Nobel for Obama
That US President Barack Obama yesterday was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize has taken everyone by surprise. The initial reaction was: Peace prize for what? The absurdity indeed is made clear in the citation produced by the judges of the $1.4 million prize. ?Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world?s attention and given its people hope for a better future.? That is absolutely true. Not since John F. Kennedy entered the White House has any US president come to office on such a tidal wave of international hope.
Nevertheless, the Nobel prizes, including the peace prize are awarded for outstanding achievement, not glittering hope. Obama has been in office for just nine months of his four-year term. America is not at peace. Its troops are still fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed very shortly Obama may announce a ratcheting up of the US military effort in Afghanistan.
His talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Premier Vladimir Putin have led to the abandonment of the ill-conceived Bush European missile shield and paved the way for a renewal of Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) negotiations. But nothing substantive has yet been achieved.
The trilateral meeting he hosted September at the White House between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu has not yet borne any fruit; rather the Israeli government continues to back the expansion of existing illegal settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. Nothing substantive has yet been achieved.
Obama?s speech in Cairo after he had come to Saudi Arabia during his Middle East visit in May was an inspiring address to the Arab world, very much in the mold of the speeches he made to US electors during his run for the Oval Office. True, it inspired hope. But it has not yet translated into achievement. His peace laureateship at this time is therefore entirely inappropriate. It belittles some past winners of this important and prestigious award and in a way will diminish the impact of his success if he does achieve peace in the Middle East, if he does bring about a meaningful new SALT deal and if he does even bring an end to violence in Afghanistan.
No one would award a gold medal to a highly promising athlete when he was less than a quarter of the way down the track. So therefore Obama?s political race has to be run right through to the line, so his political achievement in terms of peace, can be judged properly and fairly. It is hard to resist the temptation to wonder if the opinion of the Nobel Peace Prize judges may not have been hugely influenced by the apparently radical change the Obama administration represents over its predecessor. To what extent was their decision driven by the fact that Obama was not the gun-totting, tongue-tied Texan George W. Bush? At the moment the only people who could conceivably deserve this award are the Obama speechwriters. They have delivered the golden words. Now the president has to deliver the golden deeds.
Guantanamo fever
The following editorial appeared in Washington Post on Friday:
Congress continues its irrational and damaging bluster over the fate of detainees at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
On Tuesday, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to forbid the use of federal funds to bring detainees to the United States ? for any reason, including prosecution. The House approved a similar, nonbinding measure last week. This approach is even more unjustified than Congress? first foray into the matter in May, when it prohibited the Obama administration from releasing any detainees ? even those cleared during the Bush administration ? into the United States. The May provision also required that the administration give Congress advance warning before any detainee is transferred to the United States for prosecution or to another country for release.
The grownups in the House and Senate stepped back from the abyss this week by chucking the blanket prohibitions against US transfers and reverted to the unnecessary but less objectionable hurdles erected in May. The restrictions will stay in place until December 2010.
Yet to hear some of the bombast coming from the Capitol, you might have thought that congressional negotiators had agreed to arm detainees and set them loose in the heartland. Never mind that any prisoners brought to the United States for prosecution or continued detention would likely be housed in high-security prisons that have held violent offenders, including those convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, without ever suffering an escape. Some, such as Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, tried to further capitalize on the development by blasting the compromise on fiscal grounds, charging that ?the liberal leadership has cleared the way for terrorists to be tried in US courts and housed in US detention facilities all at US taxpayers? expense.? Who does Culberson believe is paying for the detentions at Guantanamo if not the US taxpayer? These policies have made it almost impossible for the administration to shutter a detention facility that has triggered nothing but international scorn.
The US refusal to allow even one cleared detainee into the country ? coupled with the rantings from Capitol Hill ? have made it that much more difficult to persuade allies to take in those who have been ordered released. And the failure to discuss seriously the creation of a legal framework to hold the 50 to 100 detainees who cannot be tried in federal courts but who may be too dangerous to release leaves open the possibility of indefinite detention with little or no legitimacy ? regardless of where the prisoners are held.
No comments:
Post a Comment