So says Bill Kristol, who somehow managed to read that into President Obama's nobel peace prize speech:
KRISTOL: There’s this one sentence, "There will be times when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified."
That’s a pretty striking statement. I mean any American president should say that who’s looking at Iran developing nuclear weapons. I think he is, it’s not just that Israel might use preemptive force against Iran. This speech lays the predicate for a legitimate use of force to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons by the U.S. ThinkProgess transcript from Fox News Sunday [Emphasis added by TP]
Talk about a one-note Billy!
Kristol used his space in the Washington Post to make the same point December 10th, clipping a larger part of Obama's speech and following it with a clip from Bush's SOTU speech in 2002.
To say that Kristol has an obsession with Iran is like saying the ocean is wet. Of course, Kristol is only going to hear what he wants to hear. As TP pointed out, a full reading of Obama's speech would have forced him to take note of this paragraph (I am excerpting slightly more than TP did):
Let me also say this: The promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone. At times, it must be coupled with painstaking diplomacy. I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation. But I also know that sanctions without outreach — and condemnation without discussion — can carry forward a crippling status quo. No repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an open door. [Emphasis added]
Kristol has no use for diplomacy:
You'll find two paragraphs devoted to speaking directly to Iran's leaders. Obama reassures them of his commitment to diplomacy, and to an engagement grounded in "mutual respect." Of course expressions of respect for the people of Iran are nothing new--President Bush reiterated our respect for the people of Iran many times, including a year ago on the occasion of Nowruz, as they call their New Year. No, what's distinctive about Obama's statement is his respect for the "leaders," the clerical dictatorship. Kristol, Weekly Standard 30 Mar
Nor does John Bolton - former US Ambassador to the UN (which he also had no use for):
First, diplomacy has not and will not reduce Iran's nuclear program. Ironically, European leaders are belatedly feeling hollow in the pits of their diplomatic stomachs, now that their failed diplomacy has left us with almost no alternatives to a nuclear Iran. Imagine their dismay that President Obama is now "opening" to Iran, thus eviscerating their tentative efforts to "close" the diplomatic cover under which Iran has almost achieved the worst-case outcome, deliverable nuclear weapons. WSJ 2 Mar
And then there's the biggest neo-con of all, Darth Cheney:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney hinted that, in the waning days of the Bush administration, he had pushed for a military strike to destroy Iran's nuclear-weapons program. WSJ 30 Aug
While observers from ThinkProgress to Admiral Mike Mullen have argued that military action against Iran would only make a highly volatile region that much unstable, the neocons' obsession with Iran and the "need" to strike first lead them to ignore all geopolitical considerations. And to ignore anything, really, that interferes with their alternative view of reality.
Thus, Kristol finds support for his warmongering in Obama's Oslo speech, even though Obama reiterated there his intention to use diplomacy.
Lest Kristol and the other neocons be dismissed here as voices crying in the political wilderness, you should remember that he is one of Sarah Palin's biggest fans, her advocate from the beginning, and that if she actually runs for and wins the White House, he would almost certainly become one of her chief foreign policy advisers. Think about that the next time you think about sitting on your hands in 2010 or 2012 because Obama and the Democrats aren't perfect.
[Update] At the request of a couple of commentators, I have added a couple of ?? and !! to the title.