Obama Accepts Nobel War Prize in Oslo

President Obama's December trip to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize smacked of opera bouffe. He accepted the prize on the condition that he is making two and a half wars now and perhaps later, if he believed it was a just war, make even more. The US neocons and conservatives in the US are peeing in their pants in paroxysms of joy over the president's declaration; nearly all the liberals are doing mental cartwheels to stand by their man despite the fact he has clearly betrayed them.

Just wars are spoiled wine in old bottles. Josef Stalin, Hideki Tojo and Adolf Hilter used the same formulation to advance their wars. Just wars only become unjust when you lose the war – the victor then claims the righteousness for his bloody deeds. The object lesson is not to lose the war to validate the concept.

When Obama was nominated by the Nobel selection committee for the prize, he had two choices: reject it or accept it under its traditional conditions as peacemaker. He fooled us all. He accepted it, but put his own conditions on it which included making wars if it suited him. Even Hopeless Henry Kissinger who had blood stains up to elbows accepted his half of the prize figuratively holding up the Picasso dove of peace. Some say Obama’s speech was a study in honesty and frankness. I believe it was pure hypocrisy.

Uncertain why Obama accepted the prize when integrity would demand he reject it if he could not subscribe to its implied tenets. Sometimes I now regard Obama as a boy scout pointlessly seeking to fill his merit badge sash just to show off. After all, as president of the USA, this position should keep his achieving ego in check. He soon will be awarded the Airforce One merit badge for most miles logged as a US president. If he had been a scout he would be over this fixation by now.

Obama declared during his acceptance speech in Oslo that he is following in the steps of Martin Luther King. How so? Just based on recent civil rights progress, you can be certain Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Jeremiah Wright do not agree with this self-evaluation; MLK, an apostle of non-violence, was turning his civil rights crusade into an anti Vietnam war movement just before he was assassinated. The president contrarily has followed a direct path to more war; he has ordered more than 60,000 troops to Afghanistan. Obama has passed out federal positions to Blacks, who many so far appear short on talent. So apart from this racial solidarity or pride, there does not seem to be much King in Obama

Whereas Obama’s main political attraction during the presidential campaign was that he was not GW Bush, his speech in Oslo could have been delivered by GWB if you excerpted the mush stuff on Wilson, Ghandi and King; and this also explains the delight over his speech by right wingers. Obama with his defense of the US as an international gendarme, righting wrongs and confronting evil in the name of democracy, is a tired mantra; this was pure neocon bullshit. So with Obama like GWB you can expect Johnny to continue to march off to war, foolishly fighting other peoples battles. Whatever happened to the intelligent isolationist non-interventionist Republicans? Not a peep from them.

Despite Obama's sharp criticism of the US invasion of Iraq during his election campaign, he actually defends this war of choice in his Oslo speech. You come a long way Mr. President to prove we have a one-party system in the US.

Obama is not the first or the last recipient of the Noble Peace Prize to make a burlesque of the award. But he he the first to redefine its meaning – War is Peace in his dogma. This is the change we can believe in? Now let us find another just war we can fight. Colonel Robert E Bartos USA Ret


Excerpted from Google: Words from Hideko Tojo after his failure to commit suicide over the WWII defeat of Japan: "I am very sorry it is taking me so long to die," he murmured. "The Greater East Asia War was justified and righteous. I am very sorry for the nation and all the races of the Greater Asiatic powers. I wait for the righteous judgment of history. I wished to commit suicide but sometimes that fails."[11]