Warmonger Obama picks up 'peace' prize

Thursday 10 December 2009

by Tom Mellen

US President Barack Obama has accepted his Nobel Peace Prize, just nine days after sending 33,500 more US troops to prosecute his bloody counter-insurgency war in Afghanistan.

In a speech at the glitzy acceptance ceremony in Oslo Mr Obama insisted that "the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace."

He went on to quote what fellow Nobel peace laureate Dr Martin Luther King observed at the same ceremony in 1964: "Violence never brings permanent peace - it solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones."

But Mr Obama, who won a landslide victory over warmongering Republican presidential candidate John McCain last year on a ticket of "change," went on to regurgitate one of his unpopular predecessor's favourite soundbites affirming his "right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation."

And he maintained that force "can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war."

In an apparent attempt to goad allied states uneasy about the war in Afghanistan to pledge more troops he insisted that "all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace."

Mr Obama then fell back on hoary old World War II comparisons.

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/84341

http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/bookauth/images/narciss.gif

birds of a feather.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/pers-d11.shtml

In the most bellicose Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech within living memory, President Barack Obama made an argument Thursday in Oslo for ever-widening war and neo-colonial occupation, putting the world on notice that the American ruling elite intends to push ahead with its drive for global domination.

Obama defended his dispatch of tens of thousands more US troops to Afghanistan, and ominously referred to Iran, North Korea, Somalia, Darfur in Sudan, Congo, Zimbabwe and Burma, any or all of which may become targets for future American military intervention.

There was a darkly farcical element to the award ceremony, as Obama acknowledged that he is the “Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars.” He presented war as a legitimate means of pursuing national interests.

In Orwellian fashion, he declared that “the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace,” that “all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace,” and that imperialist troops should be honored “not as makers of war, but as wagers of peace.”

Awarded a prize supposedly intended to promote world peace, Obama made the case for past, present and future military action. The US president communicated the “hard truth” to his audience that “we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes.” He promised that nations would continue to “find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified,” and emphasized that squeamish populations would have to get over their “deep ambivalence about military action” and “reflexive suspicion of America, the world’s sole military superpower.”

He admitted that masses of people around the globe were hostile to imperialist war, noting regretfully that “in many countries, there is a disconnect between the efforts of those who serve and the ambivalence of the broader public.” But the popular will and democracy be damned: “The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it. Peace requires responsibility. Peace entails sacrifice.”

Obama arrogantly spelled out Washington’s belief that it can intervene in defense of US interests when and where it likes, no matter what the human cost.

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