When President Barack Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, many of us questioned whether or not he deserved this honour. After all, he hadn’t done anything to be worthy of it and most thought that he was handed it for what he promised rather than what he had achieved and relief that George W Bush had left the scene.
Fast forward to 2011, and looking at what Obama has achieved, we have to questioning whether the prize should now be snatched back.
It is hard to justify his continual hanging on to the peace prize when he is Commander in Chief of the country presently involved in three separate conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya.
If the award was given for the promise of peace, what has Obama done to vindicate the committee’s faith in him? Since 2009 we have seen him escalate the fighting in Afghanistan, moved it into Pakistan, the war in Iraq continues to bubble away in the background, has sent his jets to bomb Libya, ordered drone strikes in Yemen, Guantanamo Bay is still open for business and has allowed Israel free rein to destroy any hope of Middle East peace talks.
Even the most avid Obama supporter would be pushed to acknowledge the list resembles peace by any stretch of the imagination.
The left, particularly the anti-war groups that rightly hounded his predecessor, seem unable or unwilling to criticise Obama out of some delusional affinity for the American President and relief that Obama isn't the mad Texan.
The anti-war left needs to get it's act together because while we have been patting ourselves on the backs for hounding George W Bush over his wars, the man who presented himself as the peace candidate when campaigning for office has been merrily escalating Bush's existing wars and inciting new ones.
Not the man of peace we were expecting and such an undeserving recipient of the Peace Prize that the Nobel Foundation would be fully justified in asking for it back.
4 comments:
Obama would've easily won the Gold Medal for The Best Used Car Salesman of The World had he chosen that career path.
Then I guess being President requires similar talents, you know, motor-mouth and an infinite ability to lie.
Of course, Used Car Salesmen don't kill people as far as I know so they are several steps up from Obama.
Spot on Lucy, Obama has been a big fat waste of time and space and i feel cheated that he turned out to be as big a bastard as Bush. Why isn't he having his arse kicked all around the place?
he is a bigger disaster economically.
his only value to me is socially, where he is good for improving the rights of minorities and women, but he enables most of the advances via taxes which creates a burden for people that already struggle to make ends meet - example "health care". of course, congress and senate created the laws, he just signed them.
q
Alternet have just summed up Obama's five biggest pork-pies quite neatly:
1. Health care for all.
2. Close Guantanamo.
3. Defend labour rights.
4. Repeal Patriot Act.
5. End dumb wars.
You could argue that he made a stab at the first one (however his limp-wristed compromise has actually made the situation worse) but hasn't even tried to fulfill the other four promises.
Rub. Bish.
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