Mugged by reality

The president’s best line came when he talked about how
nonviolence as practiced by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wouldn’t have stopped
Hitler and his henchmen from their destructive and murderous reign.

For the Norwegians, this line must have had special
resonance. After all, the Norwegian leadership didn’t exactly distinguish
itself in standing up to the Nazis during the Second World War. Norwegian
leader Vidkun Quisling not only collaborated with the Nazi regime; he also in
many ways helped them in their murderous ways.

Many Norwegians resisted, not peacefully, but forcefully.
And once it became clear that Hitler was doomed, so was Quisling.

Quisling’s name has become universally linked to the concept
of treachery.

So, in the context of modern history, Norwegians ought to
know that there is such a thing as a just war. Without just war, you get
collaborators like Quisling.

I suppose that this ambivalence toward war is inherent in
the Nobel Peace Prize, as the founder of the prize made his fortune in
dynamite. We all love peace, but war is not only profitable, it is sometimes
completely necessary.

Over the last couple of weeks, President Obama has seemed to
reach a difficult conclusion about the nature of war from the personal
philosophy he has held dear for years. He seems to have concluded that
sometimes you need to make the tough choices to protect the good from the evil.

You could see the president’s anguish at West Point, and you
could see it yesterday in Oslo. He doesn’t want to reach the conclusion that
George Bush was right. But in many ways, Bush was right. There are evil people
out there who need to be stopped.

It is the same realization that hits a liberal do-gooder who
gets held up at gunpoint on a street corner. Sometimes all the best intentions
of good people run smack into all of the worst instincts of bad people.

That is called being mugged by reality.

The president now realizes that those crazy Islamic
terrorists aren’t going to quit just because he says so. He now realizes that
should we lose in Afghanistan, it will have reverberations well beyond that
messed-up country.

He doesn’t feel good about what he has to do, and you can
see that it goes clearly against his personal philosophy (which is probably
more like Martin Luther King and less like Douglas MacArthur).

But he was elected not only to give speeches and make us
feel good about ourselves. He was elected to keep America safe from those who
would seek to destroy our way of life.

He may not like it, but fighting the good fight on behalf of
the American people is his job. I appreciate the anguish. But I would prefer
strong, steady leadership.

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