He didn't deserve that - he haven't even closed gitmo yet.
It does seem like an award that was directed more against his predecessor than one that he is inherently deserving of.
Edit: for correction.
Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Price in 1919 (while he was in office).
I like Obama, but what has he done so far to compare to that?
... that bastard!
At that point in time, there was virtually nothing that he could claim to have accomplished, no matter how trivial.
1) He banned torture (waterboarding)
2) He wants to close Guantanamo. I know he hasn't done it yet, but it can't be easy.
3) He's willing to negotiate with Iran without pre-conditions
4) He's actually trying to push for a Middle East peace deal, and is being vocal about settlements
5) He wants a world without nukes.
6) He didn't put the missile shield near Russia, significantly calming things down over there.
Probably some other stuff too.
Is he like Nelson Mandela or Gandhi? Absolutely not. But considering how leaders of Superpowers have behaved in the past, he is unique.
Wants: To close a nasty illegal prison, but hasn't yet. Talked to some people. Wants less nukes in the world. Didn't build a defense system.
Did: Re-banned torture, in accordance with international law.
Result: Nobel peace prize.
In a vacuum, these things don't sound so great. In today's world, they actually are. Obviously there's something wrong with that, but that's just the way it is.
Dude, Bush invaded two countries for no particular good reason. Clinton jumped into the middle of a backwards country's tribal civil war to draw attention away from his personal life. Obama can't close a fucking prison? Seriously.
http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/conason/2003/07/30/terror...
> "CIA officials went to the White House and said they had 'specific, predictive, actionable' intelligence that bin Laden would soon be attending a particular meeting, in a particular place. 'It was a rare occurrence,' Clarke said. Clinton authorized a lethal attack. The target date, however -- August 20, 1998 -- nearly coincided with Clinton's deposition about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Clarke said that he and other top national security officials at the White House went to see Clinton to warn him that he would likely be accused of 'wagging the dog' in order to distract the public from his political embarrassment. Clinton was enraged. 'Don't you fucking tell me about my political problems, or my personal problems,' Clinton said, according to Clarke. 'You tell me about national security. Is it the right thing to do?' Clarke thought it was. 'Then fucking do it,' Clinton told him."
It's not about being easy or hard, but about the gigantic class action civil suit awaiting the U.S. government the minute they release them.
You break it you get to buy it. It's amazing that so many people bought in to that stuff under Bush, I always thought that if there is one thing America will forever have to live with then it is Gitmo. Just like the Dutch have their colonial crimes and the Germans have world war II.
Some things can not be excused. Keeping people imprisoned without due process is such a crime that history will definitely remember, and that's besides the 'details' such as torturing them.
And doing it on foreign soil so you can pretend it's not an American thing is even more disgusting. If you do a thing like that at least have the balls to do it in your own country. And if that is impossible then don't do it.
Someone ought to end up in the Hague over that one.
USA has a prison system that is 19th century, compared to the rest of the western world. How much worse is Guantanamo than that? Also, afaik prisoners of war can be held until the conflict is ended. The conflict in Afghanistan is arguable not ended.
What I find shocking is the water boarding and sending people for interrogation to places which are really barbaric.
Edit: A couple of grammar changes.
Good point, so maybe upgrade the US prisons to Guantanamo Bay standards ?
> Also, afaik prisoners of war can be held until the conflict is ended. The conflict in Afghanistan is arguable not ended.
But it isn't a war. Besides that, even if it was there are pretty strict guidelines on the treatment of prisoners of war. So either they're civilians that have been arrested for crimes or they're prisoners of war. You have to choose and then play by those rules. Inventing new terms ("enemy combatants") isn't going to convince anybody but the most gullible.
> What I find shocking is the water boarding and sending people for interrogation to places which are really barbaric.
This we fully agree on. Even torture can be outsourced it seems. But I think that does not remove the responsibility for it.
That was as an answer to your original description of Guantanamo as equally shocking as the mass murders of Jews/Gypsies in WW II.
I would, without doing a Devil's Advocate, describe that position as lacking a sense of proportions.
>>But it isn't a war.
It is not a war in Afghanistan? Please inform the media.
