There was considerable controversy over the selection of President Obama as the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Many saw irony, or perhaps a desire on the part of the selection committee to influence events, in the confluence of the award ceremony with the decision to increase US troop presence in Afghanistan. Obama took his critics head on in the speech.

He did more. He addressed the just war theory in the opening paragraphs. Later in the speech, he argued that no war waged as Holy War could be just: “For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint – no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or even a person of one’s own faith.” Alluding then to the “Golden Rule” that has its parallels in most of the world’s religions, Obama continued,

Adhering to this law of love has always been the core struggle of human nature. We are fallible. We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil. Even those of us with the best intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us.

But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached – their faith in human progress – must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.

He strikes a rather Niebuhrian tone is these paragraphs, recognizing both the fallibility of human nature, and the importance of striving for a goal that lies beyond the natural and obvious.

I am deeply troubled by a number of Obama’s choices in foreign policy and in combating terrorism–among them the reluctance to come clean on torture and especially to prosecute those who tortured, and advocated the use of torture, the defense of the Bush Administration’s justice department, and the reluctance to come clean on what happened overall during the Bush administration.

I don’t know what the answer is in Afghanistan. I doubt whether this expansion of US military presence there will be successful. It seems to me that there are only difficult choices there, and overall in dealing with terrorism in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. But I suspect Obama’s hands were tied by many factors, including the generals and the hawks on Capitol Hill. It will be interesting to see if he can extricate the troops from that place in 2011.

Having invoked just war theory at the beginning of his speech, the question of whether Afghanistan conforms to just war theory is valid. I think that question would make for a lively debate, even on the limited definition Obama provided. This is what he said. A war is just “if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the forced used is proportional, and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.” I’d be curious to hear his arguments defending Afghanistan’s conforming to those criteria.