President Obama's Libya Speech and America's Global Responsibility

We're finalizing the topics for our upcoming Forum season, and the subject of the US role in global affairs keeps appearing - in conversations, on the results of our season ballot and in the emails we receive. The issue is divisive in a much less intelligible way than most; in a political landscape galvanized by bi-partisanship, U.S. foreign policy seems to be a wild-card that claims both conservatives and liberals on both sides of the debate.

In last night's speech concerning Libya, President Obama attempted - and mostly succeeded - in avoiding bi-partisan politics altogether, deciding to approach the issue from a purely humanitarian standpoint. His argument tread lightly on the issue of national and global positioning (the "need to protect our interests") and heavily on the moral responsibilities of the world's most powerful nation. He was also very careful not to allow too many correlations between this campaign and the two wars he inherited, citing UN sanctions and global partnerships, as well as making clear that this campaign is one of defending innocent civilians - not implementing regime change - to distance himself from GW's more vigilante approach. Clearly, President Obama wants to posit America as a defender and cautious promoter of liberty, and not the careless, heavy hand of freedom.

The question, then, becomes one of the fundamental duty of powerful, free nations of the world in protecting civilians and holding the world to a strict moral code.

Here's what a few past Forum panelists have to say about Obama's speech:

Andrew Sullivan (A Conversation Between Bill Moyers and Andrew Sullivan, 2006)

"It wasn't Obama's finest oratory; but it was a very careful threading of a very small needle. That requires steady hands and calmer nerves than I possess. But this president emerges once again as a consolidator and adjuster of the past, not a revolutionary force for the future. And one hopes that the notion that he is not a subscriber to American exceptionalism is no longer seriously entertained. He clearly believes in that exceptionalism - and now will live with its onerous responsibilities."

Bob Woodward (A World of Change, 2010)

“The president has a mammoth management problem, there is deep unhappiness – as there should be – about do we know what’s going on in these countries. The intelligence agencies are scrambling because they cover the leaders and not the revolutionaries or rebels involved in this upheaval.”

Stephen Carter (The End of Civility?, 2010)

"Over the long run, the world is unlikely to be able to handle the responsibility President Obama has handed it. This in turn leads to the unspoken moral issue with which we might one day have to deal: What should we do when the world thinks we are wrong?"

Is it America's responsibility to act as the global catalyst for moral outrage and action? Should we turn to isolationism and focus on our own problems? Is there a middle ground?

What do YOU think?

Connie Schultz to Moderate CT Forum on Civility

We are thrilled to once again welcome Connie Schultz to The Connecticut Forum as moderator for our first Forum this Season, "The End of Civility?" on Saturday, October 2, 2010.  Panelists for this Forum include David Gergen, Christopher Buckley, Stephen Carter, and Gina Barreca.

A nationally syndicated columnist for The Cleveland Plain Dealer and PARADE magazine's column "Back Page,"  Schultz won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for columns that judges praised for providing “a voice for the underdog and the underprivileged."

During the 2008 presidential race, she was a frequent guest on The Charlie Rose Show and also offered her Midwesterner's perspective on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show, HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher and C-SPAN’s Washington Journal.  

Schultz is the author of two books published by Random House: …And His Lovely Wife, a memoir about her husband Sherrod Brown’s successful 2006 race for the U.S. Senate, and Life Happens – And Other Unavoidable Truths, a collection of essays.

In 2005, Schultz won a Scripps Howard National Journalism Award and a National Headliner Award, both for commentary.  She was a 2003 Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing for her series, The Burden of Innocence, which chronicled the ordeal of Michael Green, who was imprisoned for 13 years for a rape he did not commit.  The week after Schultz’s series ran, the real rapist turned himself in after reading her stories.  The series won the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Social Justice Reporting, the National Headliner Award's Best of Show and journalism awards from Harvard and Columbia universities.

In 2004, Schultz won the Batten Medal, which honors "a body of journalistic work that reflects compassion, courage, humanity and a deep concern for the underdog."  Recently, the Urban League of Greater Cleveland awarded Schultz the Whitney M. Young Humanitarian Award.

She has moderated two previous CT Forums: God in 2009 with Rabbi Harold Kushner, Christopher Hitchens, and Reverend Peter Gomes; and A World of Change in 2010 with Bob Woodward and Tina Brown. 

Here's a clip of Connie in action last Season at A World of Change.

Yale Professor Stephen Carter to Join Civility Panel

The Connecticut Forum Announces:
Stephen Carter to Join Gergen, Buckley and Barreca at
The End of Civility?
Saturday, October 2, 2010

Recognized by Time magazine as one of the fifty leaders of the next century, Stephen Carter is one of America’s leading public intellectuals.

The author of four novels and of seven critically acclaimed nonfiction books on law, ethics and politics, he has been shaping the national debate throughout his career on issues ranging from the role of religion in our politics and culture to the role of integrity and civility in our daily lives. He currently is writing a book on the future of democracy and speaks on “Democracy’s Future: Books or Bumper Stickers,” among other topics. Carter has just published his fourth novel, Jericho’s Fall, a sophisticated, topical, thought-provoking thriller about issues ranging from the morality of intelligence operations to the meltdown of the world financial system.
And it creates, in Beck DeForde, an unforgettable heroine for our turbulent modern age.

Carter’s extraordinary fiction debut, The Emperor of Ocean Park, spent three months on the New York Times Bestseller List and has appeared on bestseller lists in several European countries. His other acclaimed novels are New England White and Palace Council.

Stephen Carter is also a Connecticut local: he is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale University. Carter served as a law clerk for two of the great veterans of the civil rights movement, including Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court. As a trustee for the Aspen Institute, he moderates seminars for business executives on the role of values in leadership.

Carter's recent work focuses on the role of human affection in ethical and moral discourse and the intersection between theories of unjust war and unjust law.