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Obama = Peace?
Obama = Peace?
President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize less than a year after taking office. Why did he win it? For his accomplishments… or for what we hope what he might accomplish? Everyone, well most people, want peace so if the award has been conferred for the latter, then perhaps it might produce some results. If it is for the former, then has the award been announced as more of a response to the unmitigated disaster of the George Bush presidency, which is, drum-roll please…, over?
Can Obama the man be separated from Obama the President of the United States?
The United States has, to severely understate the case, an unenviable record in Iraq.
The United States is plunging itself further into a war in Afghanistan, which seems eerily like more of the same.
The United States continues to spend roughly half of its mammoth federal budget on the military. See the War Resisters League website for a nice breakdown of the militarization of the US society and economy: http://www.warresisters.org/files/FY2010piechart.pdf
The United States continues to fund 750 American military bases in a hundred countries.
The United States has a highly inconsistent, indeed bizarre, foreign policy, which has maligned Cuba for fifty years, and, at the same time, rewarded numerous dictatorships around the world.
The United States is extremely reluctant to challenge the coup-executors in Honduras at this present time.
The United States has not made any tangible movement toward resolving the Palestinian “issue”.
The United States continues to give untold billions of dollars in military aid to countries in the developing world.
ETC….
So, while it is easy to be joyous about Obama being recognized, it is also important, as he has said himself, to question if he deserves the prize.
As Tariq Ali has suggested, why not give the Nobel Peace Prize to Noam Chomsky, who has been fighting for peace for over half a century?
For some commentary by Naomi Klein and Tariq Ali, see: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/9/as_us_continues_afghan_iraq_occupations
Peace! y un abrazo!
Paul
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Beatifully stated. Thanks
Beatifully stated. Thanks Paul...
"And though they [Nobel Prize
"And though they [Nobel Prize Committee] deny it, we know that in 1938 they couldn’t decide whether to give the prize to Hitler or to Gandhi. " Tariq Ali
Don't forget Kissinger
And while on the subject of past Nobel Peace Prize winners, let's not forget Henry Kissinger who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, three years after bombing the hell out of Cambodia, a neutral country (admittedly with North Vietnamese sympathies). This ultimately gave rise to Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime and the subsequent deaths of millions of Cambodians at the hands of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 (Year Zero) to 1979.
A regime which was supported by the Reagan Administration even after the atrocities were brought to the attention of the West.........