Being 'Nice to Everyone'

That's the function of service personnel. People who deliver services to others who pay handsomely for those services and expect that they will receive value for their money. This is what service is: 'Service with a smile'. It's what ensures the business that delivers that service will be enabled to continue delivering that service. Disappoint a customer with a miserable attitude and you lose business. When that happens often enough the business collapses.

Governments also deliver services to the people they represent. Elected representatives go a long way to trying to read the temper of their times and to persuade voters that their message has been heard and their elected representative stands ready to protect their interests. But governments also transcend merely delivering good service. They have other obligations beyond the elements of ensuring the safety and security and lawful entitlements of those they represent

You get your mail delivered on time, your transportation links are operating well, copyrights are ensured, employment insurance and government pension plan anticipated, the regulation of banking, defence, criminal law, citizenship and external diplomatic and trade relations all looked after, and you hope that the lobbyists aren't too successful in constraining better judgement for their bottom lines.

But governments don't see their mission as quite 'being nice to everyone'. Although when dealing with roughly equivalent political and social states it can be assumed that 'nice' is what diplomats representing their countries' interests actually do. Still, when a government is faced with the vulgarities of realpolitik, facing off against tyrants, dictators and non-state ideology-driven entities whose lethal intent impacts on international accord, smiles come hard.

And when the leader of the most powerful country of the free world states, in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, that there is a time for peace and a time for push-back when no other method will suffice, that speaks of a compelling and regrettable truth. That truth is the human condition. That there will always be rogue, paranoiac, belligerent and psychopathic actors on the world stage, determined to brute it out to obtain their aspirations.

Aspirations clearly inimical to the safety, security and longevity of other countries which their intentions and violence impacts upon. Parts of President Obama's acceptance speech in Oslo for the prize awarded him made eminent good sense, and he had the courage of his conviction to state his position baldly, albeit with the kind of soaring rhetoric he is so skilled at and which enthralls his listeners (who hear his mellifluous inflection as much as his words).

But this is a peculiar time in history faced by a peculiar head of state. One who has entered the world stage as a mediator, one who holds out the proverbial hand of friendship with a view to being 'nice' before he must turn seriously determined. Nice words haven't evoked a like response, alas. It's also quite amazing how presence and character can be divined through charisma. This is a conflicted man at a historical junction of international conflict.

His predecessor sent fewer troops to battle in Afghanistan, (and forwarded additional troops as a winning 'surge' in Iraq), than has Mr. Obama, but George W. Bush is generally derided as a war-monger (going head-to-head with those who threatened his country's safety which regard for safety is paramount also to President Obama) while the current president's decisions to beef up U.S. troops while vowing to leave the field of battle by 2011 is seen in a gentler light.

Barack Obama has been very nice, in fact, when speaking to the Arab world, and quite stern when addressing Israel. Where intransigence and potential violence was always seen to lie with the former, it is now being conferred upon Israel. Iran, whose initial plans imperil the balance of the entire Middle East, was given a conciliatory option of being reasonable. North Korea is still pondering that option.

When President Obama stated: As a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by [examples of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi) alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people - for make no mistake, evil does exist in the world." Yes, it most certainly does. And countries as diverse as Somalia, the Philippines, Israel, Lebanon, Democratic Republic of Congo and India face that evil.

In most of those instances, 'radicalized' Muslims sworn to uphold the honour of Islamic jihad deliver death and destruction, threatening to uproot the legitimacy of current governments, to install themselves as the reigning and triumphant rulers of an ever spreading geography of Islamist hegemony, in their pursuit of global triumphalism. That's the ultimate evil.

Which doesn't take kindly to 'nice' talk, considering it an absolute signal of the effeminacy of their antagonists, and a clear invitation to attack those regimes that offer conciliation.