Obama’s legacy doesn’t live up to the terms of his Nobel Prize

Barack Obama's legacy is a lot darker than the Nobel Peace Committee may have hoped. // Reuters

“The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

So spoke the Nobel Committee as it decided to pass the prestigious Peace Prize to President Obama after just ten months in the job. He said the award was going to be “a call to action” and was being used “to give momentum to a set of causes” that he, at the time, embodied.

As Obama nears the end of his first term as President, he has done little to live up to the terms of the award. The conflict in Afghanistan, which the UN estimates has killed nearly 12,000 civilians so far, continues under his watch. He has overseen the continued operation of Guantanamo Bay, which he pledged to close within the first year of his Presidency, and which still houses 172 inmates. He has brought the conflict in Iraq to an end, but only after the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians, and with the country still divided and war-torn. Now he is personally approving targets for a covert drone operation in Pakistan which has killed an estimated 27 people in the last three days alone.

Far from ‘strengthening international diplomacy’, this campaign has only served to deepen diplomatic rifts between the US and Pakistan. Pakistan views the drone attacks as a violation of its sovereignty and has summoned the US envoy to lodge a formal protest. This comes after Pakistan has already closed supply routes to Nato soldiers fighting in neighbouring Afghanistan after a Nato aristrike accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

The US claims that the drone strikes are an important tool in the fight against terrorism. On Tuesday morning they proudly announced that they believe they have killed Abu Yahya al-Libi, al-Qaida’s second in command. They neglect to mention, however, that 15 others were also killed in the assault. On Sunday ten more “suspected militants” were killed after drones fired missiles into crowd gathered to mourn the deaths of two other “suspected militants”, killed in drone strikes the previous day.

All together, this makes me hugely uncomfortable. Whilst it cannot be denied that al-Libi, if he proves to be among the dead, justifies a legitimate target for US strikes, the fact that further strikes can be justified on merely the suspicion of terrorist involvement is highly morally dubious. The definition of what constitutes a ‘militant’ seems to have become laughably broad: namely anyone of fighting age who happens to be killed in a drone strike area. The fact that these strikes are being carried out on foreign soil, against the wishes of the government and people of that nation, flies in the face of international democracy and the right of a people to self-determination, rights which the US claims to espouse.

The fact that the whole operation is being personally overseen by a man supposed to embody Earth’s best attempts at achieving peace beggars belief.

Obama needs to concentrate less on trying to score election points against Romney by appealing to US conservatives baying for terrorist blood, and more on encouraging the “cooperation between peoples” that his Nobel Prize was awarded for.

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• Reiner Torheit

  Drop dead, you vile warmongering harpy.

• Pat G

  That’s what I’m saying, that ‘progressives’ have given in because “it’s better than supporting the Republican party”.
  It is never too late to change political structure. Awakening can be a slow process. We must not be on the on the sidelines anywmore. As a start ‘The Independent’ should replace ‘The Sun’ as preferred newspaper.       

• bogwart

  Both sides are equally bad; politics in the USA is utterly polarised and now sod to the hightest bidder.

  I don’t understand your comment about the Independent and the Sun, though. They are utterly different, one being a red-top oik troublemaker, like its owner, and the other being a middle-of-the-road middle-class paper with a more intellectual pedigree.  The only pedigree in the Sun is the dog on page 3, and they usually have a dubious lineage.

  It’s far too late for any ‘awakening’ in the US.  The time for that has long come and gone.  The sheeple sold out, and they didn’t even get a decent price.  In fact, they sold out at a loss.

• Pat G

  By the newspapers reference I mean generally to bring media like The Independent to the front than letting low quality papers like the Sun pave their way. Any massive change requires the support of media. Indeed that is a major catalyst in producing ’sheeple’.

• bogwart

  I do understand where you’re coming from, but there are a few major stumbling-blocks. The first is that the media are owned by people and companies who adopt a far more hands-on approach than used to be the case, and those peope increasingly have a political viewpoint which is antithetical to the wishes of the people. When Murdoch bought ‘The Times’ he promised not to interfere with editorial policy, but that didn’t last too long. I fact Murdoch worldwide is probably the most malign of the media owners, with Fox News in the US being a home for all manner of extreme right-wing moonbats. They go out of their way to subvert an open press, and are a disgrace to the fourth estate.

  Also, and this again is more visible in the US, ownership of the media is vested in a handful of major corporations, and again, the people who run these corporations will not tolerate dissenting viewpoints. Investigate reporting like the WaPo and Watergate just could not happen these days, and many failed journalists can confirm that.

  This censorship extends to all forms of free speech, one right the americans boast so much about. Do you remember the Dixie Chicks? A female country band, they performed in London 10 days before the invasion of Iraq and apologised for Bush, and america’s actions. All hell broke out, their records ceased to get any plays on radio channels and their contracts were torn up. So much for the right to free speech.

  In the US now all the pieces are in play and without being overly dramatic
  it would take only one major incident, another false flag operation, and
  martial law can be imposed. FEMA have well over a million places available
  for “re-education” (their words, not mine) and any attempt at organised
  dissent or protest will spring the jaws. I was surprised that they did not
  test this more thoroughly with the OWS movements, although they did arrest
  several thousand people.

  What happens there comes here. Always.

• ricardo lion

  Thomas (Jewish Israeli name), you are obsessed with Israel, aren`t you? Why not to your queen or prime minister? Netanyahu protects the people of Israel against next door enemies, Muslim Arab bloody dictatorships (like the Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, Iraq again! and Libya you attacked, medieval kingdoms and jihadi groups (like the Al Qaeda and Taliban you kill by the thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan, like those the MI5 tortures) supported by Iran.
  Israel`s wars are for survival, not for oil or Argentinian islands.
  How many men holding old Kalashnikovs defending their country, women and children killed by your professional soldiers (killing for money) and Gurkha mercenaries (no mercenaries in the IDF) in Afghanistan today? Are you going to jeer them at Luton? No? Then you are just another hypocrite.

• ricardo lion

  Begin was the idiot who gave to a Muslim Arab bloody dictator the Sinai Peninsula. His Nobel Prize was shared with Muslim Arab Egyptian (born in the occupied land of the Copts) terrorist Arafat.

• ricardo lion

  You are obsessed with Israel, aren`t you? Are you a Muslim? Islam was invented out of an obsession with Jews (0,2% of the world population today). 100% of the “prophets” in the Koran are Jews. Strange obsession…. And when the Arabs from Arabia invaded Palestine they built that vulgar mosque right on top of Judaism holiest site in the Jewish capital, Jerusalem. Strange obsession…

• ricardo lion

  Thomas (Jewish Israeli name), you are obsessed with Israel, aren`t you? The subject here is Obama, not Israel. Why not talk about your country, the one that attacked Korea, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, Iraq again, Afghanistan and Libya. The one occupying part of Spain, the one that went to war over Argentinian islands, that killed all those civilians in Northern Ireland, the one whose MI5 tortures its own Muslim citizens….