The speech is no masterpiece. It begins by Mr. Obama laying claim to the virtue of humility which he does not have. It is wholly Bush-like in its laying claim to being the Commander-in-Chief, certainly an ego enhancer, as well as in claiming that we are joined by 42 other countries, a spin so wild as to be a lie. There's no difficult question about the relationship between war and peace. War is _never_ a way to peace. The dawn of history does question the morality of war. Cain is damned for killing Abel. The "just war" theory is wholly debunked by proportionality: in the case of Superpower America attacking nations with no navy, air force, or army. WWII was not a just war and it did not create peace. The silence on the battlefields when the bombs stop is not peace. America did not lead the world in constructing an architecture to keep the peace. We have violated almost every principle to which we subscribed, including "justifying" torture and the nuclear annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The cold war did not end with the Berlin Wall's destruction. Beck/Palin/Hannity/Limbaugh/Lou Dobbs/Bill O'Reilly continue to wage the cold war daily inside America. Invoking Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s name and a quotation saying the exact opposite of what Mr. Obama is saying is wholly specious, "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones." And then Mr. Obama claims the opposite to be true: that we "will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified." Evil does exist in the world; however to claim that non-violence could not have halted Hitler's armies is incorrect. Had Franz Jägerstätter led thousands to refuse to serve as he did, no war. "What if they gave a war and nobody came"? "There is no way to peace; peace is the way." It is a lie to claim that we have underwritten global security for more than six decades by creating and maintaining the military/industrial complex. We have assassinated, subverted, destabalized, and invaded so that "democracy" would "take hold in places like the Balkans." We lay democracy in its grave to have our American oligarchs repeatedly disdain the will of the people. F-14's and Abrams tanks, nuclear bombs and cluster bombs, uranium-coated bullets and Predator drones and other horrific instruments of war do NOT "have a role to play in preserving the peace." It is a lie to say they do. Mr. Obama and America's whole "support our troops" propaganda claims "the soldier's courage and sacrifice is full of glory." The truth was set in bas-relief by calling Horace's Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori a lie. If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin, If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs Bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old lie. . . And to say that "the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait" is also wholly specious when we consider not only the encouragement but also the military and financial support Saddam received from the United States in that invasion. If any nation has failed to "follow the rules of the road" to war, it is certainly us. It is we who have repeatedly violated the Geneva Conventions, especially in our invasions and occupations in the Middle East. The way of peace, active non-violent resistance, is not "inaction." Our soldiers are not "wagers of peace." They kick down doors to people's homes, rape the girls, kill unarmed drivers who don't obey commands given in a foreign tongue, shoot taxi-drivers in the back with 50mm howitzer shells, bomb people starved for fuel to explode a stolen fuel truck, attack wedding parties and funeral gatherings. Certainly we all remember Mr. Bush declaring like Mr. Obama declared: I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America's commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions. It is the height of hypocrisy to claim "sanctions must exact a real price" while ignoring that the people sanctions kill are the women and the children. "Intransigence must be met with increased pressure" Mr. Obama claims, the pressure of daisy cutters and threats of neutron bombs to suck the insides out of human beings, disable sewage disposal and eliminate the capacity for electricity generation. Such "consequences" are not to be decided upon by the "haves." This speech mentions for the first time in Mr. Obama's rhetoric, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It has such provisions as Article 5: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Read it.