The Nobel Prize: Thoughts?
I said I wasn’t going to post about this but I am interested in what others thought of President Obama’s speech.
The text of the speech can be found here.
My thoughts about it are contained in the comment section of the post below- suffice it to say I thought it was well-crafted but defensive, overly-hawkish and quite condescending. I also thought that spending a majority of the time talking about “just war” when one is receiving a PEACE prize, was a tad ironic. And yeah, I get the whole “the U.S. has fought wars to keep the rest of the world safe from more war” meme. But that in and of itself is a tad arrogant given where he was and who his primary audience was. A little humility goes a long way but methinks humility is not Obama’s strong suit. I personally thought perhaps he should have given that particular speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. Or maybe even included some of it in his West Point speech.
When I was getting ready for work this morning I was not surprised to hear the news anchors say that the speech was greeted enthusiastically by Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and the keyboard generals over at the National Review.
I guess we are all neoconservatives now.
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War is peace.
Slavery is Freedom.
Ignorance is Strength.
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omg 1984 win! Love that book.
And, Bush and the neocons invoked “just war” in the Global War against Terror. Having taught political philosophy, I was both p—-d off and amused at Obama’s unoriginal spin on his Bush 3 policies.
By the way, stacy, on your Steve Clemmons post downstairs I joined in the fray to post some links that provide some more background on the US policy in Afghanistan from Carter to Clinton, and the dramatic twists under Bush just prior to and immediately after 9/11. My takeaway? The US will be in Afghanistan long after Obama has stepped down, unless casualties approximate that of the Soviet Union. No recession or depression will stop this war.
Filipino-American4HRC-
I’ll check out your comments and links to the Clemmons post (probably after I get home from work). I agree that we will be in Afghanistan for a long time, particularly given much of “The Enemy” is in Pakistan.
Maria-
as I was driving to work this morning and thinking about his speech (and the reaction of the neocons to it) that book immediately came to mind and I was thinking its been so long since I read it I should go back and do so. Because there really isn’t any time in history where it hasn’t been relevant.
I actually like the speech. In my opinion he stated an a truth no matter how ugly the truth is sometimes war is justified. United States is not perfect, we don’t have the perfect political system, we don’t have the perfect healthcare system, some people live in poverty etc, but I truly beleive that this is the one place in the world where you can be anything you want to be. I am glad he kind of defended America’s original reason for going into afganastan. While I agree that U.S has things to atone for, it bothers me greatly when the U.S gets the constant blame for all the ills in the world, and then as soon as something like the coup or not quite coup or Darfur, or Rhowanda, happens everyone screams where is the U.S. It’s just my opinion.
I understand your sentiment, Rachel. I, for one, was angry at the US and Europe when they sat back and watched the slaughter, ethnic cleansing and mass rape in the Balkans because they had no strategic interests in the region. The same with Rwanda. That, I think, is where the hypocrisy lies in Obama’s speech.
I don’t mean to offend anyone, and I apologize in advance if I cause offense. But objective and critically written history books would show that if the Japanese did not bomb Pearl Harbor, the US would not have joined the Second World War. There was a very strong isolationist tendency in the US at the time, something that Woodrow Wilson also had to contend with in WW I. Between 1938 to 1941, Jewish immigrants were already trying to raise an outcry in the US over the worsening persecution of Jews, but like in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, policymakers and big media turned a deaf ear. It was the same in England; they just didn’t want to go to war and thought they could appease Hitler. Then when the gas chambers were discovered after the war, they all expressed shock (a la Casablanca). Yes, the US should get credit for its role in the war and in post-war reconstruction, but remember that this was carried out in the context of rivalry with the Soviet Union. And for all its brutality and war crimes, Japan became the recipient of US reconstruction assistance second only to the Marshall Plan in magnitude — in exchange for a role as the US rearguard against communist aggression in the Pacific. From Europe to the Pacific, that was the overarching calculus of US post-war foreign policy, something that was made more complicated by the victory of the Chinese communists in 1949. Hence North Vietnam, which successfully expelled the French and forced the latter to “grant” independence in 1954, and Indonesia — which expelled the Japanese and in the process their Dutch and British overlords — became objects of US intervention as the latter began to step into Southeast Asia in the wake of crumbled empires (at the time, the US only had my country, the Philippines, to toy with and I can tell you that Americans were just as brutal as the British and the Dutch were. They practiced waterboarding with Filipinos, before they did it with the Vietnamese and then later with the Iraqis.) Results? The Vietnam War; the 1965 overthrow of Indonesia’s Sukarno and the slaughter of nearly a million suspected communists (some were, many weren’t, and the Communist Party was legal anyway) and the installation of one of the most brutal military dictatorships in Southeast Asia; and the imposition of martial law in the Philippines in 1972 — all thanks to the CIA.
