Reply #69: That's a fair point, that the "evil" discourse distracts from the real policy issues.

[Unvanguard]

I guess what I would say is that Obama doesn't to me seem to be muddling the two. He responded to his policy critics in his earlier Afghan speech: we might argue about how well he did so, but he made the attempt. In this speech, though, his focus was less on responding to policy critics and more on articulating a philosophical framework in which it is possible to consistently be both a "war president" and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. And it seems to me that issues of evil are perfectly relevant to that.