>>So either they're civilians that have been arrested for crimes or they're prisoners of war.
But I just did a Devil's Advocate argument that the prisoners aren't treated worse than normal US' prisoners (which is horrible, but still much better than most any 3rd world prison system).
I thought the Red Cross had access to Guantanamo?
Edit: Grammar, sigh.
Edit: Historically, all countries I know of with terror problems (USA, Germany, Israel, Italy, Great Britain, etc) has played loose with human rights interpretations. I don't see a reason to judge the US harsher than others.
I wasn't comparing them on an objective level (which I think was pretty obvious), merely stating that they are all things that will be with those respective countries for a long time.
> It is not a war in Afghanistan? Please inform the media.
From the wikipedia article on the 'war' in Afghanistan:
"The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) did not authorize the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom). There is some debate as to whether UNSC authorization was required, centered around the question of whether the invasion was an act of collective self-defense provided for under Article 51 of the UN Charter, or an act of aggression.[42]
The U.S. Administration did not declare war, and labeled Taliban troops and supporters terrorists rather than soldiers, denying them the protections of the Geneva Convention and due process of law. This position has been successfully challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court[43] and questioned even by military lawyers responsible for prosecuting affected prisoners"
And:
http://www.hrw.org/en/node/79295
So, to call it war is not clear cut. A war is something that is declared between nation states and the conflict in Afghanistan misses quite a few of the pre-requisites.
For the people in the region the difference is much less important, but in international law such things do matter.
> But I just did a Devil's Advocate argument that the prisoners aren't treated worse than normal US' prisoners (which is horrible, but still much better than most any 3rd world prison system).
So, do you waterboard people in your US prisons ? Do you torture them ? Desecrate their religious objects ? And far worse than that ?
> I thought the Red Cross had access to Guantanamo?
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/01/30/letter-obama-asking-ac...
http://ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/leaked-guant%C...
Apparently they were allowed to visit off-and-on during the Bush years, and then restricted in all kinds of ways, since Obama came to power this has changed but it is unclear whether they now have full access to the facility, I can't find any evidence of that.
>>I wasn't comparing them on an objective level (which I think was pretty obvious), merely stating that they are all things that will be with those respective countries for a long time.
See the note above, re that all countries I know of with terror problems thread on the limits of human rights.
>>The U.S. Administration did not declare war, and labeled Taliban troops and supporters terrorists rather than soldiers,
Afghanistan is a conflict against organized units which as standard behavior do terror attacks against civilians and misuse civilian dress.
Anyway, it is continuing military operations since the invasion 2001, where the term is used in the standard press.
I don't have a problem with the Afghan invasion -- and neither do neutral countries like Sweden which send soldiers there.
If you harbor terrorists which attack other countries' civilians, you might get invaded. I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing -- it is an incentive for countries to not destabilize other countries.
>>So, do you waterboard people in your US prisons ? Do you torture them ? Desecrate their religious objects ? And far worse than that ?
Check spr.org. How popular do you think these people would be, if put in US prisons?
Second, I do honestly think the judgment on US here is harsher than e.g. the British and their handling of IRA, etc.
Third, desecrating religious objects isn't illegal in civilized countries. (And is it really documented?)
Fourth, lots of the stories coming from Guantanamo prisoners are certainly made up. There are innocent people incarcerated (all prisons have that). The guilty are in the terror business -- which is more or less the propaganda business.
Edit: Grammar, sigh.
The term is "unlawful combatant" and has the meaning of someone on the battlefield out of uniform. In the case of spies, they can be summarily executed perfectly legally - i.e. without breaking the Geneva Convention (which doesn't even apply in this case - it requires both sides to be signatories, and the Taliban aren't).
But in response to "there are pretty strict guidelines on the treatment of prisoners of war" - those guidelines, by their own definition, carry no legal weight in this context. Since the Taliban fighters are not uniformed members of the Army of a Geneva Convention signatory, they aren't actually "prisoners of war" for a start...
What gets my goat a bit is that you see attacks on Guantanamo for breaking the Geneva Convention (or even, as here, that it is as shocking as the Nazi mass murders!) -- and when it is pointed out that is a non-serious argument, there is never an answer.