And before 9/11 became associated with the attack on the World Trade Center, the first 9/11 that became a day of infamy for Third World activists happened in 1973, when the CIA — with financing from major US and Chilean businesses — instigated the overthrow of Salvador Allende, the democratically elected socialist president of Chile. One of the martyrs of that coup — Victor Jara — was re-buried just a few days ago, and thousands more of the dead and disappeared have yet to find justice. Their executioners were all products of the School of the Americas, the premier CIA training site where the high art of torture and coup d’etat are practiced to perfection.
If you read the links to Stacy’s post on Clemons that I referenced above, you will find that the Bush administration had already threatened the Taliban that they would bomb Afghanistan unless the latter agreed to allow US oil companies to build the oil and gas pipeline that they had been salivating over since the mid-1990s. This threat was made in early August 2001. I’m sure Obama knows that. All who mentored Obama, including Zbigniew Brzezinski (the architect of the CIA covert war in Afghanistan under Carter), know that.
I know you love your country and I can imagine how it feels when you find non-Americans apparently ungrateful to American sacrifices to defend their freedoms. But I make a distinction between ordinary Americans who were made to actually commit the sacrifice — in blood and treasure — and the American policymakers who order all this sacrifice and still get a hallowed spot in American history, not to mention retire in wealth and privilege.
But I would also argue that, in the balance of things, for every free and prosperous European and Japanese that benefited from America’s post-war role, there were 20 Third World people who lost their freedom, lives and the right to choose their own future — including their own political system — in the furtherance of US geopolitical interests.
I am not, mind you, absolving the Soviet Union or other interventionist powers. I am saying these things in the context of the “just war” speech of Obama.
filipino-american4HRC, you certainly did not offend me and I understand the hypocrisy of America bascially saying we saved Europe when we would have never done anything if we weren’t attacked, just like beign African American I can beleive the hypocrisy of my black armed service men fighting in that war to help people in another country when we were 2nd class citizens in our own country and not many countries sought to help us and certinally not with any military aid. I do understand the criticism I just don’t think it’s always justified, but as the saying goes to whom much is given much is expected.
I wrote a long blog post last year about that other September 11 that I remember so well. I loved Victor Jara’s music, was devastated about the way he died (they cut off his hands – his means of playing music). We were thoroughly neck-deep in the overthrow of Allende.
According to those UK reports from October, 2001 that you posted in my blog comments, this entire war, predicated upon capturing/killing Bin Laden, could have been obviated had the Bush Administration not (unbelievably) refused to accept Bin Laden from that Taliban that month. I hope you don’t mind if I share them here.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bush-rejects-taliban-offer-to-surrender-bin-laden-631436.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/17/afghanistan.terrorism11
The School of the Americas is a huge blight on the US abd yet it just keeps going and going. The word is that key members of the Honduran military(in high command positions) who took part in the June 28th MILITARY coup were trained there and on some Honduras blogs people pointed out this irony that not only had the US trained the people who carried out the coup but that we had longstanding informal ties with the pro-business camp which overthrew Zelaya (ie. Micheletti).
It’s strange, isn’t it? The US not only has strong ties to those taking the very undemocratic route to power but in quite a few instances we’ve actually been the ones doing the overthrowing. The CIA overthrowing Irans leader and installing the Shah comes to mind- and that ushered in the Iranian revolution which led to the current situation with Islamic fundamentalist leaders and all the problems that come along with it. And yet the US just ignores all that and lectures Latin America and Iran about democracy with an absolutely straight face.
I didn’t read or watch the speech, but I’ll give you my thoughts on him being selected to receive the award in the first place: there are others who are much more deserving.
I have to say I absolutely dislike that speech. It is extremely arrogant and though the United States did some good things it is not like others made not a similar contribution. In the speech Obama quotes too much (somehow you can sense that the speech was drafted for him and not by him), he talks too much about violence not enough about what is good in the world. I also have to say the guantanamo thing is not yet over and – prohibiting torture, closing guantanamo and reaffirming America’s commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions is what he did for peace (I tried hard to come up with more – without success) and as far as I know those were the things that were planned by most of the presidential candidates in 2008 …. I can think of countless people who deserve this honour more then him – hundreds whose names are unknowm as well as very famous people like Bill Clinton and (believe it or not) I also think that Hillary should be on the list – for more then 30 years she is fighting for human rights she already saved the treaty between armenia and turkey, she had her role in the Irish peace process(even if it was a small one) , she coaxed Karzai into elections and the list goes on and on – she for sure did more then Al Gore.
