Just wars and Nobel Peace Prize – a paradox
President and First Lady during Nobel banquet. White House Photo.
By Ravi Matah
OSLO – Barack Obama’s acceptance speech during the Nobel Prize award was a classic act from a U.S. President caught between the devil and the deep sea – receiving the most coveted prize for peace yet having to justify wars that the United States has fought in the past ten years.
But what was most notable was the fact that he did not even mention the Iraq war that resulted in a regime change. In his definition of just wars, he skipped the Iraq war entirely.
Obama thanked the Norwegian Peace Prize Committee, the dignitaries present and said, “And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated. In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage.”
Obama, who spoke about the notion of “just wars” skipped any mention of the Iraq war to oust Saddam Hussein, but included Desert Storm and the Afghanistan war on Al Qaeda in his definition of wars that nations can fight for just reasons.
“Furthermore, America — in fact, no nation — can insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don’t, our actions appear arbitrary and undercut the legitimacy of future interventions, no matter how justified,” he said, in a veiled reference that can also be read as a mention of the futile war in Iraq in search of non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
While justifying the war in Afghanistan, he said: “Still, we are at war, and I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill. Some will be killed.
“And so I come here with an acute sense of the cost of armed conflict – filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other” thereby implying that he is duty-bound to protect and defend the United States,” he added.
“But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars,” said Obama, in a paradoxical speech while receiving a peace prize.
President Obama added, “There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”
“A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaida’s leaders to lay down their arms,” Obama added, in an effort to define when force is necessary. “To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism; it is recognition of history.”
Obama’s dilemma in Oslo was also something that was not his own doing. The country is still coping with the legacy and the wages of the adventurous policies of President Bush when he got involved in an eminently avoidable war in Iraq, started on the pretext of searching for non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction, and costing the U.S. economy a whopping three trillion dollars.
Obama’s speech therefore sounded necessarily defensive of the legacy left over by his predecessor.
However, many have suggested the prize was not for what Obama has achieved, but rather to push him to go forward on the path that he seems to have chosen, including dumping most aspects of the Bush doctrine.
- Ravi Matah is a correspondent for Vancouverite. He is based in India.
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Posted by Ravi Matah
on Dec 12 2009. Filed under Humanity.
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