The Nobel Prize for failure: Obama the love-bomber

Fri 11 Dec, 2009

Never mind bottling on healthcare, US president Barack O’Bomber won the Nobel Peace Prize for continuing Bill Clinton’s legacy of a more caring, sharing warmongering

There was much guffawing when it was announced that US president Barack Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize only a few months into his residency in the White House: Obama won the Peace Prize without bringing peace to anywhere. On one level it is true that he won the prize for not being George W. Bush, the unpopular outgoing Republican party president despised around the world for starting the Iraq War which has, so far, resulted in an estimated 103,000 civilian casualties.

It would be a mistake, however, to not only see Obama as being a ‘president of peace’, but to even argue that his policies are significantly different from those of his predecessor. Obama the Democrat is very much cast in the same mould as Bush the Republican.

Despite the the Democrats’ image as lilly-livered liberals the party was in power when the United States entered – and in some cases started – the following wars: Haitian Conflict (US entered in 1915), Mexican Revolution (US involved from 1914–1918), Russian Civil War (US involvement in 1918-1920), the First Dominican Republic Conflict (US entered in 1917) World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Bay of Pigs failed invasion of Cuba, the Viet Nam War, the Second Dominican Republic Conflict, Laotian Civil War, Korean DMZ War of 1966-76, the Somali Civil War, the First Haitian Rebellion and the 1999 Yugoslav War.

Obama acknowledged this history of liberal warfare in his Nobel acceptance speech, saying: “The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans.”

However, while Obama is merely the latest in a long line of bloodthirsty liberals to prosecute murderous wars it would be mistake to simply say that American imperialism is on the march now, just as it was throughout the twentieth century. What is striking about not only Obama, but also Bush before him, is how the wars are prosecuted not in the name of narrow American interests as they were in past conflicts, but for the good of all humanity.

Announcing, on December 1, the deployment of a further 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, Obama said: “I do not make this decision lightly,” he said. “I opposed the war in Iraq precisely because I believe that we must exercise restraint in the use of military force, and always consider the long-term consequences of our actions.”

Obama’s tone is the contradictory one of the reluctant militarist, something that has been seized-upon by his opponents: “If I did not think that the security of the United States and the safety of the American people were at stake in Afghanistan, I would gladly order every single one of our troops home tomorrow,” he said.

In fact, Obama is both sending more troops and pulling-out simultaneously. His claim that the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan is the epicentre of enemy activity is perfectly straightforward and leaves him with just two options: escalate the war in order to wipe them out or forge a settlement strategy.

However, the deployment of a further 30,000 troops follows Obama’s stated objection for the US military to leave Afghanistan by 2011. In addition, in March 2009 Obama bluntly and honestly answered the question of whether America was winning in Afghanistan. He simply said: “No.” The administration has already made it clear that it thinks the war is un-winnable ‘in military terms’.

Obama’s incoherent and contradictory stance in not mere political duplicity as many of his domestic supporters-turned-critics claim. In fact, it shows a US administration that, like those of Bush and Clinton before it, can talk tough and pile up the corpses of foreigners but has no faith in its mission.

When then president Bill Clinton attacked the rump of Yugoslavia in 1999 he was so worried about American casualties that he sent in no ground troops at all, instead launching a bombing campaign that saw the very people he claimed to be protecting, Kosovan Albanians, flee en masse.

His successor George W. Bush, often portrayed as a wild-eyed lunatic, had no such qualms when it came to his pet invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Nevertheless, even Bush was rather far removed from the likes of presidents Johnson and Nixon who sent countless numbers of young Americans to their deaths in southeast Asia. The Viet Nam war was supposedly fought in order to curb the ‘evil’ of communism, something that was a clear and direct political threat to American political hegemony. Bush, on the other hand, was forced to come up with incredible reasons for his conquests, some as bizarre as alleged the promotion of women’s rights.

From the perspective of the American government, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars are humanitarian missions in the mould set by Bill Clinton in Yugoslavia. The incoherence of Obama’s policy springs from the fact that in order to justify the use of force, America has recast its army as a kind of Amnesty International with bombs. When George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the US Air Force dropped not only bombs and propaganda as is normal, but also food aid.

Obama is a bomber like most US presidents but more than that, he is also a love-bomber like his two immediate predecessors.

Jason Walsh is the editor of forth. He contributes to the Irish Times, Irish Examiner and the Guardian. His personal web site is jasonwalsh.ie