I never could stomach propaganda written by people that know better. I like to think "the good guys" should be better than that, too.
Idealists lie, where pathos go in -- integrity go out.
Answering straw men was never a requirement. You made that link, it never was in what I wrote.
>>Answering straw men was never a requirement.
You involved Godwin, I didn't.
Also, as I've written twice and you haven't commented:
All democracies I know of that had terror problems (Germany, Italy, USA, Israel, Great Britain) at least walked a thin line on human rights for the terrorists.
It seems governments would be voted out in democracies if they didn't answer attacks on voters without using all measures.
There is a pattern here. My guess is that the reason is that terror problems are similar to civil wars, which are generally acknowledged to be dirtier than coal power plants.
No, you don't have to like it. I don't either, but I don't compare modern democracies to Nazis.
The only real solution I can see is to work towards more democracy in the world -- and hope the democratic peace theory isn't a fluke...
(Sorry for answering late. It was Friday evening and I try to fake having a life.)
Yes, he is unique. As is everybody else.
Uniqueness is not a reason to give someone a prize, achievement is.
And from where I'm sitting the only thing that has changed is that the American President is no longer making a fool of himself on the international stage and hasn't made the rest of the world wonder if he still has all his marbles.
But to give him a prize for that belies the people that have in some cases paid with their lives for achieving their goals, and then to be awarded their 'prize' 30 years after the fact.
There should be some honour in being awarded a prize, this is more like an incentive to keep going.
Recipe for getting a nobel prize:
Undo your predecessors stupidity.
We should be getting to parity first, then we should improve beyond where we were roughly 9 years ago, then some time needs to pass to figure in the side effects of all the good intentions. If it still stands you can have your prize.
Less than a year into a presidency that has already lost a lot of its luster is premature by any standards.
I'm not saying he doesn't deserve one, I'm simply saying that he has to earn it and has not earned it yet. By far.
Well, apparently he has, but after this I can't see anybody taking winning the Nobel Prize for Peace as a real achievement.
If there was really nobody deserving it more than Obama this year then maybe they should have simply skipped a year.
Makes you wonder who the other nominees were. Is there a list of that ?
I understand it doesn't really reduce any real threat we're facing right now, but what about other nations we would be protecting? The smaller countries who don't have nuclear weapons as a defense option?
These are serious questions, not playing devils advocate here, I'm genuinely interested.
Poland and several other countries in the former east block are still extremely anxious about being on Russias doorstep, and the Americans figured that now was the time to get a foothold there in case there would ever be a 'revival'. Playing in to the fear they promised a shield from anything bad that Russia might be able to do, ostensibly because of the so called rogue states.
But I really don't see N. Korea or Iran attacking Europe, if Iran will do something it will more than likely be against Israel, and if North Korea will do something I'd expect it to be against Japan or South Korea, and most likely conventional against SK, Japan I'm not so sure.
So the threat is magnified for political purposes and to get a foot on the ground right where it kicks the Russians in the teeth. And of course the Russians never played along and named it for what it was.
NATO has some serious firepower in Europe already, but hardly any of it near the old Russian borders and using a popular fiction (that Iran and North Korea are a threat to western Europe) they tried to get their way.
Obama figures it is simply going to cost a bunch of money, increase the tension so better to let it go.
Smart move on his part.
I agree with you that Iran and North Korea definitely don't seem to be a threat against Western Europe, at least not an initial one or immediate one. I was under the impression that the locations for the shields were chosen based on it being able to intercept a multitude of possible strikes against different countries. Obviously the information I've gotten has been minimal and not well researched, which is why I continue to pester you ;).
Given the information you've provided, it seems Obama was indeed making a good decision, that's good news. I am a little curious on what the real threat is already against the US though. It's arrogant to think that we're not being targeted for a large hit, but with the media the way it is it's hard to accurately gauge anything, I tend to err on the side of being overly critical.
Prize nao plz?
Kanye West comment, Racial card and calling police "stupid" before knowing the facts, et cetera.
Bound to happen when you're in the spotlight and decide to have an opinion on something, but one of those was a public comment made directly to the press.