December 9, 2009 - No. 229 -
Afternoon Edition
The Significance of Giving War President
Obama
the Nobel Peace Prize
March 2009: Anti-war demonstrations across the U.S. mark sixth anniversary of
the invasion
of Iraq.
Windsor Demonstration
Obama Receives Nobel Peace Prize -- Demonstrate to Say WAR IS NOT
PEACE!
Thursday,
December 10 -- 4:00-5:00 pm
Wyandotte Street across from the Ambassador Bridge entrance
On December 10, just days after announcing his decision to escalate the
war of aggression against Afghanistan and Pakistan by sending 30,000
more troops on top of the 21,000 he already added since taking office,
U.S. War President Barack Obama will be in Oslo, Norway to receive the
2009 Nobel Prize for Peace. It is by his deeds that Obama, like anyone
else, must be judged,
regardless of his words. The Windsor Peace Coalition will be
demonstrating on Thursday December 10, Human Rights Day, to protest the
conferring of the Nobel Peace Prize on the Commander in Chief of the
U.S. military and to say: No to disinformation! War is not Peace! U.S.
and all foreign
occupiers and mercenaries, out of Iraq and Afghanistan now! Hands off
Pakistan!
The Windsor Peace Coalition also holds a weekly anti-war information
picket
every Saturday 11:00 am to noon, Ottawa Street across from Market
Square. For information: www.windsorpeace.org
|
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• The
Significance of Giving War President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize
• Nobel Committee Celebrates War as Peace
- Rick Rozoff, Stop NATO
• Obama and the Nobel Prize: When War Becomes
Peace, When the Lie Becomes the Truth - Michel Chossudovsky,
Global Research
The Significance of Giving War President
Obama
the Nobel Peace Prize
Tomorrow U.S. war president Barack Obama will be in
Oslo, Norway to receive the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. TML
calls on all its readers to pay close attention to what the
representative of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee will say to justify
awarding a war president the Peace Prize and to the doctrine
Obama himself will put forward to present U.S. warmaking as peacemaking.
George W. Bush enunciated the unacceptable doctrine of
pre-emptive
war. By presenting pre-emptive war in defence of western values and
democracy as a just war, Obama is taking this one step further.
An unelected body sitting in Norway enunciates
the criteria
required to qualify as a peacemaker and Obama is their man. Now, by the
stroke of rhetoric, you are either with Obama's definition of peace or
you are against peace.
Clearly, grave dangers lie ahead. The time is now for
all Canadians
to pay close attention and step up the work to establish an anti-war
government.
Nobel Committee Celebrates War as Peace
- Rick Rozoff, Stop NATO, December 8,
2009 -
On Thursday December 10 U.S. President Barack Obama will
receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced its selection
for the prize on October 9 of this year, less than nine months after
Obama assumed the mantle of the American presidency and less than a
month after that announced the doubling of his nation's troops for the
world's longest-running war in
Afghanistan. The first contingent of new forces, consisting of 1,500
Marines, is to arrive next week, right before Christmas.
Ten days before the bestowal of the Nobel Peace Prize,
the American president delivered a speech at the West Point Military
Academy in which he pledged an additional 30,000 troops for a war now
in its ninth year. His (and his predecessor George W. Bush's) Defense
Secretary Robert Gates hastened
to add that 3,000 more support troops would be deployed, bringing the
total to over 100,000, only 20,000 short of American soldiers in Iraq,
and with as many as 50,000 more non-U.S. forces serving under the
NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. In his West Point
address Obama reminded his listeners
that "When I took office, we had just over 32,000 Americans serving in
Afghanistan...." He has ordered that number to be more than tripled.
A brief report on Obama's peace prize appeared on the
CBS News website on December 7 with the seemingly paradoxical title "A
Peace Prize for a War President" by the news agency's White House
correspondent, Mark Knoller.
Neither the title nor the article it introduced was
ironic. They reflected the straightforward truth.
