"We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued and they must be defeated"
About this Quote
A blunt drumbeat of certainty: enemies exist; action is mandatory; victory is the only acceptable endpoint. Obama isn’t reaching for poetry here so much as command presence. The line is built on repetition and escalating verbs - found, pursued, defeated - a three-step pipeline that makes policy feel like momentum. It’s rhetorical engineering designed to compress messy geopolitics into a moral and operational clarity the public can grasp in a crisis.
The context is post-9/11 America, when the presidency is expected to speak in the grammar of counterterrorism: identification, pursuit, elimination. Obama campaigned on ending “dumb wars,” but governing meant inheriting a national security apparatus and a public appetite for reassurance. This sentence is reassurance delivered as resolve. It signals continuity with the broader War on Terror frame even as Obama often tried to refine it - moving from large-scale invasion toward drones, special operations, and intelligence-driven targeting. The structure quietly naturalizes that shift: “found” and “pursued” are verbs of surveillance and chase, not occupation.
The subtext is also defensive politics. By insisting on “real enemies,” Obama draws a boundary against the era’s tendency to inflate threats for ideological ends - a rebuke to phantom adversaries and culture-war scapegoats without naming them. Yet the line’s hard edges also concede the necessity of force and the legitimacy of lethal action. It’s a liberal president borrowing the hawk’s cadence, not to revel in it, but to keep credibility while steering the machinery.
The context is post-9/11 America, when the presidency is expected to speak in the grammar of counterterrorism: identification, pursuit, elimination. Obama campaigned on ending “dumb wars,” but governing meant inheriting a national security apparatus and a public appetite for reassurance. This sentence is reassurance delivered as resolve. It signals continuity with the broader War on Terror frame even as Obama often tried to refine it - moving from large-scale invasion toward drones, special operations, and intelligence-driven targeting. The structure quietly naturalizes that shift: “found” and “pursued” are verbs of surveillance and chase, not occupation.
The subtext is also defensive politics. By insisting on “real enemies,” Obama draws a boundary against the era’s tendency to inflate threats for ideological ends - a rebuke to phantom adversaries and culture-war scapegoats without naming them. Yet the line’s hard edges also concede the necessity of force and the legitimacy of lethal action. It’s a liberal president borrowing the hawk’s cadence, not to revel in it, but to keep credibility while steering the machinery.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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