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<h1><font size=4><b>Blood on the Nobel</b></font></h1><font size=3>On
Words, Deeds, and Imperial Re-Branding*<br><br>
December 15, 2009 <br><br>
By <b>Paul Street<br>
<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/23365" eudora="autourl">
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/23365</a></b> <br><br>
Obama is an incredibly Orwellian character. He can make people
think that war is peace.<br><br>
- Jeremy Scahill, Chicago, Illinois, Speech to the International
Socialist Organization, June 2009<br><br>
Cindy Sheehan sees war as war, whether the battle standard is being waved
by a white moron from Midland, Texas or an eloquent black man from
Chicago. <br>
- Alexander Cockburn, September 5, 2009 <br><br>
Obama has only brought war to our country. Peace prize? He's a
killer.<br>
- Afghan man, December 10, 2009<br><br>
Here is an interesting sentence from the Associated Press on the day that
Barack Obama was given the world's highest award for the advancement of
peace: "President Barack Obama entered the pantheon of Nobel Peace
Prize winners Thursday with humble words, acknowledging his own few
accomplishments while delivering a robust defense of war." <br><br>
We truly live in Orwellian times <b>[1]</b>. <br><br>
<b>A Flawed Prize<br><br>
</b>Does Obama deserve his Nobel? Let's admit from the start that the
prize has long been a less-than- perfect measure of its recipients'
actual commitment to peace. Alfred Nobel, it is worth recalling,
was a leading armaments manufacturer. He was the inventor of
dynamite along with other deadly war materials. <br><br>
It's true that the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to some deserving
recipients, like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But there are numerous peace
leaders and war opponents who have not received the award and should
have, including Mahatma Gandhi, who led mass nonviolent resistance to the
British Empire in the 1940s. <br><br>
The award has repeatedly gone to powerful Americans with blood-soaked
records. It was given in 1906 to Teddy Roosevelt, a man who openly
glorified war abroad and genocide at home, a man who helped escalate the
Spanish American War in accord with his belief that the US needed
periodic wars to maintain proper national manliness. <br><br>
The prize went in 1919 to Woodrow Wilson, who crushed dissent at home as
he sent hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops to kill and die in the great
inter-imperialist bloodbath known then as The Great War and as he sent
troops to intervene against the Russian Revolution in 1918. Wilson
also intervened in quite bloody and neocolonial ways in Mexico, the
Dominican Republic, and in Haiti, where his troops restored de facto
slavery in the sugar fields. . <br><br>
The prize went in 1945 to Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of State Cordell
Hull, a man who refused to accept Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany in
1939. Hull helped lead Western appeasement of hyper-militaristic
Nazism on the theory that fascism was a useful bulwark against
socialism. And Hull tried to economically cripple Japan, thereby
provoking the attacks that provided the pretext for the United States'
entrance into World War II - a war that he and author top foreign
policymakers exploited to advance the United States' emergence as the
world's reigning military and economic superpower. <br><br>
In 1973 the award went to Richard Nixon's Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger. Kissinger was a leading architect of the latter stages
of the U.S. crucifixion of South East Asia during the late 1960s and
early 1970s, including the mass-murderous bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong
and the invasions of Cambodia and Laos. He was involved in U.S.
support for the criminal coup that overthrew Chile's democratically
elected leftist president Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973.
The U.S.-allied junta in Santiago murdered and tortured many thousands of
Chileans. The execution and tortures under the fascist dictator Augusto
Pinochet continued as Kissinger received his award <b>[2]</b>.<br><br>
Almost exactly two years after receiving his Nobel, Kissinger and his
next president Gerald Ford gave the U.S. client state Indonesia a green
light to invade the independent island nation of East Timor, a bloody,
genocidal invasion that killed a third of the population there over the
next quarter century <b>[3]</b>. <br><br>
So the Nobel has more than a little power-worshipping blood and
explosives' dust on it as it gets handed to Obama. <br><br>
<b>Af-Pak Escalation and Speech: Deceptions and Deletions<br><br>
</b>Still, what has U.S. President Barack Obama done to deserve getting a
prize, any prize, with the word peace on it? What business does he have
standing on the same stage as Dr. King, who in 1967 courageously
identified the United States as "the leading purveyor of violence in
the world," adding that a nation approaches "spiritual
death" when it spends more on the military than it does on social
uplift? <br><br>
Let's start with Afghanistan or with what the administration calls
"Af-Pak." In defense of Kissinger's Nobel, one could argue that
Henry was at least winding down an imperial war in Southeast Asia when he
got his. <br><br>
Obama got his Nobel Peace Prize as he's escalating an imperial war in
South Asia. <br><br>
Formally announced nearly two weeks ago, Obama's decision to re-escalate
second time in Afghanistan was expected. The decision was never much in
doubt given the fact that he surrounded himself with - and handed over
most of his foreign policy to - military men, all of whom are predisposed
by career background and philosophy to advocate increased force levels.
