Obama defends war

Newly enshrined among the world's great peacemakers, President Barack Obama offered a striking defense of war.

Evil must be vigorously opposed, he declared as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday. At the same time, he made an impassioned case for building a "just and lasting peace."

"I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people," Obama told his audience in Oslo's soaring City Hall. "For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world."

He lauded previous Nobel winners Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., preachers of nonviolent action. But he added, "A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaida's leaders to lay down their arms."

"To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism, it is a recognition of history."

The president laid out circumstances in which war is justified — in self-defense, to come to the aid of an invaded nation, on humanitarian grounds such as when civilians are slaughtered by their own government.

At the same time, he also stressed a need to fight war according to "rules of conduct" that reject torture, the murder of innocents and other atrocities.

"We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend," he said. "And we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it's easy, but when it is hard."

He emphasized a need to exhaust alternatives to violence, including worldwide sanctions with teeth to confront nations such as Iran or North Korea that defy international demands. He pushed himself away from George W. Bush in defending diplomatic outreach that engages even enemies. He defined peace as civil rights, free speech and economic opportunity, not just the absence of conflict.

"Let us reach for the world that ought to be," Obama said. "We can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace."

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