![]() Honest (and predictive) as it may have been, he did not have to go to Oslo at all. At times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world’s sole military superpower.”) (“I raise this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter the cause. Among other things, he made clear that he wouldn’t be bound in any way by the examples of Gandhi or King, trumpeted his willingness to act “unilaterally,” and plunked for the necessity of war. He stood on the Nobel podium and gave a speech that, read today, looks remarkably like a rousing defense of American-style war and little short of an attack on the limited ability of nonviolence to make a real difference in a violent world. In addition, he was already overseeing a spreading drone air campaign in the Pakistani borderlands. ![]() Bush.Īfter all, the new president had run a campaign against a “stupid” war in Iraq, but for prosecuting “ the right war,” and by the time he was awarded the prize in October 2009, as an incipient peace president he had already escalated the war in Afghanistan and his administration was deep in a fierce debate over just how many more troops to send there in what would, by December of that year, become a “surge.”īy the time the president accepted his award in March 2010 in a speech entitled “ A Just and Lasting Peace” - which might more accurately have been titled “On the Necessity of War” - he had significantly increased troop levels in Afghanistan and similarly upped the levels of CIA personnel, private contractors, special operations forces, State Department personnel, and so on. The Nobel committee did it in what, even then, was visibly a vote for the idea that “peace” was anything but George W. ![]() ![]() He didn’t nominate himself for the Nobel Peace Prize back in 2009 when he was already on a distinct war trajectory in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Of course, it wasn’t Barack Obama’s fault. ![]()
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