Kate- I agree with most of what you sad. The problem is that he received the award based on lofty ideals he expressed but which he has retreated on- even Guantanamo, Bush-era secrecy, some aspects of rendition and extrajudicial actions on the part of the CIA etc. He hasn’t gotten rid of the military tribunals despite the military essentially saying they are a joke. He won’t even meet with the Dalai Lama for Christ’s sake.
And to me, saying all of the above is not anti-American- I think it’s holding America to a high standard BECAUSE I love my country.
We can do better than torture. We can do better than having a knee-jerk reaction to things like the Goldstone Report. We are a democracy and thus the executive branch shouldn’t be operating as a shadow government in the name of “keeping America safe” and we shouldn’t appeal to people’s sense of patriotism and outrage over something like 9/11 and cynically use that to justify wars of choice based as much on securing resources and military bases of operation as upon rooting out The Enemy (whoever that may be at any given time).
The one thing that came across in Obama’s speech to me, loud and clear, was that he KNEW he didn’t deserve it which is why it came across as heavy-handed and a tad defensive. Also, according to Laura Rozen, Samantha Power had a LOT of input into the speech.
I have a question not beign snotty at all I dont think anyone here is anti-american what would have liked done after 9/11? I mean it has to be okay for us to protect ourseleves, I am not sure we went about it in the right way, but I couldnt see us doing nothing. I do think we can do better than torture, but I don’t want to see our navy seals be court marshelled for giving a terrorists a busted lip(if that’s what really happened).
it was absolutely necessary to react to 9/11(sitting around and being shocked is human but doesn’t help) – and I think it was the right course of action for the president to ask congress if he could use military force IF EVERYTHING ELSE FAILS and to vote yes on a request like that is not only right it is sort of required what was wrong was the way the war was conducted and that (in my opinion) not every other option was considered before going to war.( And we don’t have to start about the fact that CIA and president Bush were so damn sure that there were weapons of mass destruction)
I remember something I heard Hillary say something like: “a vote for it is not a vote to rush to war it is a vote that puts responsibility in the hands of our president and we say to him use this power wisely and as a last resort” (the clip is somewhere on youtube) – that was exactly the right thing to say
Yes, I saw Rozen’s comment about Powers and also that she was among the cadre that accompanied him to Oslo.
Also, he really is raking in the Republican praise for this speech! Ye gods! We have fallen throught the rabbit hole AGAIN! Down is up, and up is down!
I defintely think bill clinton and others were more deserving of the award even if I liked the speech. Obama’s biggest accomplishment is winning an election, that hasn’t cure one person of disease, or feed one hungry person or solved on national crisis. Before last year Obama didnt even donate much to charity.
Rachel- you ask a fair question and it’s not snotty at all. I do also understand that it’s easy to sit back in hindsight and criticize various administrations for what they have done and it’s not quite so easy to see the right course of action as it unfolds and I do have a certain amount of sympathy for any President, even Bush, who has to decide what to do. In other words, I realize it’s easy to be an arm-chair general after the fact.
For my part, I think America absolutely has a right to defend itself but it gets tricky when we are waging war not against another nation but against a philosophy (violent fundamentalism/terrorism) and the people who use it as a justification to kill Americans or attack American interests abroad. I think that the idea that after 9/11 we simply had to do *something* to avenge the deaths of Americans, resulted in a rush to war that resulted in jeopardizing our long term security. There clearly wasn’t a long-term plan in place for either Afghanistan or Iraq. I think Team Bush did a great job of taking advantage of our fears and our psychological vulnerability after 9/11 and that made it much easier to convince us to support wars with sketchy links to the people who actually attacked us on 9/11.
In 2001 I supported the possibility of a military response to 9/11 although given almost all of the hijackers hailed from Saudi Arabia and were tied to OBL and Al Queda, I was a bit confused as to why we were going to Afghanistan to root out the Taliban even considering the OBL had set up operations in Afghanistan after being told he was no longer welcome in Sudan. Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (to a lesser degree) seemed to have as substantial, if not more, ties to Al Queda than Afghanistan and the Taliban did. I am no expert in this so anyone can correct me if I am off base here.