The feature stated "There'll be no effort by Barack
Obama to disguise or obscure the fact that he's a war president when he
accepts the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Thursday.
"The ceremony takes place ten days after he announced
plans to escalate the U.S. military engagement in Afghanistan by
deploying another 30,000 American troops there."
The selection of Obama evoked a prompt and aptly
indignant response from Michel Chossudovsky at the Centre for Research
on Globalization, who on October 11 published a piece called "Obama and
the Nobel Prize: When War Becomes Peace, When the Lie becomes the Truth"[1] which stated inter alia that
"When the Commander in Chief of the largest military force on planet
earth is presented as a global peace-maker," then "the Lie becomes the
Truth."
Although there are no firm, codified guidelines for
nominating and agreeing upon a Peace Prize recipient, Alfred Nobel's
will states that it should be conferred upon a "person who shall have
done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the
abolition or reduction of standing armies
and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."
Those criteria have arguably never been honored or
strictly abided by since the annual prize was first awarded in 1901.
Several winners have been cited for helping to end wars -- often by
simply prevailing in them. One of the two American presidents
previously awarded the prize, Woodrow Wilson,
is such a one.
The other was Theodore Roosevelt, who as Assistant
Secretary of the Navy in 1897 said "I should welcome almost any war,
for I think this country needs one."
Both Roosevelt in 1906 and Wilson in 1919 were standing
presidents when they received the prize. The first had fought in Cuba
during the Spanish-American War (the war he demanded a year before it
began) and Wilson brought the United States into the First World War.
The Spanish-American War inaugurated the expansion of
the U.S. from a hemispheric to an Asia Pacific power. And an empire.
World War I placed the American army on the European continent for the
first time and signaled its emergence as a international military
power. Theodore Roosevelt became
president in 1901 when William McKinley, who launched the conflict with
Spain and acquired Cuba, Guam, the Philippines and Puerto Rico as
spoils of war, was assassinated; Wilson not only sent over one million
soldiers to France but also deployed 13,000 troops to fight the new
Russian government of Vladimir
Lenin in 1918.
But neither Roosevelt nor Wilson were
commanders-in-chief of a war when they were given the Nobel Prize. And
they received it for, at least in theory, contributing to ending wars;
the Russo-Japanese War and World War I, respectively. Granting the
Nobel Peace Prize to a head of state escalating
a war already in its ninth year half a world away from his own nation
is a precedent that was reserved for this year.
Reuters quoted White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on
December 7 stating "We'll address directly the notion that many have
wondered, which is the juxtaposition of the timing for the Nobel Peace
Prize and -- and his [Obama's] commitment to add more troops around --
into Afghanistan."
Juxtaposition, paradox, irony, contradiction and so
forth are terms too weak and inaccurate to describe the timing of the
announcement of this year's Nobel Peace Prize recipient, coming as it
did between two pledges of military reinforcements for the world's
largest-scale and longest-running war. Travesty
is a better word.
Speculation was rife after October 9 regarding the
Norwegian Nobel Committee's rationale and motives for awarding Obama
the prize, and press pundits were not amiss in offering explanations.
But actions are more revealing than assumed or imaginary intentions and
what the Nobel Committee has
accomplished is to yet further tarnish its reputation and that of the
prize it grants.
It is hard to think of any recipient, and surely any
recent one, who personifies the qualities indicated by Alfred Nobel
himself. Advocating and working for peace seem to have little if
anything to do with being awarded the nominal Peace Prize. But twice in
the last three years it has been conferred
upon individuals far more deserving of indictment for violating the
Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal, especially that section of
Principle VI, Crimes against peace, which is defined as "Planning,
preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in
violation of international treaties, agreements or
assurances."
Two years ago the prize was shared by Al Gore, who as
the vice president of the U.S.'s first post-Cold War administration
helped preside over deadly street battles in Somalia and bombing --
incessant bombing -- attacks in Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Sudan and
Yugoslavia. And the launching of Plan
Colombia in 1999, the latest fruit of which is the Pentagon's
acquisition of seven new military bases in the country and the
resulting threat of armed conflict with its neighbors. Arranged by this
year's Peace Prize recipient. But, again, Gore received the prize years
after leaving office and for work in an area unrelated
to his former government posts.