<br><br>
On December 1, 2009, speaking to a prime- time national television
audience from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the
Commander-in-Chief announced plans to send 30,000 more troops to
Afghanistan over six months, on an accelerated timetable that would
dispatch several hundred Marines by Christmas. Six times in his war
speech Obama used the phrase "safe haven." Like Bush in the
fall of 2001, Obama wants American people to think that Afghanistan is
some of special, super-powered planning and execution site for past and
.future terror attacks on the American "homeland." The word he
used last week was "epicenter." This was dangerous nonsense. As
Harvard Kennedy School of Government professor Stephen Walt noted in an
August 2009 Foreign Policy essay, Obama's "safe haven myth"
rests on the flawed premise that al Qaeda and/or its many and various
imitators couldn't just as effectively plot and conduct future terror
attacks from any of a large number of other locations, including Western
Europe and the U.S. itself. 9/11 itself was planned and conducted
primarily outside Afghanistan and Pakistan. There is no single
"epicenter" of extremist Islamic terror...no single epicenter
except perhaps Washington, which has long fueled flames of Islamic
extremism both directly and indirectly in connection with a long history
of imperial intervention and occupation in the Middle East and the
broader Muslim world.<br><br>
There was quite a bit deleted from Obama's West Point speech. The
president said nothing in that address about the many tens of thousands
of private military contractors deployed by the Pentagon in Afghanistan
(57 percent of the U.S. force presence there at the end of last
June). U.S, paid mercenaries' numbers in Afghanistan rose by 40%
just between June and September. They now total 104,101, more than
the total number of uniformed personnel there. <br><br>
Obama did not note that nearly a third of all U.S. fatalities in
Afghanistan have taken place since he became president. Obama has been
the president for less than a tenth of the time in which the U.S. has
been deploying troops in Afghanistan but his period as commander in chief
accounts for nearly a third of the total U.S. deaths over there. Clearly
there's already been an escalation before the escalation. <br><br>
Obama also did not mention the fact that as of the latest Gallup poll
prior to his Afghanistan speech less than half of Americans and less than
a third of Democrats supported a White House decision to increase troops
in Afghanistan. The partisan differences are interesting, reminding
some observers of how Bill Clinton ended up relying significantly on
Republicans over and against Democrats on key issues like NAFTA and
welfare reform. Before his speech last week, just 29 percent of Democrats
but fully 72 percent of Republicans favored a troop increase in
Afghanistan.
(</font>
<a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/124490/In-U.S.-More-Support-Increasing-Troops-Afghanistan.aspx">
<font size=3 color="#0000FF">
www.gallup.com/poll/124490/In-U.S.-More-Support-Increasing-Troops-Afghanistan.aspx</a>
</font><font size=3>]. <br><br>
(After his West Point speech, terrible and wooden as it was, Obama got a
bump, with Gallup reporting a bare majority, 51 percent, now supporting a
troop increase. That's why the ruling class hired him - to provide
eloquent fake-progressive cover, re-branding, for militaristic policies
that most Americans would be more likely to oppose if they were being
carried out by the Republican Party, whose brand was badly damaged by the
Bush fiasco.) <br><br>
Obama's West Point war speech failed to mention that the Karzai
government he says he wants to equip for security tasks in Afghanistan is
among the most corrupt, pathetic, and inept governments on Earth.
It is loathed by the nation's Pashtuns, who are by far the largest ethnic
group in Afghanistan. <br><br>
Obama failed to note that just 6 percent of the U.S. military units
deployed in Afghanistan report high morale or that more U.S. soldiers
committed suicide this year than in any year on record. <br><br>
Also unmentioned by the president were the many hundreds of innocent
Pakistani civilians killed by his drastically escalated
"secret" Predator drone war. Obama has embraced and
expanded the killer drone program conducted by the CIA and the private
contractor formerly known as Blackwater (Xe Services). "During his
first nine and a half months in office," the journalist Jane Mayer
recently noted, "he has authorized as many CIA aerial attacks in
Pakistan as George W. Bush did in his final three years in office ...So
far this year, various estimates suggest, the CIA attacks have killed
between three hundred and twenty-six and five hundred and thirty-eight
people." (The New Yorker, October 26, 2009). According to the CIA
counter-insurgency consultant David Killcullen, most of the people being
killed this way are innocent bystanders. In a recent New York Times Op-Ed
titled "Death From Above, Outrage Down Below," Killcullen, a
former advisor to General David Patraeus, explained that the United
States' remote-controlled drones perform deliver what he calls
"a hit rate of two percent on 98 percent collateral" - meaning
that two militants are killed for every 98 civilians slaughtered. This is
"not moral," Killcullen says. Yes, "not moral"
(New York Times, May 17, 2009).<br><br>
The first two Predator assaults of the Obama administration occurred on
the morning of January 23, 2009 - the future Nobel Peace Prize winner's
third day in office. The second drone-hit ordered by the
"peace" president on that day mistakenly targeted the residence
of a pro-government tribal leader, killing his entire family, including
three children. In keeping with U.S. policy going back to Bush and
Clinton, there was no official acknowledgement of either strike. The CIA
drone program is an officially non-existent U.S. secret and honored as
such by the Obama administration. <br><br>
In his West Point War Speech, Obama failed to note that his drone war and
Washington's general murderous presence in South Asia is fueling the very
de-stabilization and terrorism he purports to oppose and wants us to fear
in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He did not note that the U.S. is
constructing gigantic, super-fortified mega-embassies in Islamabad and
Kabul along with gargantuan consulates in Peshawar and elsewhere.
The U.S. clearly intends to remain in the region for a very long time,
something that powerfully validates Osama bin-Laden's longstanding
narrative on how the American Empire has dug in for a long occupation of
the Muslim world. <br><br>
In an effort to mollify his fading liberal base last week, it is true,
Obama made reference to a timetable for the beginning of withdrawal in
July 2011. This should not be even remotely confused with a
schedule for actual withdrawal, however. And just in case anyone thought
otherwise, the White House public relations machine went into hyper-drive
last Sunday sending out what the New York Times calls a "forceful
public message ...that American military forces could remain in
Afghanistan for a long time...In a flurry of coordinated television
interviews," the Times reported, "Defense Secretary Robert M.
Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other top
administration officials said that any troop pullout beginning in July
2011 would be slow and that the Americans would only then be starting to
transfer security responsibilities to Afghan forces..." <br><br>
<b>White House Whitewash<br><br>
</b>If there was anything surprising or at least shocking about Obama's
December 1st address, it was the extent to which he was willing to
grossly distort history and to sound almost exactly like George W. Bush
on behalf of his militaristic policy. "Just days after 9/11,
Congress authorized the use of force against al Qaeda and those who
harbored them -- an authorization that continues to this day.... For the
first time in its history, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization invoked
Article 5 - the commitment that says an attack on one member nation is an
attack on all. And the United Nations Security Council endorsed the use
of all necessary steps to respond to the 9/11 attacks. America, our
allies and the world were acting as one to destroy al Qaeda's terrorist
network and to protect our common security." ("Text of Obama's
Speech on Afghanistan," December 1, 2009,
<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/12/01/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5855894.shtml">
www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/12/01/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5855894.shtml</a>
) <br><br>
Obama clearly meant here to create the false impression that the United
Nations Security Council (UNSC) authorized the Bush administration's
attack on Afghanistan in October, 2001). But, of course, the UNSC
did no such thing since the attack met none of the UN's criteria for
legitimate self-defense. After 9/11, the Council passed two
resolutions, neither of which authorized the use of military force in
Afghanistan.<br><br>
The claim that human civilization ("the world") was united in
support for Washington's attack on Afghanistan was completely
false. An international Gallup poll released after the U.S. bombing
began showed that global opposition was overwhelming. In 34 of the 37
countries Gallup surveyed, majorities opposed a military attack on
Afghanistan, preferring that 9/11 be treated as a criminal matter rather
than as a pretext for war. Even in the U.S., just 54% supported war.
"In Latin America, which has some experience with US behavior,"
Noam Chomsky noted last year, "support [for the U.S. assault]
ranged from 2% in Mexico, to 18% in Panama, and that support was
conditional on civilian targets being spared (they were attacked at
once). There was an overwhelming preference in the world for
diplomatic/judicial measures, rejected out of hand by [Washington,
claiming to represent] 'the world.'" (N. Chomsky, "‘The World'
According to Washington," Asia Times, February 28, 2008). <br><br>
"Under the banner of this domestic unity and international
legitimacy - and only after the Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin
Laden - we sent our troops into Afghanistan," Obama said, adding
that "We did not ask for this fight." <br><br>
This was completely false. In the actual history that occurred, the U.S.
refused to respond to the Taliban government's offer to turn bin-Laden
over to a foreign government for a trial once evidence pointing to his
guilt was presented. The U.S. deliberately made sure that bin Laden
would not be turned over through legal and diplomatic channels because
quite frankly the Bush administration wanted war and did not wish to
follow the UN Charter's requirement that nations pursue all means of
resolution short of force before taking military action. "President
George Bush rejected as ‘non-negotiable' an offer by the Taliban to
discuss turning over Osama bin Laden if the United States ended the
bombing in Afghanistan," The Guardian reported on October 14,
2001.<br><br>
The West Point speech was marred by broader historical deceptions that
seemed to have been pasted almost identically from the war speeches of
George W. Bush. Just like his predecessor, Obama peered straight into the
camera to address the people of a nation he was about to inflict more
terror to and said: "I want the Afghan people to understandAmerica
seeks an end to this war and suffering." Like the much-bemoaned
messianic militarist "Dubya," the new war president claimed
that "We have no interest in occupying your country." He even
claimed - quite preposterously - that he wanted "to forge a lasting
friendship in which America is your partner, and never your patron."
Also like Bush, Obama: <br><br>
* exaggerated the "contributions from our allies" in this war
effort, which is overwhelmingly American.<br><br>
* cited Al Qaeda's "attacks against London and Amman and Bali"
as a justification for imperial interventions in distant Muslim
lands.<br><br>
* promised a long war against terrorism: "The struggle against
violent extremism will not be finished quickly, and it extends well
beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan....It will be an enduring test of our
free society, and our leadership in the world."<br><br>
* Went to remarkable rhetorical lengths to whitewash the supposed
benevolent historical record of that great global "leadership,"
claiming that: <br><br>
- "More than any other nation, the United States of America
has underwritten global security for over six decades." <br><br>
- "Unlike the great powers of old, we have not sought world
domination"<br><br>
- "We do not seek to occupy other nations."<br><br>
- "We are still heirs to a moral struggle for freedom. And now we
must summon all of our might and moral suasion to meet the challenges of
a new age."<br><br>
These last claims were too much for Matthew Rothschild, editor of the
monthly left-liberal magazine The Progressive. In an essay titled
"Obama Steals Bush's Speechwriters," Rothschild offered a
historically informed response:<br><br>
"Well, let's see: The United States led the world to the cliffs of
nuclear annihilation during the Cold War. The United States invaded one
Latin American country after another, and subverted other governments
there covertly. The United States helped overthrow governments in Ghana
and the Congo, and supported racist forces in southern Africa. The United
States plunged into the Korean War, and then supported one dictator after
another in South Korea. The United States killed between two and three
million people in Indochina. And the United States supported Suharto in
Indonesia, who killed nearly a million people, some at the behest of the
CIA, after taking power in 1965. The U.S. also supported Suharto's
invasion of East Timor ten years later, which took another 200,000
lives" <br><br>
"Obama can call that ‘global security,' if he wants to, but it's
dripping red."<br><br>
"... what does having almost 1,000 military bases in more than 100
countries mean, then?"<br><br>
"...the United States has invaded or overthrown dozens of countries
in the last six decades, and it doesn't need to occupy them if it can
install a puppet regime instead" <b>[4]</b>.<br><br>
"If you closed your eyes during much of the President's speech on
Afghanistan Tuesday night and just listened to the words,"
Rothschild added, "you easily could have concluded that George W.