I agreed totally with the Bush administration’s moves immediately after 9/11 to freeze financial assets of certain people and organizations believed to have ties to terrorism although once again, we seem to hold some of the members of the House of Saud to a different standard given the fact that many suspect some members of that HUGE family support global jihad financially but due to our dependence on their oil, we seem to turn a blind eye. It seems to me that the only way to effectively fight fundamentalist extremism is to rely heavily on help from countries like Egypt, Jordan and even Saudi Arabia- Muslim nations have to help fight Muslim extremism and I am not sure what Bush did during his years in office to strengthen ties with the Muslim world. If anything, he seemed to plant the seeds of an us vs. them mentality which started to look a lot like a Christian crusade.
Using the small elite forces in Afghanistan in the beginning seemed to work- until Iraq. That was the main problem for me- Saddam and AQ and Iran had been enemies for years. We knew we didn’t have the resources to fight two wars and yet we went ahead and it’s almost impossible to argue that war was for anything other than resources and to obtain military bases in Iraq. It served as a boon for the military industrial complex who spawned a whole new breed of corrupt private contracting services where tax payer dollars would pay men and women 100 times what we were willing to pay our own troops to provide security. And keep in mind, these defense contractors help fund re-election campaigns. The Iraq War increased terrorist recruitment, fed into fears that America was not fighting “just wars” but rather imperialistic ones and we ended up strengthening Iran.
I realize we can’t just pull everyone out immediately but I haven’t heard anything yet that convinces me that Obama, Gates or McCrystal know what “victory” looks like. By immediately backtracking on the time frame for *beginning* to draw down troops Obama has effectively committed himself to potentially endless war in a region where no modern foreign power has been able to “win” (whatever that means). I understand why Obama wanted to throw a timetable out there to let Karzai (and others) know that the U.S. taxpayer was not going to fund their corrupt system in perpetuity and they would do well to get their act together if they wanted democracy to flourish there. And then there’s the problem of Pakistan- how the heck do we fight Al Queda or the Taliban in Afghanistan when apparently most of them have slithered over into Pakistan?
Our military is spread so thin, what happens if there is another crisis that involves immediate deployment of troops and resources to another region of the world? I can’t help but feel MORE vulnerable after 9/11, not less. I remember watching one of PBS Frontline’s specials on the Iraq War and/or Afghanistan and some CIA case officer who worked in that region said that after the US failure in Mogadishu, OBL’s plan to weaken America depended largely on a strategy of baiting us into in so-called “bleeding wars” where we have to send troops to various places to fight – in other words, mini-wars against AQ all over the globe which would result in high civilian and military casualties and which would spread our military and our resources very thin. Did he succeed in that? I think that’s an important question to ask.
I’ll make it short and sweet: the same comment I made last night on Facebook.
Stillfor Hill
Ambushed by Norwegians, Obama accepts Peace Prize with a speech containing the word “war” more than 3 dozen times. Is this year over yet? I have gone WAY beyond my yearly dosage of irony for 2009.
Love this, still4hill!
I couldn’t bear to listen to or even read the speech, after all of O’s santimonious, holier-than-thou claptrap about “dumb wars” during the 2008 primaries. “I opposed that war from the very beginning!” “Clinton has claimed she has experience for day one, I think you need to be right on day one.”
I hope, for our country’s sake, that this administration pulls us through the economic crisis and gets some version of health care reform passed before the Republicans regain control of Congress, but it’s oh so sweet to hear former Obamabots say — one after another — that the scales have fallen from their eyes.
Honestly, I think it’s ludicrous that Obama gets a Nobel Peace Prize. It is totally bizarre to me. His defenders say that it’s because of his “speeches, his inspiration, etc.” To me, that’s a big HUH? Many politicians make great speeches, many politicians offer hope, many politicians inspire. That’s what politicians do.
But to give the man a Nobel for basically winning an election, being in the right place at the right time, and making speeches does not make him a peacemaker.
A peacemaker is someone who has had a lifetime of hard work, a public servant, a person who has toiled to make a difference and has in fact made an impact on the world for the better.
To me, Obama has simply not made the impact to deserve the award. He has not really done anything. I simply do not understand it.
Great discussion, everyone. As I said in another post I think, there’s more agreement here than it may seem at first blush. I personally think that Congress made a huge mistake granting George Bush such expansive war powers when our enemy is an organization and an ideology and not a nation state. I think stacey touched on this the other day. Iraq diverted needed resources from Afghanistan and as a result, we find ourselves in quite the quagmire and yes, it’s a quagmire.