Obama's December 1 speech was larded with lines
evocative of the worst rhetorical excesses of his predecessor combined
with allusions to broadening the war reminiscent of Richard Nixon's and
Henry Kissinger's expansion of what had previously been America's
longest war from Vietnam into Cambodia
in 1970. "[S]hortly after taking office, I approved a long-standing
request for more troops. After consultations with our allies, I then
announced a strategy recognizing the fundamental connection between our
war effort in Afghanistan, and the extremist safe-havens in Pakistan. I
set a goal that was narrowly defined
as disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al Qaeda and its extremist
allies...."
The current administration has, in addition to plans to
boost combined U.S. and NATO ("our allies") military forces to 150,000
in Afghanistan, dramatically escalated drone missile attacks inside
neighboring Pakistan and, as the above quote demonstrates, declared
western and southern Pakistan part
of the expanding war theater.
The president mentioned or alluded to the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization several times in his address, in one instance with
a degree of hyperbole that is as frightening as it is extravagant. "For
what's at stake is not simply a test of NATO's credibility -- what's at
stake is the security of our Allies,
and the common security of the world.
"We are in Afghanistan to prevent a cancer from once
again spreading through that country. But this same cancer has also
taken root in the border region of Pakistan. That is why we need a
strategy that works on both sides of the border."
The entire world is threatened by a spreading cancer.
This alarmist and crude phraseology was employed by a 21st century
leader of the world's superpower, a Harvard graduate, but could as well
have been lifted from the lowest yellow journalism screed of the Cold
War.
In attempting to deny the obvious -- the inevitable --
Obama continued by stating that "there are those who suggest that
Afghanistan is another Vietnam. They argue that it cannot be
stabilized, and we are better off cutting our losses and rapidly
withdrawing. Yet this argument depends upon a false reading
of history. Unlike Vietnam, we are joined by a broad coalition of 43
nations...." Troops from America's NATO and NATO partner vassals and
tributaries in the war against barbarians -- the terms are those of
Zbigniew Brzezinski from his 1997 The Grand Chessboard: American
Primacy and Its Geostrategic
Imperatives -- will not be limited to the war in Afghanistan,
which in fact is a laboratory for a far broader global strategy, as
"The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly,
and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan....Where al Qaeda
and its allies attempt to establish a foothold --
whether in Somalia or Yemen or elsewhere -- they must be confronted by
growing pressure and strong partnerships."
U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones said in
October that "according to the maximum estimate, al Qaeda has fewer
than 100 fighters operating in Afghanistan without any bases or ability
to launch attacks on the West." Government estimates for Taliban
fighters in Afghanistan are in the neighborhood
of 20,000.
This is the global cancer that requires 150,000 U.S. and
NATO troops and an Afghan army of a quarter million or more troops. And
a war that will continue well beyond the 2011 deadline mentioned in the
West Point speech and be fought with intensified vigor and as far from
Afghanistan as the Horn
of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Southeast Asian archipelago.
With the deployment of "senior members of Mr. Obama's
war council," as the New York Times characterized them, on
the Sunday morning television news program circuit on December 7, the
scope and the length of the already biggest and longest war in the
world became undeniable.
The National Security Adviser, former Marine general and
NATO top military commander James Jones, told CNN's State of the Union:
"We have strategic interests in South Asia that should not be measured
in terms of finite times. We're going to be in the region for a long
time."
He added that the influx of more American and NATO
troops "will allow us to move our forces back towards the border
regions, where really the most important struggle that we're going to
have is to make sure that on the Pakistani side of the border, that we
eliminate the safe havens."
Pentagon chief Robert Gates said on NBC's Meet the Press
that although there would still be over 100,000 American troops in
Afghanistan in 2011, only "some handful, or some small number, or
whatever the conditions permit, will begin to withdraw at that time."
