Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Ma questi cazzo premi nobel per la pace?

Sono una presa per il culo, Obama ad esempio....
In a famous TV commercial from the 1980s, an elderly woman, surveying
the minuscule amount of hamburger in the middle of a bun, asks
pointedly, “Where’s the beef?” One year after President Barack Obama
was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize despite having been in office only a
short time, ABC News’ Russell Goldman reports that many people are
asking, “Where’s the peace?”
On October 9, 2009, the Nobel Committee awarded Obama the Peace Prize
“for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy
and cooperation between peoples.” Goldman writes that Obama “was
selected, prize committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland said, not for
what he had accomplished but for the promise of what he would
accomplish.” Former President Jimmy Carter, the 2002 Peace Prize
recipient, said Obama was deserving of the prize for his “vision and
commitment.”
What, then, has Obama done to vindicate the committee’s faith in him?
Goldman sees a few bright spots: “Obama has withdrawn tens of
thousands of troops from Iraq. He rushed to the relief of Haiti after
its devastating earthquake and redirected U.S. helicopters and aid to
help the millions of Pakistanis whose homes were washed away by
catastrophic floods.”
On the flip side, Goldman notes, “fighting is escalating in
Afghanistan, the war in Iraq continues to smolder and Obama [is
struggling] to keep fledgling Middle East peace talks from collapsing.
Drones are firing missiles in unprecedened [sic] numbers and
confrontations with Iran and North Korea are hotter than ever.” “In
addition,” he says, “wars rage in Somalia, Africa, Asia and South
America, fueled by religion, tribal hatreds, poverty and piracy.” It
is, of course, a good thing that Obama has mostly kept his nose out of
these other wars. But he has done little to address the problems in
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan and, in the case of Afghanistan and
Pakistan, has actually escalated, rather than lessened, hostilities.
The President has committed an additional 47,000 troops to
Afghanistan; and though he has stated that he will begin withdrawing
troops in July 2011, he has made it clear that the withdrawal is
dependent on conditions on the ground and that even if withdrawal does
begin at that time, the United States is going to be involved in
Afghanistan for years to come. The troop surge has hardly achieved
peace: “Nearly 500 U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan and
nearly another 500 troops from other Western allies since October
2009,” writes Goldman. At the same time, the Pentagon is seeking a
permanent presence in Afghanistan, with Defense Secretary Robert Gates
averring that “we’re not ever leaving at all” and Obama meekly
acquiescing to whatever the military wants — this according to Bob
Woodward’s book Obama’s Wars.
In Pakistan, as Goldman points out, unmanned drone strikes have
greatly increased on Obama’s watch. Via these strikes Obama “has
killed well over a thousand people inside Pakistan since taking
office,” according to Jason Ditz of Antiwar.com. “The vast majority of
those killed have turned out to be innocent civilians, while large
numbers of others remain unidentified but classified as ‘suspects.’”
Fighting between NATO (read: U.S.) troops and Taliban militants in
southwestern Pakistan has also been on the increase lately, with some
NATO contractors even suspected of planting bombs in some of the oil
tankers that have been blowing up en route to Afghanistan.
Elsewhere, fighting continues in Iraq even though Obama announced the
end of combat operations on August 31. The President has ordered drone
strikes within Yemen. He has imposed sanctions on Iran. He has failed
to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp despite having issued an
executive order calling for its closure by January 22, 2010. He has
asserted the right to order the assassination of anyone, even an
American citizen, anywhere in the world. The list goes on — and none
of it resembles peace by any stretch of the imagination.
Anti-war activism has become much less pronounced since Obama took
office, probably because most prominent anti-war groups are on the
Left and therefore have a natural affinity for the President. Previous
Nobel Peace Prize winners Carter, Al Gore, and the American Friends
Service Committee declined to offer comments on the anniversary of
Obama’s prize when contacted by Goldman.
However, not all anti-war activists are keeping silent. Dana Balicki,
National Campaign Coordinator for Code Pink, told Goldman, “Of course
we’re disappointed with the president. He simply hasn’t live [sic] up
to [his Nobel Prize]. There was a great deal of skepticism that he
deserved the prize in the first place.” Balicki added, “We’ve seen an
escalation in Afghanistan. We’ve seen a withdrawal in Iraq, but with
the left hand comes a withdrawal and with the right hand an increase
in private mercenary army a [sic] funded with tax dollars. Thousands
of people are dead, because of those policies.”
Cindy Sheehan, who was feted by the national media when she dogged
President George W. Bush’s footsteps to demand an audience with him
over the death of her son in Iraq, has not given Obama a pass either,
writing recently that as far as she is concerned, Obama is Bush “on
steroids.” Even though Sheehan has continued to turn up on Obama’s
travels, one would never know this from reading the mainstream press
since journalists, too, are by and large Democrat partisans. Sheehan
herself noted this phenomenon, observing that “to be anti-war in the
age of Obama is not to be tolerated by many people.”
What ought not to be tolerated is a President who escalates existing
unconstitutional wars and incites new ones, especially after
presenting himself as the peace candidate when campaigning for office
and accepting the Nobel Peace Prize once in office. Peace activists
and voters need to increase the pressure on both Obama and Congress to
end the wars, bring the troops home, and then mind their own business.
What a wonderful day for America — and the rest of the world — it
would be if, when asked, “Where’s the peace?” Americans could answer,
“It’s here.”

 pointedly, “Where’s the beef?”
Ricordato per la prima volta in venticinque anni!  Ah quei giorni, ah
gioventù...