Obama said he wanted to “create a better dialogue so that the Muslim world understands more effectively how the United States but also how the West thinks about many of these difficult issues like terrorism, like democracy, to discuss the framework for what’s happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and our outreach to Iran, and also how we view the prospects for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians”.

So far, so blah – President George W. Bush often expressed much the same sentiments.

But then, as is his habit , Obama turned the concept around. “Now, the flip side is I think that the United States and the West generally, we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.

“And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world. And so there’s got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples.”

Obama said in Turkey that Americans “do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation”. John McCain was criticised in 2007 for saying the US was “a Christian nation”, later amending this to “a Judeo-Christian valued nation”.

Of course, the concept of separation of church and state, which derived from the First Amendment to the Constitution, means that the US is not officially a Christian nation or a nation of any other particular religion. Which means, I suppose, that the US is as much a Muslim nation as a Christian one.

It’s a bold – some might say audacious – turnaround by the president.

It’s also a classically Obamaesque move.

During the 2008 campaign, he skillfully made himself, through his life story, the personification of change.

Now, implicitly contrasting himself with the born-again, evangelical Bush who pursued a post-9/11 “crusade” against terrorism, Obama is presenting himself to the Islamic world as the personification of a new, tolerant – and, yes, partly Muslim – America.

UPDATE: The excellent Don Surber crunches the numbers and points out that Obama’s claim is highly dubious. According to Surber, the US has an estimated three to eight million Muslims, less than one per cent of the world’s total and less than at least 23 other countries.

The average claim for the US Muslim population is about six million. The precise figure is difficult to get because it’s not included in US census data and many put the figure at much, much less.

But even if we assume there are six million Muslims in the US, that makes it only the 34th biggest Muslim country in the world – behind Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Nigeria, China, Ethiopia, Algeria, Morocco, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Tanzania, Syria, Malaysia, Niger, Senegal, Ghana, Tunisia, Somalia, Guinea, Kenya, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Burkina Faso and Tajikistan.

Debbie Schlussel cites a reputable survey by Pew that puts the number of Muslims in the US at 1.8 million. This would make it the 48th biggest Muslim country, after the above list plus France, Libya, Jordan, Israel, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritania, Germany, Kuwait, Oman, Eritrea, Lebanon and Serbia and Montenegro – and just above Britain, which would be the 50th.

Tell that blather to the active soldiers and veterans, including myself, who are shaking their heads in disbelief at Obama’s current Afghanistan surge strategy ~ which is obviously politically motivated.

Obama arrived Friday from Norway after becoming the first chief executive to collect the storied award so early in his tenure. He blitzed through his Nobel itinerary, then met privately with U.S. embassy staff at his hotel in Oslo before returning to a huge agenda hanging in the balance, including health care and another European trip next week for a climate summit.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is working privately to secure support among Senate Democrats for a tentative deal to expand the government’ role in health care. The potential breakthrough in the long health care debate was reached last weekend, and Democrats are driving for a final vote before Christmas. The House already has passed its bill.

Obama’s goal — to expand coverage to those without it, improve it for those who do and rein in the crushing costs of health care — remains at the core of his political efforts. Congress has spent months trying to get out a bill that satisfies its own blocs and Obama.

The focus on health care, however, will be brief. Obama will be returning to Europe next Friday — to Copenhagen this time — to join scores of leaders from around the globe in final negotiations on a pact to aimed at stemming emissions blamed for global warming.

Senators supporting climate legislation offered a revised proposal Thursday that calls for a 17 percent reduction in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, similar to the reductions Obama has said he will call for at the Copenhagen talks. Press secretary Robert Gibbs hailed the measure as “a significant step in the effort to pass comprehensive energy reform.”

The bill also includes incentives for building nuclear power plants, and it would open the way for possible expanded oil and gas drilling off the nation’s coastlines. Both are seen as key to attracting Republican support needed to win Senate approval of the climate bill.

Before boarding Air Force One Friday morning, Obama exchanged a few words with Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland and the committee’s permanent secretary, Geir Lundestad.

“He was pleased, very thankful … ,” Lundestad told reporters after talking to Obama before his departure.

Lundestad said Obama had worked on his Nobel speech “through the night” before accepting the prize.

“He slept one or two hours. The president himself wrote most of the speech,” Lundestad said. “He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t care about it.”

In accepting the peace prize, Obama spelled out a doctrine of justifiable war and the steps needed for a “just and lasting peace.”

The hawkish message was an inevitable nod to the controversy defining his selection: an American president, lauded for peace just as he escalates the long, costly war in Afghanistan. He accepted the peace prize just nine days after ordering 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

“I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people,” Obama told his audience in Oslo’s soaring City Hall. “For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world.”

And yet for all the talk of might — as Obama put it, the tools of war have a role in preserving peace — he also stressed the need to avoid conflict.

He called for alternatives to killing, like sanctions with true bite. He defined peace as civil rights, free speech and economic opportunity, not just the absence of conflict. And he pushed himself away from George W. Bush, defending diplomacy that engages even enemies.

Obama was chosen for the award more for his aspirations and approach than his accomplishments thus far. The Nobel committee honored him for changing the tenor of international politics and pursuing goals that the winner himself says will take a world effort, like nuclear disarmament and reversing global warming.

At a dinner in his honor Thursday night, Obama paid tribute to his mother, who died before his election to the presidency.

“To the extent I am deserving of this esteemed prize, either now or in the future, it will be largely because of her and the largeness of her heart,” Obama said.

Mrs. Obama said her favorite was a metal doll house with plastic furniture that she wasn’t sure what to do with.

“I really didn’t know how to set up a house so I had all the furniture lined up along the walls as opposed to nestled around the fireplace, but I loved that little doll house,” Mrs. Obama said.

“Well, now you get some practice here, goodness gracious,” Winfrey said, speaking of the 132-room White House.

Obama said he remembered getting his first “big-kid, 10-speed” bicycle because that’s always a special moment in a boy’s life.