The Pentagon's Central Command chief, General David
Petraeus, appeared on Fox News Sunday and acknowledged that there were
no plans for a "rush to the exits" and that there "could be tens of
thousands of American troops in Afghanistan for several years."[2]
Little noted with the expansion of the war is that its
range is widening as its intensity is deepening.
The top U.S. Air Force commander in Europe and Eurasia,
General Roger A. Brady, was in Georgia on December 7 and in the
neighboring South Caucasus nation of Azerbaijan on the 8th to discuss
both nations' increased troop deployments to Afghanistan and
solidifying strategic military relations.
The president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, has recently
and once again threatened war against Nagorno Karabakh and by
unavoidable implication Armenia, which is a member of the Collective
Security Treaty Organization with Russia. The latter is obligated to
provide Armenia military assistance under
terms of the treaty in the event of it becoming the victim of
aggression. With the American commander listening attentively, defense
minister of Azerbaijan Colonel-General Safar Abiyev said that ongoing
negotiations over Nagorno Karabakh "were not fruitful and such a
situation forced Azerbaijan to use other ways
to liberate its lands from the occupation."[3]
On December 4 the president of Georgia, Mikheil
Saakashvili, who fought a five-day war with Russia in August of last
year, spoke of his offering the U.S. and NATO 1,000 more troops for the
Afghan war and ominously added: "This is a unique chance for our
soldiers to receive a real combat baptism.
"We do not need the army only for showing it in military
parades....While our allies -- in this case the United States and
Europe -- are concentrating on other issues [Afghanistan and Iraq], our
enemy is getting active. The sooner the Afghan situation is resolved
and sooner the war is over in Iraq, [the
sooner] Georgia will be more protected."[4]
The enemy is Russia and the quid pro quo is
U.S.-trained Georgian troops receiving a war zone "baptism" for a
future conflict with their "numerous, dangerous and perfidious"
adversary. The adjectives are also Saakashvili's, as are these words:
"We need an army that knows how to fight.
And participation in the operation in Afghanistan is a unique chance to
study this and receive experience....Our final aim is to free the
occupied territories [Abkhazia and South Ossetia] and unite and
integrate Georgia."[5]
Other nations are obtaining combat experience in
Afghanistan under NATO auspices for use in and on the borders of their
homelands, including, like Azerbaijan and Georgia, nations bordering
Russia -- Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Mongolia, Norway, Poland
and Ukraine -- as well as future
belligerents in conflicts elsewhere like Colombia, South Korea and the
United Arab Emirates.
If the world's sole superpower and its NATO entourage
can employ the military necessity at will to advance their interests
abroad, their "vassals" will be emboldened to do so nearer home and
will receive the arms and training to execute their designs.
Far from promoting peace, even an enforced peace, a Pax
Americana, the war in Afghanistan and U.S. foreign policy in general
are igniting power kegs around the world.
If it can be argued that Obama inherited the war in
South Asia from George W. Bush and is intent on "finishing the job,"
his signing of the $106 billion Iraq and Afghanistan War Supplemental
Appropriations in July and the $680 billion 2010 National Defense
Authorization Act in late
October belies any claim of objection to the enhanced use of the
military in general and war in particular.
Next year's Pentagon budget is the largest, in both
current and real U.S. dollars, since 1945, the last year of World War
II. Although it contains $130 billion for the war in Afghanistan and
the occupation of Iraq that previously would have been appropriated as
separate supplemental funds, immediately
after the signing of the Defense Department budget the chairman of the
U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, stated "he expected
the Pentagon to ask Congress in the next few months for emergency
financing to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,"[6] with
the first request to be approximately $50 billion.
With the announcement on December 1 of another Afghan
troop surge, the Pentagon's requests for "emergency financing" can be
expected to grow in both size and frequency. As with the claim of a
troop withdrawal (or "drawdown") by 2011, the alleged ending of war
supplements is a public relations
ploy and sleight of hand trick employed to beguile a gullible public.
