Robert Fisk: Obama, man of peace? No, just a Nobel prize of a mistake
The US president received an award in the faint hope that he will succeed in the future. That's how desperate the Middle East situation has become
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Israeli soldiers clash with Palestinians in Qalandyia, south of Ramallah, on the West Bank
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His Middle East policy is collapsing. The Israelis have taunted him by ignoring his demand for an end to settlement-building and by continuing to build their colonies on Arab land. His special envoy is bluntly told by the Israelis that an Arab-Israel peace will take "many years". Now he wants the Palestinians to talk peace to Israel without conditions. He put pressure on the Palestinian leader to throw away the opportunity of international scrutiny of UN Judge Goldstone's damning indictment of Israeli war crimes in Gaza while his Assistant Secretary of State said that the Goldstone report was "seriously flawed". After breaking his pre-election promise to call the 1915 Armenian massacres by Ottoman Turkey a genocide, he has urged the Armenians to sign a treaty with Turkey, again "without pre-conditions". His army is still facing an insurgency in Iraq. He cannot decide how to win "his" war in Afghanistan. I shall not mention Iran.
And now President Barack Obama has just won the Nobel Peace Prize. After only eight months in office. Not bad. No wonder he said he was "humbled" when told the news. He should have felt humiliated. But perhaps weakness becomes a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Shimon Peres won it, too, and he never won an Israeli election. Yasser Arafat won it. And look what happened to him. For the first time in history, the Norwegian Nobel committee awarded its peace prize to a man who has achieved nothing – in the faint hope that he will do something good in the future. That's how bad things are. That's how explosive the Middle East has become.
Isn't there anyone in the White House to remind Mr Obama that the Israelis have never obliged a US president who asked for an end to the building of colonies for Jews – and Jews only – on Arab land? Bill Clinton demanded this – it was written into the Oslo accords – and the Israelis ignored him. George W Bush demanded an end to the fighting in Jenin nine years ago. The Israelis ignored him. Mr Obama demands a total end to all settlement construction. "They just don't get it, do they?" an Israeli minister – apparently Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – was reported to have said when the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, reiterated her president's words. That's what Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's crackpot foreign minister – he's not as much a crackpot as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but he's getting close – said again on Thursday. "Whoever says it's possible to reach in the coming years a comprehensive agreement," he announced before meeting Mr Obama's benighted and elderly envoy George Mitchell, "... simply doesn't understand the reality."
Across Arabia, needless to say, the Arab potentates continue to shake with fear in their golden minarets. That great Lebanese journalist Samir Kassir – murdered in 2005, quite possibly by Mr Obama's new-found Syrian chums – put it well in one of his last essays. "Undeterred by Egypt since Sadat's peace," he wrote, "convinced of America's unfailing support, guaranteed moral impunity by Europe's bad conscience, and backed by a nuclear arsenal that was acquired with the help of Western powers, and that keeps growing without exciting any comment from the international community, Israel can literally do anything it wants, or is prompted to do by its leaders' fantasies of domination."
So Israel is getting away with it as usual, abusing the distinguished (and Jewish) head of the UN inquiry into Gaza war crimes – which also blamed Hamas – while joining the Americans in further disgracing the craven Palestinian Authority "President" Mahmoud Abbas, who is more interested in maintaining his relations with Washington than with his own Palestinian people. He's even gone back on his word to refuse peace talks until Israel's colonial expansion comes to an end. In a single devastating sentence, that usually mild Jordanian commentator Rami Khouri noted last week that Mr Abbas is "a tragic shell of a man, hollow, politically impotent, backed and respected by nobody". I put "President" Abbas into quotation marks since he now has Mr Ahmadinejad's status in the eyes of his people. Hamas is delighted. Thanks to President Obama.
Oddly, Mr Obama is also humiliating the Armenian president, Serg Sarkisian, by insisting that he talks to his Turkish adversaries without conditions. In the West Bank, you have to forget the Jewish colonies. In Armenia, you have to forget the Turkish murder of one and a half million Armenians in 1915. Mr Obama refused to honour his pre-election promise to recognise the 20th century's first holocaust as a genocide. But if he can't handle the First World War, how can he handle World War Three?
