President Barack Obama's Acceptance Speech in Oslo.
"Esteemed Nobel Peace Prize Committee, honored guests.
"I can appreciate the irony of being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and was probably just as flabbergasted as Kissinger when he won it 36 years ago for escalating the war in Vietnam. I guess the standards of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee are so forgiving that merely trying to reverse a disastrous and blood-soaked policy is enough to get you a first class plane ticket to Oslo. (laughter)
"People of the world, we stand at the crossroads of history. We face many challenges and the greatest work is still before us. And if that involves sucking up to the apartheid state of Israel and allowing them to gobble up pieces of the West Bank in Palestine like Rush Limbaugh at an all-you-can-eat buffet, so be it.
"If the work includes killing hundreds of innocent Afghani and Pakistani civilians, many of them women and children, through unmanned CIA drone strikes, then so be it.
"If that includes keeping our troop levels in Iraq at over 130,000 in defiance of the SOFA agreement and arrogantly keeping Blackwater/Xe in Iraq in defiance of Iraqi law, so be it.
"If that includes ramping up our involvement in Afghanistan by keeping 68,000 troops there and possibly sending many tens of thousands more on the recommendation of a general who used to oversee assassination missions as commander of JSOC, so be it. Just because Alexander the Great, the Soviet empire and many others failed to pacify Afghanistan, why should anyone think we'll similarly fail?
"The Nobel Peace Prize Committee saw fit to give me this year's honor for fostering international diplomacy, even though those diplomatic initiatives haven't resulted in any meaningful negotiations, have not led to peace treaties anywhere in the Middle East or elsewhere. Considering that I haven't really done anything on the diplomatic front and that I chose as my Secretary of State someone who voted to go to war with Iraq and refused to apologize for it and who also voted to name the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, I interpret the Peace Prize Committee's decision as a vote of confidence. (Applause)
"Now, there are a lot of people putting stuff out there and almost none of it's true. A lot of people on both sides of the aisle are saying that my administration is merely a third Bush term, that my backpedaling on issues such as exposing the evils of my predecessor and closing Guantanamo Bay and eradicating the extra-judicial military tribunals is a sign of concessions to those on the right side of the Great Divide. Nothing can be further from the truth.
"Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I am not backpedaling and I have not broken my campaign promises. These decisions are the result of policy reversals. Apparently, when I was still the junior senator from Illinois, I never once considered that once I became President I'd learn a thing or two about how things really work and that the pure, unmitigated, soul-crippling evil of my predecessor's administration would be on such a Hadean scale that it would make full disclosure prohibitive.
"So the evidence of our ongoing use of torture in Guantanamo Bay, Bagram and elsewhere will, unfortunately continue to be kept from the American people and the Muslim world. Since we can't seem to win this war on terror, we have to stop and consider what al Qaida would do to us were my administration to make full disclosure of my predecessor's many, many, many, many war crimes. (Applause)
"But arduous sacrifice is best shouldered when it's shared. So I call upon all the nations of the world to join me in condemning Iran for a nuclear weapons program that hasn't been proven to exist and to hope and pray that we can kill less and less innocent people in those unmanned drone air strikes in central Asia, that we can finally exit Iraq so those multinational oil companies can resume sucking Iraq dry of its oil in peace and prosperity. (Applause)
"In summation, I hope that future generations will not laugh at the Committee's unexpected decision to give me the Peace Prize and putting me on a par with The Rev. Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mother Teresa and that I will somehow exceed the vote of confidence shown to my predecessor Jimmy Carter, whose Camp David Accord miserably failed.
"This is a great honor and I thank you."
Joe Wilson: "You lie!"
posted by jurassicpork @ Friday, October 09, 2009
18 comments
18 Comments:
I wonder if you saw his Rose Garden speech this morning. Before he began talking about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he paused, possibly realizing how strange it was to win a Nobel Peace Prize while waging two wars. He also didn't use the word "war" when describing the conflict in Afghanistan (nor for Iraq, I believe).
Unfortunately, the track record of presidents who have won the Peace Prize is not good. Besides the example you provided of Jimmy Carter, Woodrow Wilson won it for the League of Nations, which the U.S. Congress failed to recognize, and which failed to stop WWII. And even though Teddy Roosevelt did broker a peace accord to stop the Russo-Japanese War, it may have been done more to stop the Japanese from winning said war than for a wish for peace. In addition, that intervention bolstered Japan's view that Western powers were intent on preventing it from taking the world stage, which eventually led to its bloody campaigns during WWII.
I hope Obama is humbled enough by the winning of this prize to change strategy on many of the decisions where he has erred (black sites, both wars, continuation of repressive Bush policies, refusing to investigate the crimes of the past administration, etc.), and to push forward in the areas of nuclear nonproliferation, the cutting of greenhouse gas emissions, and the closing of Guantanamo Bay. Only time will tell if he, indeed, deserves the title of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate to be associated with his name.