Even in a world that over the last decade has been
afflicted with such logical and moral affronts as humanitarian war and
preemptive retaliation, awarding a peace prize to a war president
represents a new nadir of cynical realpolitik and a flagrant
endorsement of militarism, however well-disposed many
may have been toward its most recent recipient.
Notes
1.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?aid=15622&context=va
2. New York Times, December 7,
2009
3. Azeri Press Agency, December 8, 2009
4. Civil Georgia, December 5, 2009
5. Rustavi2, December 4, 2009
6. Associated Press, November 1, 2009
Obama and the Nobel Prize
When War Becomes Peace,
When
the Lie Becomes the Truth
- Michel Chossudovsky, October 11, 2009 -
When war becomes peace,
When concepts and realities are turned upside down,
When fiction becomes truth and truth becomes fiction.
When a global military agenda is heralded as a
humanitarian endeavor,
When the killing of civilians is upheld as
"collateral damage,"
When those who resist the U.S.-NATO led invasion of
their homeland are categorized as "insurgents" or "terrorists."
When preemptive nuclear war is upheld as self
defense.
When advanced torture and "interrogation" techniques
are routinely used to "protect peacekeeping operations,"
When tactical nuclear weapons are heralded by the
Pentagon as "harmless to the surrounding civilian population"
When three quarters of U.S. personal federal income
tax revenues are allocated to financing what is euphemistically
referred to as "national defense"
When the Commander in Chief of the largest military
force on planet earth is presented as a global peace-maker,
When the Lie becomes the Truth.
Obama's "War without Borders"
We are the crossroads of the most serious crisis in
modern history. The U.S. in partnership with NATO and Israel has
launched a global military adventure which, in a very real sense,
threatens the future of humanity.
At this critical juncture in our history, the Norwegian
Nobel Committee's decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President
and Commander in Chief Barack Obama constitutes an unmitigated tool of
propaganda and distortion, which unreservedly supports the Pentagon's
"Long War": "A War without
Borders" in the true sense of the word, characterised by the Worlwide
deployment of U.S. military might.
Apart from the diplomatic rhetoric, there has been no
meaningful reversal of U.S. foreign policy in relation to the George W.
Bush presidency, which might have remotely justified the granting of
the Nobel Prize to Obama. In fact quite the opposite. The Obama
military agenda has sought to extend
the war into new frontiers. With a new team of military and foreign
policy advisers, the Obama war agenda has been far more effective in
fostering military escalation than that formulated by the NeoCons.
Since the very outset of the Obama presidency, this
global military project has become increasingly pervasive, with the
reinforcement of U.S. military presence in all major regions of the
World and the development of new advanced weapons systems on an
unprecdented scale.
Granting the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama provides
legitimacy to the illegal practices of war, to the military occupation
of foreign lands, to the relentless killings of civilians in the name
of "democracy."
Both the Obama administration and NATO are directly
threatening Russia, China and Iran. The U.S. under Obama is developing
"a First Strike Global Missile Shield System":
"Along with space-based weapons, the Airborne Laser is
the next defense frontier. ... Never has Ronald Reagan's dream of
layered missile defenses -- Star Wars, for short -- been as....close,
at least technologically, to becoming realized."
Reacting to this consolidation, streamlining and
upgrading of American global nuclear strike potential, on August 11 the
Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Air Force, the same Alexander Zelin
cited earlier on the threat of U.S. strikes from space on all of his
nation, said that the "Russian Air Force
is preparing to meet the threats resulting from the creation of the
Global Strike Command in the U.S. Air Force" and that Russia is
developing "appropriate systems to meet the threats that may arise."[1]
At no time since the Cuban missile crisis has the World
been closer to the unthinkable: a World War III scenario, a global
military conflict involving the use of nuclear weapons.
