President Obama's speech today accepting the Nobel Peace Prize confirmed his transformation from dove into liberal warrior. For all his undoubted abilities to win friends and influence people, Obama faced an improbable task today: explaining to Europeans, who have experienced centuries of warfare and want no more of it, why the recipient of the peace prize is going off to war. Obama maintained that peace can depend upon war, which he did by invoking just war theory (itself a European export to the rest of the globe) and the somewhat tattered banner of humanitarian warfare. He may never have shouted invictus to his audience, but his basic message was that the liberal West can prevail in the struggle against intolerance and malignity abroad.
Obama's rhetorical strategy was shrewd. He didn't promise to have all the answers. Instead, as is his penchant, he deprecated his own accomplishments -- "slight" -- holding out the promise of bigger and better things in the future. But like a doctor promising renewed health through surgery, he indicated that to get there will require some painful measures.
But will high theory produce actual results in the barren landscape of Afghanistan, denuded by successive waves of invaders and barbaric regimes? Obama may invoke just war theory justly, but whether peace and justice and prevail is another matter. The Nobel Prize speech could prove the high-water mark of his presidency should the Afghan venture go belly-up.
For now, Obama, as a new New York Times/CBS News poll indicates, cannot rely on Democrats for much support on Afghanistan. Instead, it's Republicans who are backing him up. But absent real progress, this cannot last. Democrats will abandon the effort within the next year should Obama be unable to show any signs of real progress, not to mention his NATO allies, who are already loath to increase their troop commitments.
This is not the presidency that Obama envisioned when he began campaigning for office. He promised to change America. But so far he is the one who has changed the most. His Oslo speech is thus the latest installment in the education of Barack Obama.
Being President has made him grow up- Hillary was right in the primary debates after all- and she is there with him as a grownup in the cabinet- Hillary has indefatigable energy,maturity and class in serving this President. What a facade Obama created in the primary- I voted for him and want him to succeed- but he is not giving me ANY reason to support him given his ambivalence on health care and also in announcing a withdrawal date from Afghanistan even before we get there. Osama should be destroyed and those Islamic terrorists deserve no sympathy and no timeliness.
" I honestly believe private contractors, mercenaries, profiteers — whatever you call them — are one of the most destructive elements in the indefinite foreign military presence in Afghanistan today. Aside from the criminal behavior, the waste and the fraud and the abuse (all well-documented), as “strategic communications” they are a disaster. They shame us, they breed mistrust and fear among the people we supposedly there to help and most importantly, they broadcast with a bullhorn that the bottom line is more valued than honor, respect, ethics or responsibility (kind of like our society back home!) And we are all at fault for letting it happen."
"Allegations of misconduct and corruption on this level go way back — Dyncorp was accused of pimping out skinny, war ravaged girls back in Bosnia. No one seems to care. They just got another contract worth up to $7.5 billion in Afghanistan. They have contracts elsewhere in the expanding U.S footprint, including Africa."
"As for President Obama, who pledged during his campaign to review the troubling inflation of private contracting and to hold contractors accountable — crickets."
All quotes from -
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2009/09/17/the-business-of-war-and-profit-arent-we-proud/
The first and greatest heresy in the Christian faith occurred in the third century when Augustine penned the "Just War Theory" which gave the church's OK to violence perpetuated by the empire and "our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system."-Dorothy Day
Clement, Tertillian, Polycarp and every other early Church Father taught that violence was a contradiction of what Christ was about, but as Gandhi commented, "Everyone but Christians understands that Jesus was nonviolent."
Christians were not a part of the military until the third century, when Emperor Constantine instituted Christianity as the State's religion and required all soldiers to be baptized, but "How can you kill people, when it is written in God’s commandment: ‘Thou shall not murder’?"– Leo Tolstoy
Excerpted from December 11, 2009: http://www.wearewideawake.org/
President Obama's Nobel Speech, Just Wars and just Stop It!
We all have to get over our naive gullibility and start to work together to bring back honesty, credibility, and trust back and replace our myopic and self-absorbed politicians with representation we can all take pride in.
He is the worlds "Emperor" of war, controlling the greatest army and arsenal known to mankind and involved in 2 wars that we know of.
Strange recipient for this honor..
the war is stupid, and i firmly believe (based on MY knowledge and understanding) that we should get out. but I'm not privy to what he knows, and what he knows may change my mind on what we should be doing in Afghanistan.
the big issue is whether presidents get fed reports from the military that always make the case for more war (which I wouldn't be surprised if they did). if so, then i wouldn't know how to solve that. if the military is indeed running the show behind closed doors, then god help us all.
It is no new direction, but a familiar one.
“The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make.”
- W. Wilson
Equally, Obama portrays US Mideast involvement as unconnected to geopolitics, pipelines, petrodollars, or resource dominance. His actions belie his words. More militarism, more wars, permanent bases for occupation. Less justice by a massive transfer of wealth to an international financial and warmaking elite.
He has chosen to appeal to national chauvinism.
His words attempt to hide a pretension to world leadership (based on military might), and an assumed right thereby, to establish ‘peace’ and develop ‘civilization’, conveniently according to US political and economic interests. Push come to shove, it is not the well-being of others that is paramount, but the well-being of the ruling US leadership.
"I believe if we had, and would, keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-crooked fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own.”
- --General David Shoup, former Marine Corps Commandant