‘These Long Wars Will Come To A Responsible End.’

While President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan last night unfortunately didn’t offer too many specifics beyond troop numbers, I agree with Mike Cohen that it represents an important shift in strategy and a new, and hopefully last, phase of the war in Afghanistan.

I’m more interested, however, in how President Obama took the opportunity of last night’s speech to begin to re-contextualize U.S. foreign policy toward a post-post-9/11 era. The speech seemed to me to have been written partly as a rejoinder to those who tried to represent his May 19 speech on the Arab Spring (at least the parts not having to do with the 1967 lines) as an embrace of the Bush "freedom agenda" or of neoconservatism. His declaration that "these long wars will come to a responsible end" seemed a shot across the bow of the neocons, for whom "the long war" is a preferred term for the permanent militarization of U.S. foreign policy. (Their pained reactions indicate that a lot of neocons are reading it that way.)

At the same time, the president reiterated the U.S.’s support for democratic change in the Middle East. Stressing the importance of collective action, he also made clear that America still has an enormously significant role in world affairs. I challenge anyone to read this and tell me the man is not a believer in American exceptionalism:

In all that we do, we must remember that what sets America apart is not solely our power – it is the principles upon which our union was founded. We are a nation that brings our enemies to justice while adhering to the rule of law, and respecting the rights of all our citizens. We protect our own freedom and prosperity by extending it to others. We stand not for empire, but for self-determination. That is why we have a stake in the democratic aspirations that are now washing across the Arab World. We will support those revolutions with fidelity to our ideals, with the power of our example, and with an unwavering belief that all human beings deserve to live with freedom and dignity.

I like the oblique reference to Winthrop’s "shining city on a hill" here — leading not by coercion but by the power of our example and the attractiveness of our values. A supporter and, where possible, facilitator of democratic change, but not trying to march at the head of everyone’s parade. Only the most committed global hegemonist could interpret this as "embracing decline," which is to say that will probably be Krauthammer’s column tomorrow.