Stacey your just another limosine liberal who doesn’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Not only were we right to invade Afghanistan and Iraq we should do the same to Iran because no one else will. If we don’t Israel may very well be destroyed. But reading through some of the comments on this blog despite your claims I think you do hate america and you seem to side with and defend the islamofascists.
And as for that illegal alien Hussein Obama, it’s the first speech he’s given that made any sense. Although he hates America almost as much as some of you here do.
American Bill- Clearly, anyone with whom you disagree MUST hate America and LOVE Islamofascists. Clearly.
Have you noticed that everyone else is able to discuss their views, including areas of possible disagreement, without resorting to ad hominem attacks? Everyone but you.
When people spew nothing but angry insults it’s hard to conclude anything other than the person is insecure in their views and about their ability to make a reasoned argument based on facts or even purely subjective personal viewpoint. Anyone is welcome here irrespective of viewpoint but to just drop in and scream “America-hater” is a bit trollish.
Is it that difficult to remain civil?
Apparently it IS that difficult to remain civil.
I’d be interested to know if RudeAmericanBill has an actual argument or opinion he’d like to share with the class or is he just going to run in, drop a turd bomb and run away? My guess is the latter.
This ia all wonderful insights to the Speech. Thanks everyone for your comments. However I agree with all of you. That said, Obama should have never been awarded the Nobel Prize. He has not earned it or anything yet.
I thought the core value of the Nobel Prize is to award someone who use a non-violent way to promote peace, and not someone use force to promote peace. BTW, what is a “Just War”? If you look back at history, all dictators, kings, czars, who didn’t say their wars were just? How many wars were fought in the name of peace? Ask Bid Laden, Al Qeada, they will tell you their war is just.
Go HRC- I totally agree.
There was a startling naivete in Obama’s speech in that regard (in my opinion). People who use violence to achieve their ends, whether by a formal declaration of war or even by guerrilla warfare and terrorism, claim that their cause is just. It’s all very subjective. The Founders of this country were seen as treasonous insurgents at the time but history views their cause as just even though many at the time did not.
And as you point out many despots throughout history have appealed to their followers by claiming their cause is “just” and the fact that others may disagree hardly matters. And of course, I bet many in the audience in Oslo who were listening to Obama’s speech, may well have disagreed about whether or not Afghanistan continues to be a just war – reasonable people can disagree about this but Obama presented it as rather black and white as though determining what is just and what isn’t, should be clear as day to everyone listening.
But you know what, shame on the Nobel Committee for selecting him in the first place- they picked him immediately after he took office when he had done absolutely nothing but express his lofty vision (some of which I agreed with at the time by the way)- a vision which he has backtracked on (in areas like Mideast peace, the environment, regulation of Wall Street, human rights, Bush-era secrecy and overly-expansive executive power, closing GITMO and ending military tribunals and on and on). Some of it is a result of political realities in Washington but some of it is a result of lacking a backbone and a misguided view of bipartisanship (it takes TWO to be bipartisan).
I think its an insult to all the men and women who sacrifice their livelihood and even their lives working for peace- people who promote freedom and democracy at a HUGE personal cost to themselves- in China, in the former Soviet Union, in Iran and the Muslim world and all of them got passed over for a guy who doesn’t even have the backbone to meet with a fellow Nobel Laureate, the Dalai Lama. It’s mind boggling.
Part of the problem is that, like many liberals and progressives in the US, a lot of the left in Europe and elsewhere perceived Obama as one (or potentially one). If you would research the non-US social democratic and socialist websites that followed the primaries, not only did they see Hillary as a continuation of if not worse than Bush, but they saw Obama as “the One.” Funny how Naomi Klein and anti-globalization activists supported Obama, and now (in her recent interview in Democracy Now) she dissects the Obama campaign the way she dissected global corporations in her book “No Logo,” essentially saying his supporters were taken in by the same kind of marketing that has made billions of consumers captive markets of the likes of Nike. Duh!
The interesting question is, if Obama continues to follow the advice of his advisers, the pundits and even the media, who always run around crying the “sky is falling” when a democrat gets elected and warns them against running from the far left, will progressives who voted for Obama vote for him in 2012? As someone who supported Hillary in the primaries but voted for Obama in the general (because I simply couldn’t vote for McCain/Palin), I’m wondering if I am going to be able to pull the lever for this particular democrat. Right now, I’m thinking not.