…for all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate. Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.
The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest – because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if others’ children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity….
The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it. Peace requires responsibility. Peace entails sacrifice. peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict. Only a just peace based on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting…
We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil. Even those of us with the best of 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 fundamental faith in human progress – that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey…
Let us reach for the world that ought to be – that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls…
Clear-eyed, we can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that – for that is the story of human progress; that’s the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth.
Seen above: “Portraits of Peace,” a painting series by Mel Ahlborn On the front-page mastheads and above, from the top: “Bend History;” next: “My Name Is Peace;” next: “Silver Star – Sgt Monica Brown;” and finally, “Our Actions Matter.”
Words above are excerpted from “Nobel Lecture by Barack H. Obama,” Oslo, 10 December 2009