Some excerpts from Obama's West Point speech

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

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Here's some excerpts from Obama’s speech at West Point. The on-going narrative of ‘the US is the greatest nation on Earth’ etc really makes my blood boil. I hate the very notion of a ‘super power’, whoever it is.

The values of our founding inspire leaders in parliaments and new movements in public squares around the globe. And when a typhoon hits the Philippines, or girls are kidnapped in Nigeria, or masked men occupy a building in Ukraine - it is America that the world looks to for help. The United States is the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed, and will likely be true for the century to come.

It is absolutely true that in the 21st Century, American isolationism is not an option. If nuclear materials are not secure, that could pose a danger in American cities. As the Syrian civil war spills across borders, the capacity of battle-hardened groups to come after us increases. Regional aggression that goes unchecked - in southern Ukraine, the South China Sea, or anywhere else in the world - will ultimately impact our allies, and could draw in our military. Beyond these narrow rationales, I believe we have a real stake - an abiding self-interest - in making sure our children grow up in a world where school-girls are not kidnapped; where individuals aren't slaughtered because of tribe or faith or political beliefs. I believe that a world of greater freedom and tolerance is not only a moral imperative - it also helps keep us safe.

Here's my bottom line - America must always lead on the world stage. If we don't, no one else will.

[Tenka]

This left me vaguely nauseated. Obama in his completely lame manner of speaking promoting American exceptionalism and increased militarism and foreign intervention with nonsensical appeals to girls not being kidnapped and religious fundamentalists not killing.

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

OP, did you actually want to discuss the content of Obama's speech, or are you trying to create an online rendition of the Two Minutes Hate?

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

OP, did you actually want to discuss the content of Obama's speech, or are you trying to create an online rendition of the Two Minutes Hate?

Can't it be both?

[synthesis]

This just in: Imperialist leader attempts to justify imperialism

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

It was pretty interesting to hear how the analyses typically found in postmodernism (i.e. fluid, changing world that lacks fixed-narratives and the like) and related critiques were carried across into this speech as a sign of the times. It goes to show how things are changing, especially when Obama referred to terrorist threats coming in a decentralised form (and his means of combating them, eschewing conventional war), echoing the move from concentrated control and organisation to some diffuse forms (the diffuse spectacle).