Obama, the Committee tells us “has as president created a new climate in international politics.” Really? Perhaps they are trying to humor us, because the millions of civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan who have been displaced due to his policies probably wouldn’t agree.In order for a US President to win a Nobel Peace Prize, he usually needs to be a big time mass murderer like Woodrow Wilson or Theodore Roosevelt, who took part in the war against Cuba and personally congratulated a US general who had just massacred hundreds of villagers in the Philippines. As such, it was only natural that the Nobel Committee continues to award the peace prize to infamous and unrepentant warmongers; after all, they awarded it to Henry Kissinger too. That occasion marked the loss of hope that the prize will ever go to those who actually strive for world peace and set the stage for the peace prize being awarded to President Barack Obama this week.
True, Obama is not yet at the stage of being a flagrant violator of human rights like the former three mentioned above, but he’s getting there. Apparently, the Committee is under the impression that since he is a minority, Obama can somehow end the Western world’s domination over those who are of a darker skin. That’s a pretty heavy task for someone who has proven himself to be nothing more than an eloquent promise-maker.
Obama, the Committee tells us “has as president created a new climate in international politics.” Really? Perhaps they are trying to humor us, because the millions of civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan who have been displaced due to his policies probably wouldn’t agree. The world hasn’t seen a new climate because Bush era policies are being continued under a different administration. Iraq remains occupied, spying on American citizens without warrants is still practiced, Guantanamo Bay continues to operate, and civil liberties remain a legend of the past. While presidential candidate Obama was vocal about how he is going to hold the Bush Administration responsible for its actions and policies, Nobel Laureate Obama has done nothing remotely close to that.
More recently, the Obama administration bribed and pressured the Palestinian Authority to join the US in an effort to bury the United Nations Goldstone Report on Israeli war crimes that occurred during the leveling of Gaza last December. But according to the Nobel Committee, “Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.” Their words, not mine. Of course, the naive will rush to claim that the Nobel committee knew exactly what it was doing when it handed the prize to him. Of course, they wanted to lock him into keeping his many campaign promises about peace and human rights, correct? A quick look back the campaign trail shows us Obama’s plans weren’t exactly peaceful to begin with: he was all for bombing Pakistan and upping the ante in Afghanistan.
Since taking office, Obama has worked diligently to threaten Iran with attacking it unless it caves in and surrenders its rights as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. This is the bright future the Nobel Committee was talking about when it said, “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.” What the Nobel Committee unfortunately lacks is a solid understanding of history. They seem to be easily impressed by superficialities and rhetoric and cannot differentiate between words and actual concrete achievements. Instead of striving for peace, Obama has continued deadly and inhuman wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and is planning a third in Pakistan, along with consistently violating the sovereignty of other nations such as Iran.
The current mob that runs the United States and controls most of the world is impervious to reform or change. While many of us have come to accept this, handing them peace prizes is unacceptable. It’s about time that the Nobel Committee stops making a mockery of the word peace.
