GfS, you have it right. Politics is the art of salesmanship, on a national and international basis. Those who believe the spiel will willingly buy the product.

Obama's speech is typically well-spoken, calm, reasonable-sounding, articulate, and he says the required things he would be expected to say. I'd not have expected him to do anything other than that, but his government is not engaged in legitimate defensive wars, it's engaged in aggressive wars of its own choice, and their purpose is to control strategic regions and resources and to establish client (meaning subservient) governments in those regions.

Like the Soviets before them, I think the USA will not succeed in attaining any of their longterm objectives, and like the Soviets before them, they are bankrupting themselves in the process. This is not in the interests of the American people nor of American servicemen.