When President Barack Obama was announced as the latest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in October, some expressed hope (or fear) that it would steer the president, who hasn’t really done anything remotely peace related yet, to step up to the plate and be an advocate for peace.
When he accepts the prize tomorrow, it will have come just nine days after he announced a massive escalation of the Afghan War. The irony of this was not lost on anybody, even the decidedly hawkish president.
“The president understands and again will also recognize that he doesn’t belong in the same discussion as Mandela and Mother Teresa,” noted his spokesman Robert Gibbs. He will also talk about his 30,000-man escalation and its incongruous nature with a supposed Nobel laureate.
But he will talk about it quietly. The president’s participation in the ceremony will be decidedly limited. He will fly into Oslo overnight, attend the award ceremony and the banquet afterwards, but that is it. Traditionally recipients give a news conference after receiving the award and give a high profile interview. President Obama, according to the White House, will do neither.
Perhaps it is something of a victory, albeit a small one. Champion of the endless escalation of the Afghan War and opponent of the ban on land mines, surely, and one of the least deserving recipients of what was supposed to be a prize for radical peace activists who oppose standing armies. But at least he’s ashamed enough of his behavior that he isn’t going to stand there before the world and make a big deal of winning the award.
This sudden self-awareness is a welcome change, though it would surely be far more welcome if it actually prompted him to tone down his unabashedly pro-war policies. It has also irked Norway, which has had to cancel an awful lot of the festivities.
But in the end, a Nobel Prize cannot change the nature of a man, and a Peace Prize will no more turn a hawk into a dove than a Nobel Prize in Mathematics would turn an uneducated man with no mathematics background into an insightful genius. It may perhaps serve as a lesson to the selection committee, that these awards are best left to people who have actually accomplished something in their field instead of trendy faces that they hope to co-opt to their own agenda.
Obama is the first war criminal with a Nobel peace price award .Now that's that is ironic.
Strange how Mir is unable to separate the victims from the victimizers, oddly like the Nobel committee that he appears to be excoriating………..
"The first war criminal with a peace price?" Clearly you haven't looked at the list of previous winners.
Despite the non-existence of the Nobel Prize for Mathematics, Obama should win it anyway for his remarkable demonstration that 'War = Peace'. What a great equation. It'll go down in history like E = mc^2.
Interesting change from the up-to-now spotlight-seeking Obama. But with his ego, aloofness and insecurity to speak without a teleprompter, the new role of the hated American president who flies in at night and disappears suits him well. I'm sure he'll get used to it quickly. It'll make him feel even more powerful and superior. Since he wants to be a neo-con he'll easily adapt to the role traditionaly reserved to Republican presidents: the most hated man on earth.
Probably lost on Americans and those of us living in the US is the extraordinary, irrational amount of love and adoration bestowed on Obama by virtually all Europeans (and I would assume – no data there, Norvegians) for the sole reason that he is not Bush. Without any other basis in fact and knowledge, all Europeans I know (from the far left to the right) have made an emotional transfer from the negatives of Bush to the assumed positives of Obama.
The European press, intelligentsia and eventually person in the street has only limited understanding of US politics. They have fully bought into the idea this man is almost European.
He did not get the price for being Obama, even less for having done anything antiwar. He got it for not being Bush…
Very true that he got the prize for not being Bush. I would add that not absolutely everyone has bought the idea of Obama being antiwar, or whatever they think. On the left wing there is opposition to the wars, including Afghanistan, and many have criticized him getting the prize. Both the centre-left is mostly on board with Obama and the Afghanistan war. And than there is criticism from the right wing, who think Obama is a leftist peacenik! There is unfortunately no antiwar right in Europe (at least not in Scandinavia), they all love the idea and practice of NATO wars (and sometimes others as well).
So the so-called “peace candidate,” Obama, has turned out to be just another warmongering president. Why should this come as a surprise to anyone? Since the end of WWII, the American Ruling Establishment (the CFR-Federal Reserve banking-War Street corporate complex) has exercised total control over the presidency, the Congress and America’s foreign policy. The American Ruling Establishment has made trillions from their military industries and a foreign policy of endless and perpetual war. No one, in either major political party, gets nominated to become president unless they are thoroughly vetted and approved by the American Ruling Establishment. Want proof? Just do some research and observe where the vast majority of the campaign contributions come from. (Continued in next post)
It is time for the American people to grow-up, wise-up and take back their government. It is time for a new Progressive-Libertarian Party of the people. This new party would be Progressive in the sense that it would meet its obligations to take care of the old and the poor, and it would be Libertarian in the sense that it would end America’s imperialistic foreign policy and it would restore the people’s liberties, property rights and prosperity. It is time to rid ourselves of government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations. America needs a new Progressive-Libertarian Party; of the people, by the people and for the people. We have nothing to lose but a growing police-state, a growing federal tyranny and an economy that is heading for third-world status.
All one had to do to know that Obama was nothing more than another bankster-bought globalist-pandering warmongering neocon shill was to look, listen and study beyond what was published in the lame stream media. Shockers?? (yawn)
"["The first war criminal with a peace price?" Clearly you haven't looked at the list of previous winners.] "
I have, but I would still give the distinction of "the first war criminal with a Nobel peace price" to Obama. Al Gore would qualify although he was just the vice president while countless innocents were killed in undeclared wars. Kissinger only secretary of state, Maarty Ahtisaari is definitely a war promoteur and a criminal, Shimon Perez and Itzak Rabin would be war criminals themselves. Even Kofi Anan could qualify.
However, I still think Obama is clearly the number one.
It's sad that the genuine winners have to share the trophy with such scum.
I shouldn't forget Wilson, it must've been very similar to Obama as he was promissing he'll keep US out of WW1 during his electoral campaign. Perhaps a tie for number one.
The Nobel Peace price has never had much value to most of the world except the West and now it has even become more of a joke.