nobelprijs voor de oorlog voor Obama

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The Nobel War Prize
10 October 2009

Friday’s announcement by the Nobel committee in Norway that Barack
Obama had been chosen to receive its 2009 Peace Prize was met with
expressions of astonishment around the globe.

Many questioned how Obama could be chosen after less than ten months
in office, with no discernable achievements on any front. He was
inaugurated just 11 days before the cut-off date for nominations for
the prize.

More significant, however, is what Obama has done in office, which has
nothing to do with peace.

Obama appeared in the Rose Garden in the mid-morning to deliver
remarks that began with a declaration that he was “surprised and
deeply humbled” to receive the Peace Prize. He then marched back into
the White House to meet with his war council and discuss sending tens
of thousands more troops to Afghanistan and escalating the bombing in
that country and across the border in Pakistan.

Using his statement to issue veiled threats against Iran, Obama went
out of his way to declare himself the “commander-in-chief” and refer
to the two wars and occupations over which he presides.

While the Nobel committee praised him for his “vision of a world free
from nuclear arms,” Obama commented that this goal “may not be
completed in my lifetime.” Given that in talks with Moscow his
administration has demanded the right to keep a minimum of 1,500
nuclear warheads, he knows whereof he speaks.

“We have to confront the world as we know it,” said Obama, making a
clear distinction between his supposed “vision” and the reality of his
administration’s bellicose policies.

On the surface, awarding a peace prize to the US president is
farcical. There are widespread warnings that the selection may well
prove only an embarrassment for the Obama administration. How is it
possible to proclaim a “commander-in-chief” who is responsible for war
crimes, such as the of bombing the civilian population of
Afghanistan—one such attack having claimed the lives of over 100 men,
women and children just last May—as the champion of peace?

Yet, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize has always been a dubious
distinction. Its reputation has never really recovered from the
decision to award it in 1973 to Henry Kissinger, who is today unable
to leave the United States for fear of being arrested as a war
criminal. His co-recipient, Le Duc Tho, the Vietnamese leader who
negotiated the Paris peace agreement with Kissinger, refused to accept
the award, pointing out that the accord had brought no peace to his
country.

A few years later, Menachem Begin was chosen for the prize. The Nobel
committee chose to ignore his long career as a terrorist and killer,
honoring him for reaching the Camp David deal with Anwar Sadat of
Egypt, his co-recipient.

Jimmy Carter, whose administration instigated a war in Afghanistan
that claimed a million lives, was given the same award in 2002.

The committee cannot be accused of violating its own principles, such
as they are. The founder of the prize, Alfred Nobel, was the inventor
of dynamite. He would no doubt be intrigued by the Pentagon’s efforts
to speed up production of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), a
30,000-pound bomb designed to obliterate underground targets. The
weapon is being readied for possible use against Iran.

Despite its praise for Obama’s “vision” and for having “captured the
world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the
Nobel committee did not choose Obama based on illusions in his
campaign rhetoric.

The Nobel Peace Prize is, and always has been, a political award given
with the aim of promoting definite policies.

The selection was made by a committee composed of five members of the
Norwegian parliament drawn from the main parties, ranging from the
far-right to the social democrats. Its decisions reflect positions
prevailing within the European ruling elite as a whole.

Thorbjorn Jagland, the committee’s chairman and a former Norwegian
prime minister, defended the choice of Obama in an interview with the
New York Times Friday, expressing the cynicism underlying the choice.
“It’s important for the committee to recognize people who are
struggling and idealistic, but we cannot do that every year,” he said.
“We must from time to time go into the realm of realpolitik.”

Realpolitik doubtless played the decisive role in the recent selection
of two other prominent American politicians for the prize: Carter in
2002 and Al Gore in 2007. Carter was picked on the eve of the US war
against Iraq in a rebuke to the belligerent unilateralism of the Bush
administration. The prize went to Gore, the Democratic presidential
candidate in 2000, in advance of the 2008 election, a not-so-subtle
hint that Europe wanted a break from the Bush administration.

While in those years the prize was employed as a critique of US
foreign policy, this time it represents an endorsement. As Jagland put
it, “We hope this can contribute a little bit to enhance what he is
trying to do.”

The glaring contradiction in giving the peace prize to Obama as he
prepares to send more troops into Afghanistan is more apparent than
real. The award is meant to legitimize Washington’s escalation in
Afghanistan, its attacks on Pakistan and its continued occupation of
Iraq, giving them Europe’s seal of approval as wars for peace.

It serves to undermine popular opposition within the United States and
internationally to the wars being waged under the Obama
administration, as well as to future ones still being planned.

The European powers support the war in Afghanistan, a position that is
more frequently finding its expression in the press. The British daily
Independent, for example, published an editorial Thursday declaring
that it “in principle” supports the call for sending as many as 40,000
more US troops into the war.

Meanwhile, Germany, France and other countries have shifted their
positions on Iran as well, backing Washington’s campaign for tougher
measures.

What ruling circles in Europe see in Obama is not a champion of peace,
but rather a shift away from the unilateralism of the Bush
administration and a willingness to factor European support into the
pursuit of US imperialism’s strategic aims.

No doubt, Europe’s governments calculate that their backing of the US
military interventions will translate into a stake in the exploitation
of the energy reserves of Central Asia and the Persian Gulf.

Moreover, in legitimizing these wars and promoting a return to
multilateralism in US foreign policy, the European powers see a means
to legitimize their own turn to militarism and to suppress opposition
to war within their own populations.

Obama’s Nobel prize, far from signaling hope that the world’s greatest
military power is turning toward peace, is itself an endorsement of
war and serves as a warning that the intensifying crisis of world
capitalism is creating the conditions for resurgent militarism and the
threat of widening international conflicts.

Bill Van Auken

Copyright © 1998-2009 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/oct2009/pers-o10.shtml

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