Bush was still in the Oval Office...And that he didn't choke on these
words tells you all you need to know about Obama." <br><br>
<b>"Spiritual Death" Re-Visited: "The United States is
Broken Yet Nation-Building in Afghanistan"<br><br>
</b>As the Christmas season arrives amidst growing U.S. food lines and
the highest U.S. unemployment rate in more than 27 years, we might
reflect on the terrible domestic social and opportunity costs of
escalation abroad. Those costs, reflecting the twisted misplacement of
resources that Dr. King described as symptomatic of America's
"spiritual death," are enormous. By the White House's own
calculation, the Afghan escalation is going to cost $1 million a year per
every single new soldier deployed - a $300 billion investment. In a
rational, just, and democratic nation, that stupendous sum would be
diverted to create jobs and to fund education, housing relief and health
care in a time when real U.S. unemployment is close to 20 percent, when
45,000 Americans die each year in connection with their lack of health
insurance, in a time when 1 in 4 American children now rely on Food
Stamps. <br><br>
Echoing Dr. King's late-1960s sermons and speeches against the U.S.
military state's "perverted priorities," New York Times
columnist Bob Herbert marked the day of Obama's West Point Address with
an eloquent lament: <br><br>
"More soldiers committed suicide this year than in any year for
which we have complete records," Herbert wrote. "But the
military," Herbert noted, "is now able to meet its recruitment
goals because the young men and women who are signing up can't find jobs
in civilian life. The United States is broken - school systems are
deteriorating, the economy is in shambles, homelessness and poverty rates
are expanding - yet we're nation-building in Afghanistan, sending
economically distressed young people over there by the tens of thousands
at an annual cost of a million dollars each." <br><br>
Of course, "nation-building" is a euphemism for imperial
assault and occupation. Look at the unimaginable devastation - more
than 1 million plus killed before their time, millions more injured and
displaced, and massive social and technical infrastructure destroyed -
"we" (our unelected agents of Empire) have inflicted on Iraq,
about which Obama had the noxious imperial chutzpah to say the following
in West Point last week: "Thanks to [U.S. troops'] courage, grit and
perseverance, we have given Iraqis a chance to shape their future."
<br><br>
A chance to shape their future? As the respected Middle East journalist
pointed out two years ago: "The American occupation has been more
disastrous than that of the Mongols who sacked Baghdad in the thirteenth
century. Only fools talk of solutions now. There is no
solution. The only hope is that perhaps the damage can be
contained" ("The Death of Iraq," Current History, December
2007, p. 31) <br><br>
One wonders what Rosen would have had to say about the following comment
offered by Barack Obama to autoworkers assembled at the General Motors
plant in Janesville, Wisconsin on February 13, 2008, just before that
state's Democratic primary: "It's time to stop spending billions of
dollars a week trying to put Iraq back together and start spending the
money putting America back together" <b>[5]</b>. <br><br>
For those who knew the depth and degree of the destruction inflicted on
Iraq by two invasions, one ongoing, and more than a decade of deadly
economic sanctions (embargo), this statement was nothing short of
obscene. <br><br>
<b>The Broader Middle East<br><br>
</b>Let's turn briefly to Obama's qualifications for a peace prize beyond
Afghanistan and Pakistan. For what its worth, if anyone still cares
- the media certainly doesn't - Obama has continued the disastrous Iraq
occupation. Earlier this year, the White House has pressured the
Iraqi government not to permit the popular referendum required by the
Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) - the withdrawal document forced on the
Bush administration by the Iraqi resistance. This is because the
Obama administration fears that the Iraqi population will insist on the
immediate removal of all U.S. troops, consistent with their longstanding
majority resistance to the presence of U.S. forces in their country.
<br><br>
Obama has refused to rule out U.S. approval for an Israel attack on Iran.
He maintains that a U.S. first strike, possibly nuclear, remains on
America's table of options in regard to the supposed threat posed by
Iran. He has consistently raised bogus Bush-like WMD alarms about
"Iran's nuclear program" even as he moves forward with efforts
to reconstitute U.S. nuclear weapons and with U.S. assistance to India's
nuclear weapons program, both actions in violation of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty. Right after receiving the Nobel, Obama ordered
the accelerated production (at the cost of $51 billion) of a 13 ton
so-called bunker buster bomb - deadly ordnance meant to be placed on B2
Stealth bombers for strikes on mythical Iranian weapons facilities.
<br><br>
Obama has refused to move in any serious way against Israel's brutal and
criminal occupation of Palestine. He refuses to acknowledge the
well-known fact that Israel is a heavily nuclear-armed state - something
that makes it difficult for much of the world to take Obama seriously
when he claims to be upset about the possibility that nuclear weapons
might rear their head in the Middle East. <br><br>
Obama has cozyed up to hyper-authoritarian regimes in Egypt and Saudi
Arabia because of their perceived indispensability in supporting U.S.
goals and "checking Iran". <br><br>
<b>Bullying Nuclear Russia <br><br>
</b>Moving beyond the Middle East, the Obama White House has continued
the Bush administration's dangerous practice of bullying Russia, still
the world's second leading nuclear power. It has conducted
military-training operations and supplied weapons to Georgia, site of a
probably U.S.-sponsored war with Russia in August 2008. Obama has
persisted with and possibly increased Bush's provocative efforts to
incorporate Georgia and the Ukraine and even formally neutral Sweden and
Finland into the North American Treaty Organization (NATO), a
US-dominated political and military alliance aimed at encircling Russia
and rolling back Russian influence and power in Europe. And while
it scrapped George W. Bush's plans for "anti-missile" bases
near Russia's western border in Poland and Czechoslovakia, the new White
House is reconfiguring the anti-Russian "missile shield" with a
more widely dispersed and mobile missile system that will be operational
much more quickly than what the previous administration promised.