1. The so-called missile defense shield or Star Wars
initiative involving the first strike use of nuclear weapons is now to
be developed globally in different regions of the World. The missile
shield is largely directed against Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
2. New U.S. military bases have been set up with a view
to establishing U.S. spheres of influence in every region of the World
as well as surrounding and confronting Russia and China.
3. There has been an escalation in the Central Asian
Middle East war. The "defense budget" under Obama has spiraled with
increased allocations to both Afghanistan and Iraq.
4. Under orders of president Obama, acting as Commander
in Chief, Pakistan is now the object of routine U.S. aerial
bombardments in violation of its territorial sovereignty, using the
"Global War on Terrorism" as a justification.
5. The construction of new military bases is envisaged
in Latin America including Colombia on the immediate border of
Venezuela.
6. Military aid to Israel has increased. The Obama
presidency has expressed its unbending support for Israel and the
Israeli military. Obama has remained mum on the atrocities committed by
Israel in Gaza. There has not even been a semblance of renewed
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
7. There has been a reinforcement of the new regional
commands including AFRICOM and SOUTHCOM
8. A new round of threats has been directed against Iran.
9. The U.S. is intent upon fostering further divisions
between Pakistan and India, which could lead to a regional war, as well
as using India's nuclear arsenal as an indirect means to threaten China.
The diabolical nature of this military project was
outlined in the 2000 Project for a New American Century (PNAC). The
PNAC's declared objectives are:
- defend the American homeland;
- fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major
theater wars;
- perform the "constabulary" duties associated with
shaping the security environment in critical regions;
- transform U.S. forces to exploit the "revolution in
military affairs;"[2]
The "Revolution in Military Affairs" refers to the
development of new advanced weapons systems. The militarization of
space, new advanced chemical and biological weapons, sophisticated
laser guided missiles, bunker buster bombs, not to mention the U.S. Air
Force's climatic warfare program (HAARP)
based in Gokona, Alaska, are part of Obama's "humanitarian arsenal."
War against the Truth
This is a war against the truth. When war becomes peace,
the world is turned upside down. Conceptualization is no longer
possible. An inquisitorial social system emerges.
An understanding of fundamental social and political
events is replaced by a World of sheer fantasy, where "evil folks" are
lurking. The objective of the "Global War on Terrorism" which has been
fully endorsed by Obama administration has been to galvanize public
support for a Worldwide campaign
against heresy.
In the eyes of public opinion, possessing a "just cause"
for waging war is central. A war is said to be Just if it is waged on
moral, religious or ethical grounds. The consensus is to wage war.
People can longer think for themselves. They accept the authority and
wisdom of the established social order.
The Nobel Committee says that President Obama has given
the world "hope for a better future." The prize is awarded for Obama's
"extraordinary efforts to strengthen international
diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached
special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without
nuclear weapons.
"...His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those
who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and
attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."3]
The granting of the Nobel "peace prize" to president
Barack Obama has become an integral part of the Pentagon's propaganda
machine. It provides a human face to the invaders, it upholds the
demonization of those who oppose U.S. military intervention.
The decision to grant Obama the Nobel Peace Prize was no
doubt carefully negotiated with the Norwegian Committee at the highest
levels of the U.S. government. It has far reaching implications.
It unequivocally upholds the U.S. led war as a "Just
Cause." It erases the war crimes committed both by the Bush and Obama
administrations.
War Propaganda: Jus ad Bellum
The "Just war" theory serves to camouflage the nature of
U.S. foreign policy, while providing a human face to the invaders.
In both its classical and contemporary versions, the
Just War theory upholds war as a "humanitarian operation." It calls for
military intervention on ethical and moral grounds against
"insurgents," "terrorists," "failed" or "rogue states."
The Just War has been heralded by the Nobel Committee as
an instrument of Peace. Obama personifies the "Just War."
Taught in U.S. military academies, a modern-day version
of the "Just War" theory has been embodied into U.S. military doctrine.
The "war on terrorism" and the notion of "preemption" are predicated on
the right to "self defense." They define "when it is permissible to
wage war": jus ad bellum.