Mr Obama advertised the Afghanistan conflict as the war America had to fight – not that anarchic land of Mesopotamia which Mr Bush rashly invaded. He'd forgotten that Afghanistan was another Bush war; and he even announced that Pakistan was now America's war, too. The White House produced its "Afpak" soundbite. And the drones came in droves over the old Durand Line, to kill the Taliban and a host of innocent civilians. Should Mr Obama concentrate on al-Qa'ida? Or yield to General Stanley McChrystal's Vietnam-style demand for 40,000 more troops? The White House shows the two of them sitting opposite each other, Mr Obama in the smoothie suite, McChrystal in his battledress. The rabbit and the hare.
No way are they going to win. The neocons say that "the graveyard of empire" is a cliché. It is. But it's also true. The Afghan government is totally corrupted; its paid warlords – paid by Karzai and the Americans – ramp up the drugs trade and the fear of Afghan civilians. But it's much bigger than this.
The Indian embassy was bombed again last week. Has Mr Obama any idea why? Does he realise that Washington's decision to support India against Pakistan over Kashmir – symbolised by his appointment of Richard Holbrooke as envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan but with no remit to discuss divided Kashmir – enraged Pakistan. He may want India to balance the power of China (some hope!) but Pakistan's military intelligence realises that the only way of persuading Mr Obama to act fairly over Kashmir – recognising Pakistan's claims as well as India's – is to increase their support for the Taliban. No justice in Kashmir, no security for US troops – or the Indian embassy – in Afghanistan.
Then, after stroking the Iranian pussycat at the Geneva nuclear talks, the US president discovered that the feline was showing its claws again at the end of last week. A Revolutionary Guard commander, an adviser to Supreme Leader Khamenei, warned that Iran would "blow up the heart" of Israel if Israel or the US attacked the Islamic Republic. I doubt it. Blow up Israel and you blow up "Palestine". Iranians – who understand the West much better than we understand them – have another policy in the case of the apocalypse. If the Israelis attack, they may leave Israel alone. They have a plan, I'm told, to target instead only US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their bases in the Gulf and their warships cruising through Hormuz. They would leave Israel alone. Americans would then learn the price of kneeling before their Israeli masters.
For the Iranians know that the US has no stomach for a third war in the Middle East. Which is why Mr Obama has been sending his generals thick and fast to the defence ministry in Tel Aviv to tell the Israelis not to strike at Iran. And why Israel's leaders – including Mr Netanyahu – were blowing the peace pipe all week about the need for international negotiations with Iran. But it raises an interesting question. Is Mr Obama more frightened of Iran's retaliation? Or of its nuclear capabilities? Or more terrified of Israel's possible aggression against Iran?
But, please, no attacks on 10 December. That's when Barack Obama turns up in Oslo to pocket his peace prize – for achievements he has not yet achieved and for dreams that will turn into nightmares.
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Comments
So why is it that once a year our children have to have Holocaust (tm) day that focuses on something that happened an age ago, why no mention of Armenia, Russia, post WWII Germany and Vietnam or latterly Iraq and Palestine?
And isn't it strange that the American's have through either their incompetence, meddling or downright stupidity have killed many times what the Nazi's have yet the Nazi's are the eternal bad guys and we have to endure the pure tripe in being told the Americans are somewhat noble and enlightened superior beings to us all... a load of bollocks to be sure.
The US has lost the plot, it is showing the signs of terminal empire decay and is driving itself into the abyss, with its allies deserting it thick and fast, the latest news is that Japan wants most if not all US troops out of nearly all its bases and a reduced force moved to the southern most facility is indicative that peace prizes or not, the world is heartily sick of America and no amount of smooth presentable Presidents with shiny prizes and medals can change...
America could have learned a lot from the British after it engineering the collapse of the British empire, we laid our empire down and survived intact, America could have done that and retained a great deal of goodwill but instead will collapse like the Soviets and be left with nothing except years of strife and turmoil.
Well, let's try to explain this to you all over again.
