily Kos, Nobel Shock shows America oblivious to its reign of terror.

Image: The Nobel Peace Center in Oslo.