Jus ad bellum has served to build a consensus
within the Armed Forces command structures. It has also served to
convince the troops that they are fighting for a "just cause." More
generally, the Just War theory in its modern day version is an integral
part of war propaganda and media
disinformation, applied to gain public support for a war agenda. Under
Obama as Nobel Peace Laureate, the Just War becomes universally
accepted, upheld by the so-called international community.
The ultimate objective is to subdue the citizens,
totally depoliticize social life in America, prevent people from
thinking and conceptualizing, from analyzing facts and challenging the
legitimacy of the U.S. NATO led war.
War becomes peace, a worthwhile "humanitarian
undertaking," Peaceful dissent becomes heresy.
Military Escalation with a Human Face: Nobel Committee
Grants the
"Green Light"
More significantly, the Nobel peace prize grants
legitimacy to an unprecedented "escalation" of U.S.-NATO led military
operations under the banner of peacemaking.
It contributes to falsifying the nature of the U.S.-NATO
military agenda.
Between 40,000 to 60,000 more U.S. and allied troops are
to be sent to Afghanistan under a peacemaking banner. On the 8th of
october, a day prior to the Nobel Committee's decision, the U.S.
congress granted Obama a 680-billion-dollar defense authorization bill,
which is slated to finance the process
of military escalation:
"Washington and its NATO allies are planning an
unprecedented increase of troops for the war in Afghanistan, even in
addition to the 17,000 new American and several thousand NATO forces
that have been committed to the war so far this year.
"The number, based on as yet unsubstantiated reports of
what U.S. and NATO commander Stanley McChrystal and the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen have demanded of the White House,
range from 10,000 to 45,000.
"Fox News has cited figures as high as 45,000 more
American soldiers and ABC News as many as 40,000. On September 15 the Christian
Science
Monitor wrote of "perhaps as many as 45,000.
"The similarity of the estimates indicate that a number
has been agreed upon and America's obedient media is preparing domestic
audiences for the possibility of the largest escalation of foreign
armed forces in Afghanistan's history. Only seven years ago the United
States had 5,000 troops in the country,
but was scheduled to have 68,000 by December even before the reports of
new deployments surfaced."[>a href="#NN04">4]
Within hours of the decision of the Norwegian Nobel
committee, Obama met with the War Council, or should we call it the
"Peace Council." This meeting had been carefully scheduled to coincide
with that of the Norwegian Nobel committee.
This key meeting behind closed doors in the Situation
Room of the White House included Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and key
political and military advisers. General Stanley McChrystal
participated in the meeting via video link from
Kabul.
General Stanley McChrystal is said to have offered the
Commander in Chief "several alternative options" "including a maximum
injection of 60,000 extra troops." The 60,000 figure was quoted
following a leak of the Wall Street Journal.[5]
"The president had a robust conversation about the
security and political challenges in Afghanistan and the options for
building a strategic approach going forward," according to an
administration official."[6]
The Nobel committee had in a sense given Obama a green
light. The October 9 meeting in the Situation Room was to set the
groundwork for a further escalation of the conflict under the banner of
counterinsurgency and democracy building.
Meanwhile, in the course of the last few months, U.S.
forces have stepped up their aerial bombardments of village communities
in the northern tribal areas of Pakistan, under the banner of combating
Al Qaeda.
Notes
1. Rick Rozoff, Showdown with
Russia and China: U.S.
Advances First Strike Global Missile Shield System, Global Research,
August 19, 2009
2. Project for a New American Century,
Rebuilding
Americas Defenses.pdf, September 2000
3. Nobel
Press Release, October 9, 2009
4. Rick Rozoff, U.S., NATO Poised For
Most Massive War
In Afghanistan's History, Global Research, September 24, 2009
5. AFP: After Nobel nod, Obama convenes
Afghan war
council, October 9, 2009
6. Quoted in AFP: After Nobel nod, Obama
convenes Afghan
war council October 9, 2009
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