"With the growing threat of encirclement and aggressive
militarization and technical advancement of western (mainly U.S.)
weaponry proceeding apace," the left researchers Edward S. Herman
and David Peterson noted last November, "Russia had moved to an
openly greater reliance on tactical and other nuclear weapons. On
these areas," Herman and Peterson note, "Obama once again
represents continuity rather than change."(MR Zine, November 9, 2009
at
<a href="http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/hp091109.html">
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/hp091109.html</a>) Just like his
predecessor George Bush, Obama is using the ridiculous notion that Europe
is threatened by Iran to "justify building a missile system aimed at
Russia and China" (John Pilger, "Power, Illusion, and America's
Last Taboo," <i>International Socialist </i>Review
(November-December 2009), p. 26). <br><br>
Some peace president. <br><br>
<b>Rolling Back Democracy in Latin America <br><br>
</b>Meanwhile, back in his own hemisphere, Obama is assisting a
right-wing counter-attack against recent movements towards social justice
and national independence in Latin America. Beneath deceptive progressive
rhetoric that seemed to put him on the side of democracy in Honduras last
summer, Obama has refused to move in any significant way against a
right-wing coup that overthrew a democratically elected, left-leaning
president in that country - a coup the White House certainly knew about
in advance and could have prevented with one phone call. The
administration has recently acknowledged the results of a sham election
carried out by the Honduran junta - an election rejected by all but a few
Latin American states. Consistent with previous administrations, Obama
has signed off on continuing expensive U.S. taxpayer and military
investment in repressive Drug War efforts of Mexico and the militarized
right-wing U.S. client state of Columbia, whose corrupt leader Alvaro
Uribe continues to receive a pass from Washington for his effort to
undermine what remains of democracy there. The Columbian regime sponsors
death squads and possesses the worst human rights record in Latin
America. With guidance from Pentagon satellites, its paramilitaries
conduct covert operations inside Venezuela with the aim of deposing the
democratically elected left government of Hugo Chávez, Valued as a
bastion of U.S. power in a continent and region that has moved to the
left and away from U.S supervision, Columbia continues in the Age of
Obama to receive hundreds of billions of dollars in "military
assistance" from Washington. As during the Bush years, it
receives "U.S. military support second in scale only to
Israel." <br><br>
On October 20th, the Obama administration inked a deal that grants the US
seven giant military bases in Columbia. It lied by claiming that
the deal was only about internal operations against narcotic lords.
"The [real] idea," reported the Associated Press, "is to
make Colombia a regional hub for Pentagon operations... [so that] nearly
half the continent can be covered by a C-17 [military transport] without
refueling..." "Translated," John Pilger writes, "this
means Obama is planning a ‘rollback' of the independence and democracy
that the people of Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Paraguay have achieved
against the odds, along with a historic regional co-operation that
rejects the notion of a US ‘sphere of influence.'" Each of those
countries except Paraguay was (and remains - along with Cuba and
Nicaragua) a member of the anti-imperialist association ALBA - the
Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean"), an
alternative to the U.S.-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas
(FTAA).<br><br>
<b>"There is No Peace Dividend"<br><br>
</b>Overall, Obama has increased the U.S. "defense" (empire)
budget, which is responsible for half the world's military spending and
maintains more than 760 military bases spread across more than 130
countries.<br><br>
This is consistent with a report given to its investors by the Wall
Street firm Morgan Stanley one day after Obama's inauguration. "As
we understand it, Obama has been advised and agrees that there is no
peace dividend" (Frida Berrigan, "Dispatches from
America," Asia Times, November 22, 2008, read at
<a href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JK27Ak01.html">
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JK27Ak01.html</a>). <br><br>
Unlike his so-called "health reform," Obama's war spending is
unburdened with the requirement that it "not add a dime to the
federal deficit." High-tech corporate defense contractors like
Boeing, Raytheon, Rockwell Collins, Xe Services, Halliburton and Lockheed
Martin are of course making out like bandits, reaping hidden profits of
empire. Under Obama as under Bush, leading "defense"
executives and investors "hide in their mansions, while young
people's blood flows out of their bodies and gets buried in the
mud." They are the same parasitic, fear-mongering, blood-soaked
Masters of War that Bob Dylan sang about in 1962. <br><br>
<b>Substance v. Style<br><br>
</b>The transition from Bush to Obama is about public relations and
"re-branding," not any deep or substantive change in the core,
underlying U.S. structures, practices, policies, and doctrines or
ideologies. As Noam Chomsky observed in London one year after Obama's
election: "As Obama came into office, Condoleezza Rice predicted
that he would follow the policies of Bush's second term, and that's
pretty much what's happened apart from a different rhetoric and
style. But it wise to attend to deeds, not rhetoric. Deeds
commonly tell a different story." (Common Dreams, November 9, 2009).