Click on the title.
Just as a sidebar, it;s amazing how fast and furiously Kos's flying monkeys swarmed me within seconds of my crosspost on DKos. They're no different from the DNC calling any critics of Obama winning the Nobel "terrorists". Yes, they actually used that word. Go check out what Glenn Greenwald says on the subject.
This is the link to my cross-post on DKos. When my fiancee broke the news to me this morning, I already had a pretty good idea of what I was going to say. I also knew that I'd make some enemies along the way but I never anticipated that Markos' flying monkeys would come out in full force. What a hat full of assholes. I'll never post another diary there again. They're no better than the fucking right wingers.
I mean, Barack fucking Obama? The Nobel Peace Prize? What, O what the fuck were they thinking?!
Come on, JP, you're much more astute than that! They were thinking of repudiating eight years of horror under Bush, that's what they were thinking.
"I realize that for me to have won this award this year means that I had to have been nominated by February 1, before I'd even cashed my first paycheck. So be it."
Brilliant stuff! Loved it, dead on.
But really, you should have expected as much from the rabid ones over Kool-Aid Central.
DKos has long been absorbed by the body-snatchers. My friend Bernie the Attorney called me this AM convinced that the Nobel was awarded in recognition of Obama's turning a blind eye towards Israel's aggression against the Pals (though if the decision was made by the commitee in Feb, the timeline's a little off).
If that's the case though, it also does double duty as a cudgle should Obama actually try to rein in Israel; the media can spout that the award has gone to his head and he should stop turning the other cheeks towards "tarrists". The right already refers to him as Neville Chamberlain.
"The right already refers to him as Neville Chamberlain."
Well, me, too.
Mr. Porky, of all the columns of yours that I have read, this is absolutely the best. The insanity of choosing him leaves me gasping.
If he had to be nominated in Feb, or even Mar, what had he actually accomplished besides getting elected. I wonder if the committee will review its stupid mistake? I wonder if the committee is embarrassed?
As far as posting at Dkos, I don't even read that blog unless someone links to it and shows that it is worth reading. obama has shown himself to be much less than I even expected. I see ads imploring me to stand with obama to support his "plan." Other than carrying on as bush III, caving to the repugs and big corps (not bailing out the auto industry was directed at the unions), and bowing to the likudniks, I have no idea what his plan(s) is(are).
Good point, though the meme that will propagate is the one that Obama weakens the US by not drawing (and holding) a line in the sand against the "Axis of Evil" types, not that he acquiesces to Israeli aggression while claiming "peace in our time".
Not to sound like a Reich Wingnut, something surely is wrong with giving anybody a "Peace Prize" when that person is President of a cunt tree involved in wars of aggresion in at least three countries, that we know of.
Don't even get me started on Nuclear armed Israel.
You have to admit, it's doubly patently absurd to give this to Obama because all the nominations had to be in by Feb. 1st, meaning they nominated him 11 days into his administration, or before he could cash his first paycheck as president (I don't know if they hold back a week).
On the Rachel Maddow Show (MSNBC) they showed clips of parts of his speeches prior to the Feb 1 date talking about the importance of working diplomatically before resorting to military might in resolving conflicts and the goal of elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide. Supposedly, the Nobel committee was recognizing the shift in attitude in an attempt to promote more of the same coupled with the hope of Pres. Obama actually following through on what he said he would.
Thanks,great post
Awarding Obama the Peace Prize is on par with Harvard, say, awarding a freshman "cum laude" graduation honors on the basis of high-school transccript and first-semester Bio lab notes...
I'd compare it more to being awarded a scholarship or grant based on (past) merit and expectations.
See Lew Rockwell,
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/39055.html
The Real Prince of Peace
Posted by Laurence Vance on October 9, 2009 03:16 PM:
I was asked my opinion from a Christian perspective of Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize. My answer: There is only one Prince of Peace, and it ain’t Barack Obama, a man with blood on his hands. Just as Johnson’s war became Nixon’s war, so Bush’s wars are fast becoming Obama’s wars.
Ya know...I don't get all the hate you've received from the folks at the evil orange. It often seems as if there are 25 people posting at Kos.....and each of them have 2500 monikers each. And until you've received the imprimatur of a few of those folks......
In the grand scheme of things,The Daily KOS does provide a needed role in the blogosphere...much like crows do in our world. Also keep in mind...DK is permeated with white folks who bought into the lies of ST. Ronald Reagan many years ago.....Only to find themselves disenchanted and disenfranchised many years later. Just like a sports franchise.
I'm reminded of a quote or two from PT Barnum.
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