President Obama remembers Gandhi and King at Oslo- Yet another inspiring speech

[P. Uday Shankar]

President Obama makes it yet again- An inspiring speech at Oslo as an acceptance speech for receiving the coveted Nobel Prize. I was glued to my TV as he rendered his speech.

The text of his speech is available in the net. I read it at :
http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-44627820091210>;

He has mentioned about his Guru King and about Gandhi during the course of his speech. The best part I liked was this:-

"We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.

I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this same ceremony years ago -- "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life's work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak, nothing passive, nothing naive in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. 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 is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason."

[Clayborne Carson]

There was much that I liked about Obama's speech, but I was troubled by his tendency to equate the use of "force" to combat evil with the use of military force. Not only political leaders but also some advocates of nonviolence do not consider of the range of options between the extremes of military force and pacifism/civil disobedience. Just as Obama equates force with military force, many nonviolence advocates equal nonviolence with pacifism and civil disobedience.