<br><br>
While this statement would probably have irked most leading
"mainstream" U.S. journalists and conventional academicians as
an irresponsibly "ideological" comment, the same basic point
was made by ideologically diverse handful of British professors in a
common-sense letter to The Guardian in mid-September of 2009. The English
academics' missive, asked British journalists and citizens to "grow
up" about the reality of Obama in the actual world of imperial
power:<br><br>
"Though Obama's leadership has enhanced America's image, as yet
there has been no major change from the policies and outcomes of the Bush
years. Yet the Obama presidency is still reported in the mainstream media
as a happy departure from the ‘disastrous Dubya.' Though we are
from opposite ends of the political spectrum, we strongly challenge this.
The public, we feel, should be properly informed that the US will pursue
its interests, regardless of which party holds power."<br><br>
"Obama presents himself as the ‘un-Bush.' But when you look at
substance, rather than style and rhetoric, and the structural constraints
on presidential power, you can legitimately question the extent of his
ability to change US policies. We call for a richer and better informed
debate on US policy abroad. We need to end this unhealthy obsession with
personalities and look properly at the issues - an admittedly difficult
task given the supremely gifted and charismatic president now in
office."<br><br>
"Journalists must be more forthright about the multibillion-dollar
Pentagon budget, the massive numbers of US military bases around the
world, the sheer scale of the US national security state. If, in Britain,
more people knew of the 57 US bases in the UK, we might all be more
realistic in our attitudes to that country." <b>[6]<br><br>
"Evil Does Exist in the World"<br><br>
</b>Such counsel and Obama's militarist record notwithstanding, Obama was
granted the Nobel gift three weeks after this letter was printed. It was
a "stunning decision," meant, Associated Press writers Karl
Ritter and Matt Moore wrote, "to encourage his initiatives to reduce
nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy
and cooperation rather than unilateralism." But many were
"shocked by the unexpected choice so early in the Obama presidency,
which....has yet to yield concrete achievements in peacemaking" and
"still oversees [colonial, P.S.] wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and
has launched deadly counter-strikes in Pakistan and Somalia." Ritter
and Moore quoted Ahmid Shabir, an 18-year-old student in Kabul, who
reasonably said that "I don't think Obama deserves this. I
don't know who's making all these decisions. The prize should go to
someone who has done something for peace and humanity." (Karl
Ritter and Matt Moore, "President Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace
Prize," Associated Press, October 9, 2009, read at
</font><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_nobel_peace">
<font size=3 color="#0000FF">http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_nobel_peace</a>
</font><font size=3>). <br><br>
Preposterous in light of the record reviewed above, the 2009 Nobel Peace
Prize was a spectacular gift to the Orwellian re-branding project that is
the Barack Obama White House. I found it less than surprising given
the exaggerated Obamania - more advanced even than even what can be found
in the United States - of what passes for liberal and left opinion in
Western Europe <br><br>
Obama himself sensed the absurdity of the award. In his acceptance speech
in Oslo on December 10, 2009, Obama stated that "I cannot argue with
those who find [other] men and women -- some known, some obscure to all
but those they help -- to be far more deserving of this honor than
I." <br><br>
Obama claimed to be mindful of previous Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin
Luther King, Jr.'s statement "at this same ceremony years ago:
‘Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social
problem: it merely creates new and more complicated
ones.'" <br><br>
"As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's
life work," Obama said, "I am living testimony to the moral
force of non-violence." ("Remarks by the President," Oslo,
Norway, December 10, 2009, at
<a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-acceptance-nobel-peace-prize">
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-acceptance-nobel-peace-prize</a>
) <br><br>
This hardly prevented Obama from accepting the award, however, or from
using the awards ceremony as an opportunity to advance what the
Associated Press described as "a robust defense of war" (Ben
Feller, "Obama Accepts Nobel Peace Prize With Robust Defense of
War," Associated Press (December 10, 2010). <br><br>
"I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the
midst of two wars," Obama lectured the Nobel committee and the
world. "I'm responsible for the deployment of thousands of young
Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill, and some
will be killed."<br><br>
As "a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation,"
Obama argued in Oslo, "he could not be guided" by the examples
of Martin Luther King and Gandhi "alone." <br><br>
"I face the world as it is," the former professor turned
president intoned to a significant number of stone-faced war opponents,
"and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American
people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the
world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's
armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down
their arms."<br><br>
Contrary to Obama's longstanding "American exceptionalist"
belief that the U.S. has always been and remains "overwhelmingly a
force for good in the world," the bloody record of U.S. imperial
militarism noted by Matthew Rothschild eight days before led much of the
world to stubbornly conclude (in an example of what Obama considers a
childishly "reflexive suspicion of America, the world's sole
military superpower") that global "evil" had long been
significantly headquartered in Washington D.C. It's a record that the
real world President Obama - something very different than the
mass-marketed "Brand Obama" sold to liberal voters at home and
masses abroad - has done all too much to continue in the curious name of
"change." <br><br>
"Obama," the Associated Press added, "is staying here only
about 24 hours and skipping the traditional second day of festivities.
