Accepting peace prize, Obama makes case for unending war

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Accepting peace prize, Obama makes case for unending war
11 December 2009

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.

This was wrapped, rather miserably, in the language of moral uplift,
the “law of love” and, inevitably, the “spark of the divine.” He
indicated, although the speech and his mode of presentation offered no
sign of it, that he felt an “acute sense of the cost of armed
conflict.” On the contrary, Obama delivered his remarks about war and
peace with all the depth of feeling of a university administrator
issuing a set of campus parking regulations.

Obama was even blunter when answering questions from Norwegian
journalists prior to the ceremony. Speaking of his administration’s
first 11 months, he explained, “The goal is not to win a popularity
contest or to get an award, even one as prestigious as the Nobel peace
prize. The goal has been to advance America’s interests.”

Obama offered his audience—which included Norwegian royalty and
politicians, along with Hollywood celebrities—a potted, misanthropic
history of human civilization (“War … appeared with the first man …
Evil does exist in the world”), before launching into a spirited and
lying defense of America’s global role.

The president presented the post-war period as one of peace and
prosperity bestowed by a benevolent US. “America led the world in
constructing an architecture to keep the peace … The United States of
America has helped underwrite global security for more than six
decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. …
We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will.” The
levels of hypocrisy and falsification are staggering.

Obama later made the extraordinary claim that “America has never
fought a war against a democracy, and our closest friends are
governments that protect the rights of their citizens.” Aside from the
historical fact that the US has fought wars with Britain, Germany and
Austria-Hungary, when all of them had parliamentary systems, Obama
deliberately sidestepped the long, sordid history of US interventions
against peoples of the oppressed countries, from Mexico, Central
America and the Caribbean region in the first part of the 20th
century, to Vietnam, Iran, Guatemala, Congo, Indonesia, Chile, and
Nicaragua in the postwar period.

As for Washington’s “closest friends,” that list presently includes
brutal and corrupt regimes in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Israel, Egypt,
Jordan, Morocco, and Uzbekistan (along with the puppet governments in
Iraq and Afghanistan), among others, all of which practice torture and
widespread repression.

After referring to the concept of “just war,” associated with a nation
acting to defend itself, and claiming, falsely, that the US invasion
of Afghanistan after 9/11 was based on that principle, Obama made it
clear that Washington needs no such legitimation.

He spoke in favor of military action whose purpose “extends beyond
self-defense or the defense of one nation against an aggressor.”
“Humanitarian grounds,” determined of course by Washington, were
sufficient to justify “force,” which could be employed against much of
Africa, Asia, Latin America and eastern Europe. This is nothing more
than colonialism cloaked in the mantle of “just war.”

Obama defended a version of the Bush doctrine of preemptive war, with
a more multilateral coloration as part of the effort to reinforce the
European powers’ support for the US-led wars in the Middle East and
Central Asia. “America cannot act alone,” said the US president.

The European ruling elites, whose interests find expression in the
decisions of the Nobel committee, were glad to oblige Obama with a
stage from which he could defend these wars and paint imperialist
aggression as an act of humanitarianism. They hope that Obama, unlike
Bush and Cheney, will offer Europe a role in enforcing “global
security” (and sharing in the spoils) in “unstable regions for years
to come.”

Obama made reference to the Nobel prize speech delivered 45 years ago
by Martin Luther King Jr., in order to repudiate its oppositional
content. King, unlike Obama, delivered a short address, calling
attention to the ongoing repression of blacks and opponents of racism
in the South. King insisted that “Civilization and violence are
antithetical concepts.”

Before his assassination, King became an outspoken opponent of the
Vietnam War. It is his identification of militarism with oppression
and barbarism that Obama and the entire American political
establishment instinctively find threatening and seek to discredit.

The Nobel speech is a further stage in the political unmasking of
Obama. The candidate of “change” is revealing himself not only as the
continuator, in every important aspect, of the Bush-Cheney policies,
but as a deeply reactionary, foul figure in his own right. He is not
feigning his obvious relish for the military and war; this is who and
what he has become over the course of his political career.

Jabir Aftab, a 27-year-old engineer in Peshawar, Pakistan, told the
Agence France-Presse Thursday, “The Nobel prize is for those who have
made achievements, but Obama is a killer.” That understanding will
come to permeate the thinking of vast numbers of people in the coming
period.

David Walsh

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

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