Nobel Peace Prize to Obama!

Quote:

Although President Hamid Karzai sent Obama a congratulatory note, others in Afghanistan were dismayed he was given the prize.
"What is this for? Please show me which peace?" asked Roshanak Wardak, a member of parliament from Wardak province. "The Americans are killing 75 Pashtuns a day in Afghanistan. For this they give a prize to Obama? They should call him a criminal."

NoDifferencePartyPooper wrote:

October Surprise:  Peace Prize to a War Criminal

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/10/october-surprise-peace-prize-to-wa...

Two years ago, when Al Gore won the prize, Stephen Lendman wrote a [url=http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/14174]comprehensive review[/url] of the shameful history of the Peace Prize and the war mongers who have won it. 

 

And this time around [url=http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22842]Paul Street[/url] counts the ways that Obama doesn't deserve any kind of peace prize:

Paul Street wrote:

They should have granted their prize to the great anti-imperial U.S. intellectual Noam Chomsky, who has spent more than five decades brilliantly and exhaustively chronicling, contextualizing, criticizing, and resisting the policies, structures, and crimes (not just the "mistakes" and strategic missteps)  of American Empire, from Vietnam and Cambodia to East Timor to Central America to both Iraq invasions and the current criminal war in Afghanistan, undergoing escalation and expansion under the Obama administration. 

Instead, the Nobel committee updated Orwell (and Kafka, Heller, and Vonnegut) by giving the ultimate "peace" honor to an imperial chief executive who has:

* escalated terrorist, civilian-slaughtering war in South Asia, dangerously expanding the war theater (now called "Af-Pak")to include nuclear Pakistan.

* Responded coldly to Afghanistan president's early request that the U.S. stop killing Afghani civilians.

* Promoted a notorious assassin and death-squad leader to the position of Commander of U.S. Forces in "Af-Pak." Lt. General Stanley A McChrystal, former chief of the military's special Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq, was involved in a prisoner abuse scandal in Baghdad's Camp Nana and played a key role in covering up the "friendly fire" death of professional football star and Army Ranger Pat Tllman.  According to U.S. empire-critic Tom Engelhardt, McChrystal is "a legacy figure from the worst days of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld era" who "comes from a world where killing by any means is the norm and a blanket of secrecy provides the necessary protection."

* Indefinitely continued the disastrous Iraq occupation, pressuring the Iraqi government not to permit the popular referendum required by the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) - the withdrawal document forced on the Bush administration by the Iraqi resistance.

* Refused to once acknowledge the criminal, immoral, and illegal nature of the Iraq War or of any other U.S. war, including Vietnam and, of course, Afghanistan ("Obama's Vietnam").

* Sustained the large-scale use of expansive, largely unaccountable corporate-mercenary fighting forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

* Increased the U.S. "defense" (empire) budget (itself responsible for half the world's military spending and the maintenance of more than 760 military bases spread across more than 130 countries), consistent with his advance dismissal (as leading Bush-Obama bailout recipient Morgan Stanley reported last November) of a "peace dividend")

* Refused to rule out approval for an Israel attack on Iran.

* Consistently raised bogus alarms about "Iran's nuclear program" even as he moves forward (as the Inter-Press Service recently reported) with efforts to reconstitute U.S. nuclear weapons

* Refused to in any serious way against Israel's brutal and criminal occupation of Palestine.

* Refused to move in any significant way against a right-wing coup against a democratically elected president in Honduras.

* Repeatedly crafted and advanced arrogant nationally narcissistic "American exceptionalist" rhetoric on the United States' supposed special moral and historical qualifications and duty to run the world's affairs by force when "necessary."

* Repeatedly claimed that the U.S. must not apologize for any of its actions (the worst ones considered well-intentioned "mistakes," never imperial crimes) since it is on the whole "an enormous force for good in the world."

* Repackaged and reproduced essential core aspects of Bush's "counterterrorist" assault on basic human and civil rights at home and abroad.  According to Jack Goldsmith, a former Assistant Attorney General in the Bush II administration, Dick Cheney's premise "that the Obama administration has reversed Bush-era [counterterrorism] policies is largely wrong. The truth is closer to the opposite: The new administration has copied most of the Bush program, has expanded some of it, and has narrowed only a bit. Almost all of the Obama changes have been at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric.... The main difference between the Obama and Bush administrations concerns not the substance of terrorism policy, but rather its packaging."

ETA: If the links I posted above don't work the first time (due to automatic redirection at the ZNet website) try again.

Quote:

Giving Obama the Nobel Peace Prize is like giving someone the literature prize because you hope he writes some good books.

He doesn’t even have to be an aspiring writer. To say Obama aspires to peace is to ignore his escalation of the occupation of Afghanistan.

It may be a joke, but the Norwegians have told more morbid ones: Roosevelt in 1906 and Kissinger in 1973 both had records far more blood-soaked than anything Obama has had time for.

But he has had time to make an impact on people such as Awal Khan, who might want to weigh in on Obama’s prize.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cooney10132009.html

And, of course, Obama is right there in your mind's eye, turning from his own daughters to put another round or two into those twitching bodies.

But what about we who are also guilty of living off the proceeds of the economy that is dependent on war (well, living off the U.S. economy that is dependent on military spending that...well you know).

And there must be some other kinky, gratuitous connection to all that blood if we just slosh around a bit.

The fundamental point about the Nobel committee's award is what it tells us about the critical state of the world, and the abject FEAR felt by those still capable of balanced reasoning that has prompted them to put all hope in the one individual who is in a position to rectify the human situation. The reactions from petty bourgeois political positions only go to underline the severity of the situation, the absence of the goodwill that will clearly be necessary to bring it off.

Why not. Anything goes hereabouts.  And perhaps another explanation for the actions of the Nobel committee is forthcoming?

N Beltov: that is an excellent article and I was about to post it as well.

I couldn't think of a clearer example of a person who actually makes change versus a person who makes speeches about change.

Considering his roots and the adversity he's faced, Evo Morales remains the most incredible leader in our Hemisphere. No wonder our media ignores him and will do whatever it takes to ensure Canadians don't hear about the improvements taking place in Bolivia.

"Liberal sensibilities."  

Sure wish there were more folks with that trait down thataway.  (Up thisaway too, as a matter of fact.) We may need them in the coming crunch which will be about heading of fascism as much as pondering the loss of "liberal sensibilities".

Ah, the Obomba author. Bet you haven't read Deer Hunting With Jesus yet, MS.  Don't really know what's happenin' with the huntin' fraternity - despite Sarah's attempt at an end run.  Well, I guess making fun of an African-American name is something by way of comment - if short on analytical punch. You really live in hope, eh?