This miffs some in Norway but reflects a White House that sees little
value in extra pictures of the president, his poll numbers dropping at
home, taking an overseas victory lap while thousands of U.S. troops
prepare to go off to war and millions of Americans remain
jobless."<br><br>
<b>"To Speak in Favor of War and Peace"<br><br>
</b>A headline in Ohio calmly reported: "Nobel-Winning Obama Defends
War in Call for Peace" (see
<a href="http://www.wgal.com/politics/21917001/detail.html">
http://www.wgal.com/politics/21917001/detail.html</a>). It got crazier in
Norway, where Obamaphoria remains all too intact at the elite
level. According to the Oslo newspaper Aftenposten's chief
political commentator Harald Stanghelle, Obama's "powerful"
acceptance speech "made a clear message of faith in international
order and in an ethical base for the handling of the problems of this
world. Obama represents a hope for change," Stanghelle
wrote.<br><br>
"Never before has the message of the need for war been presented
with stronger conviction by a peace prize winner," wrote The Norway
Post. <br><br>
Norway's largest newspaper Verdens Gang concluded its main editorial on
December 11th, 2009 as follows: "Yesterday's speech will remain in
history as a great Nobel Speech, possibly the greatest. A sitting US
president, involved in two wars, was going to speak in favor of war and
of peace. He managed to do both." ("Norwegian Press Comments on
Obama's Acceptance Speech," The Norway Post, December 13, 2009, read
at
<a href="http://www.norwaypost.no/content/view/22892/26/">
www.norwaypost.no/content/view/22892/26/</a>) <br><br>
"Barack Obama," the left journalist Jeremy Scahill said last
spring in Chicago, "is a brilliant supporter of empire who has
figured out a way to trick a lot of people into believing they're
supporting radical change. Obama," Scahill added, "is an
incredibly Orwellian character. He can make people think that war
is peace." <br><br>
"Overall," Scahill said in an interview around the same time,
is "implementing a U.S. foreign policy that advances the interest of
the American empire in a way the Republicans could only have dreamed of
doing."<br><br>
The title of the Socialist Worker article in which Scahill made this last
comment said a mouthful "Re-branding War and
Occupation."<br><br>
The "re-branding" project is enhanced, of course, by the Nobel
Peace Prize<br><br>
<b>Will Norway Apologize to Bola Boluk?<br><br>
</b>We can hardly expect the Norwegians to rescind their creepy gift to
Obama and, through him, to the American Empire. <br><br>
But maybe we could ask them to issue an apology to the people of Bola
Boluk. <br><br>
Obama's escalation of attacks on "insurgents" who live
intermingled with civilians has brought a predictable increase in
"collateral damage" in South Asia. An especially graphic
episode came in the first week of May 2009. That's when U.S.
air-strikes killed more than 140 civilians in Bola Boluk, a village in
western Afghanistan's Farah Province. Ninety-three of the dead villagers
torn apart by U.S. explosives were children. Just 22 were males 18 years
or older. As the New York Times reported: <br><br>
"In a phone call played on a loudspeaker on Wednesday to outraged
members of the Afghan Parliament," The New York Times reported,
"the governor of Farah Province...said that as many as 130 civilians
had been killed." <br><br>
According to the governor," the villagers bought two tractor
trailers full of pieces of human bodies to his office to prove the
casualties that had occurred.'"<br><br>
"‘Everyone at the governor's cried, watching that shocking
scene.'"<br><br>
An Afghan legislator "talked to someone he knew personally who had
counted 113 bodies being buried, including those of many women and
children. Later, more bodies were pulled from the rubble and some victims
who had been taken to the hospital died..." (New York Times, May 6,
2009).<br><br>
The initial response of the Obama Pentagon to this horrific incident -
one among many such mass U.S. aerial killings in Afghanistan since
October 2001 - was to absurdly blame the civilian deaths on "Taliban
grenades." <br><br>
While Obama's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed deep
"regret" about the loss of innocent life, neither she nor Obama
would issue an apology or acknowledge U.S. responsibility for the
blasting apart of civilian bodies in Farah Province. The United
States, Obama has said both as a candidate and as president, does not
apologize for its "mistake." This, he explains, is
because America is overwhelmingly a "force for good in the
world."<br><br>
By sharp and telling contrast last May, Obama had just offered a full
apology and fired a White House official because that official had scared
U.S. civilians with an ill-advised Air Force One photo-shoot flyover of
Manhattan. The exercise reminded New Yorkers of 9/11.
<br><br>
The disparity was revealing. Frightening New Yorkers led to a
presidential admission of guilt and request for forgiveness along with
the discharge of a White House staffer. Killing more than 100 Afghan
civilians did not require an apology. Nobody had to be fired.
The Pentagon was permitted to advance preposterous claims about how the
civilians died -- stories that were taken seriously by
"mainstream" (corporate-imperial) media. The U.S. subsequently
conducted a dubious "investigation" of the Bola Boluk slaughter
that reduced the civilian body count drastically and blamed the Taliban
for putting civilians in the way of U.S. bombs.<br><br>
Orwell, Vonnegut, and Kafka would have been impressed. Some Afghans were
not.<br><br>
As one young Pashtun man told Al Jazeera on the day the Nobel gift was
handed to the head of the American Empire: "Obama has only brought
war to our country. Peace prize? He's a killer." <br><br>
"He doesn't deserve the award," said a woman from Bola Boluk.
"He bombed us and he left us with nothing - not even a home"
<b>[8]</b>.<br><br>
<b>Postscript</b>. Good news. After Obama's Afghanistan speech and
as he received his noxious Nobel, the remnants of an antiwar movement
stirred to a degree not seen in some time. Along with the cumulative
impact of President Obama's first year of corporatism and militarism, the
bracing effect of his remarkably George Bush-like speeches (at West Point
and in Oslo) on behalf of war and militarism was starting to break down
the fog of "Obamaitis" - the paralyzing impact of the nation's
charismatic first black president on progressive forces inside the U.S.
"homeland." The imperial reality of Obama was dissolving the
childish confusions spread by "Brand Obama" [8] to an
unprecedented degree. I marched against the Afghanistan re-escalation in
downtown Chicago on December 5, 2009 with hundreds of other fellow
leftists, chanting, among other things, "Obama, don't lie to me,
your wars don't bring democracy." Many curious Christmas shoppers in
Obama's "home city" laughed and some applauded. They were
pleased to see visible confirmation of something many of them surely had
been thinking in recent days - that the much-ballyhooed
"change" of November 4, 2008 had brought forth another in a
long line of war presidents. <br><br>
It was nice to see. "Brand Obama" has shut down the antiwar
movement long enough. Illegal, mass-murderous permanent war and perverted
imperial priorities are illegal, mass-murderous permanent war and
perverted imperial priorities whether they are being led by a white
Republican moron from Midland Texas or by an eloquent black Democrat from
Chicago - whether they are headed by a boorish lout like Richard Nixon or
a dashing young telegenic personality like Jack Kennedy. The
American corporate and military order is a richly bipartisan affair.
<br><br>
It's not about writing "Open Letters to President Obama" ala
Michael Moore, begging the new commander-in-chief to be the truly
progressive actor so many deluded left liberals (with Moore in the lead)
wanted to believe he was. It's time to resist Empire's New Clothes,
determined to "Fight the Rich, Not Their Wars."<br><br>
<b>Paul Street
(</font><a href="mailto:paulstreet99@yahoo.com">
<font size=3 color="#0000FF">paulstreet99@yahoo.com</a></font>
<font size=3>) is the author of many books, articles, chapters, reviews,
and speeches. His next volume is provisionally titled
"Empire's New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power and
the Politics of Progressive Betrayal" (2010).<br><br>
* </b>This essay expands (considerably) on a speech I was supposed to
give on the topic "Does Obama Deserve the Nobel?" at the
University of Minnesota on December 10, 2010. Post-blizzard road
conditions kept me in Iowa but I am very grateful to Jason Adams, Dan
Dimaggio, and Socialist Alternative for asking me to speak and sparking
these thoughts. Thanks to Kelly G. for the Norway press cites.
<br><br>
<b>SELECTED NOTES<br><br>
1.</b> "The Ministry of Truth...was an enormous pyramidal structure
of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, three
hundred meters into the air. From where Winston stood it was just
possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the
three slogans of the Party: WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE
IS STRENGTH." George Orwell, <i>1984</i> (New York: Harcourt Brace
Janovich, Inc., 1949), p.7. <br><br>
<b>2.</b> On Kissigner and Chile, see Christopher Hitchens, The Trial of
Henry Kissinger (London: Verso, 2001), pp. 55-76, 129-130. <br><br>
<b>3.</b> On Kissinger, Ford, Indonesia, and East Timor, see Noam
Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, The Washington Connection and Third World
Fascism, Volume I (Boston, 1979), pp. 130-204; William Blum, Rogue State:
A Guide to the World's Only Superpower (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press,
2005), pp. 188-89.<br><br>
<b>4.</b> Rothschild compared Obama's airbrushed historical account with
the following passage from Bush's 2004 State of the Union Address:
"America is a Nation with a mission, and that mission comes from our
most basic beliefs," Bush said. "We have no desire to dominate,
no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace -- a peace founded
upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman. America acts in this
cause with friends and allies at our side, yet we understand our special
calling: This great Republic will lead the cause of freedom." M.
Rothschild, "Obama Steals Bush's Speechwriters," The
Progressive, December 2, 2009. See Blum, Rogue State, pp. 162-220 for a
useful history of U.S. interventions abroad, 1945-2004. <br><br>
<b>5.</b> WIFR Television, CBS 23, Rockford, Illinois, "Obama Speaks
at General Motors in Janesville," February 13, 2008, read at
</font><a href="http://www.wifr.com/morningshow/headlines/15618592.html">
<font size=3 color="#0000FF">
http://www.wifr.com/morningshow/headlines/15618592.html</a><br><br>
</font><font size=3><b>6.</b> Professors Inderjeet Parmar (University of
Manchester), Dr Mark Ledwidge (University of Manchester), Professor Rob
Singh (Birkbeck College), Dr Tim Lynch (Institute for the Study of the
Americas), "Letter: U.S. Foreign Policy," The Guardian,
September 18, 2009, read at
</font>
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/18/us-foreign-policy-obama-afghanistan">
<font size=3 color="#0000FF">
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/18/us-foreign-policy-obama-afghanistan</a>
</font><font size=3> <br><br>
<b>7.</b> "Barack Obama is a brand. And the Obama brand is designed
to make us feel good about our government while corporate overlords loot
the Treasury, our elected officials continue to have their palms greased
by armies of corporate lobbyists, our corporate media diverts us with
gossip and trivia and our imperial wars expand in the Middle East. Brand
Obama is about being happy consumers. We are entertained. We feel
hopeful. We like our president. We believe he is like us. But like all
branded products spun out from the manipulative world of corporate
advertising, we are being duped into doing and supporting a lot of things
that are not in our interest."<br><br>
"...The Obama campaign was named Advertising Age's marketer of the
year for 2008 and edged out runners-up Apple and Zappos.com. Take it from
the professionals. Brand Obama is a marketer's dream. President Obama
does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to believe another. This is the
essence of successful advertising. You buy or do what the advertiser
wants because of how they can make you feel." See Chris
Hedges, "Buying Brand Obama," Truthdig (May 3, 2009), read at
<a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090503_buying_brand_obama/">
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090503_buying_brand_obama/</a><br>
<br>
<b>8.</b>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBHrnQTinGY&feature=related" eudora="autourl">
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBHrnQTinGY&feature=related<br>
</a><hr>
From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives <br>
URL:
<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/23365">
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/23365</a> <br><br>
<img src="http://www.zcommunications.org/graphics/icons/print_ico.gif" alt="[]">
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