The reason why the holocaust occupies such a central position in the consideration of genocides is because of a number of factors.
a) it was committed by one the most supposedly civilised nations in the world.
b) it was the culmination (at that time) of centuries of anti-semitic persecution.
c) it introduced an appalling concept - that whole groups of people should be exterminated because of their race (Jews, gypsies and Slavs), their sexual orientation (homosexuals) or because of they were considered unfit human specimens (because of physical or mental infirmity).
d) it was a virtually industrialised system of mass slaughter as epitomised by the death camps - although many millions died outside of them.
e) The reason why it has a special resonance with Jews is because more than 50% of them were killed (about a third of the world Jewish population) - can you think of any other group of people in the twentieth century who suffered slaughter on such a scale?
The holocaust was never just about Jews. It was a mirror to humanity in that it reflected back on all of us as to how barbaric and cruel we can all be - given the circumstances.
"And isn't it strange that the American's have through either their incompetence, meddling or downright stupidity have killed many times what the Nazi's have yet the Nazi's are the eternal bad guys and we have to endure the pure tripe in being told the Americans are somewhat noble and enlightened superior beings to us all... a load of bollocks to be sure."
I would respectfully suggest that you are the one talking a load of bollocks. The Americans have not killed as many people as the Nazis and certainly not in the period of such a short space of time - the holocaust only got really going in the last two years of the war. Is it any wonder that the Nazis are the 'eternal bad guys'? Start by looking at some of the old film footage of Hitler and his ranting speeches. The ideology alone was quite simply repugnant.
" Does anybody remember the laughter?"
He start with promise to stop settlement in West bank and Jerusalem as to start "peace" with Abass,but when Obama withdrew settlement and kept "peace"?Abass and his co,said will go to USA after being refusing to go!! since PA came we member only "yes sir".Israel chose and train its negotiators from PA.
it is insult to Prize to give it to such achievement!
Obama only opportunistic .
But then I remember Henry Kissinger won for "the 1973 Paris agreement intended to bring about a cease-fire in the Vietnam war and a withdrawal of the American forces". Even the Oscars don't sink that low.
‘I am very disappointed to hear that the Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama.
They say this is for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples, and yet he continues the policy of militarism and occupation of Afghanistan, instead of dialogue and negotiations with all parties to the conflict.
I believe the award is premature.
Furthermore,I believe the Nobel Committee has not met the conditions of Alfred Nobel’s will where he stipulates it is to be awarded to those who work for an end to
militarism and war, and for disarmament. This is not the first time the Nobel Peace Committee in Oslo has ignored the will of Alfred Nobel and acted against the spirit of what the Nobel Peace Prize is all about.
Giving this award to the Leader of the most militarized country in the world, which has taken the human family, against its will, to war will be rightly seen by many people around the world, as a reward for his country’s aggression and domination’.
Has any Imperialist, Colonialist country faced any justice? NO
Hope we are not going to see another extermination. BUT, this time we have to ask why?
HOW THE HELL CAN HE WIN THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE? The Nobel Peace Prize for NO Peace??
I wish people would wake up to the fact that all these Presidents are just figure-head puppets controlled by the likes of Henry Kissinger to carry on there agenda of World "reconstruction". Presidents and MP's come and go, but the agenda will always remain in place and be accomplished.
Headline on presstv, which says it all really.
This is not to say that Obama deserves the peace prize, though as one commenter pointed out, it does put pressure on Obama to provide a peaceful solution. Desperate but overall i would consider it a nobel move to promote nobel intention.
"Isn't there anyone in the White House to remind Mr Obama that the Israelis have never obliged a US president who asked for an end to the building of colonies for Jews – and Jews only – on Arab land?"
let's put aside the fact--or even just call it an argument if you want--that the "arab land" to which mr. fisk refers is actually disputed land. let's instead take mr. fisk's comment for the truth it contains in ripping down the drapes hiding the picture behind the arab bargaining position, which is muslim exclusivity--and use that to bring true peace. based upon mr. fisk's exposure of the exclusivity theorem, true peace will be build as follows:
1. the jews will build no more settlements in the "arab land." in return, all jews, christians, bahai's, zorastrians, and every other belief, not to mention non-believers, get full civil rights in all muslim countries. if a coptic christian wants to be president of egypt for life, let's say, well, get him--or her--on the ticket. synagogues and churches would all be welcome in the open, even in saudi arabia.
2. where would the jews come from to start those synagogues you might wonder? well, that's easy. with complete civil rights, and reparations for the property the various arab governments stole from them by effectively expelling them, the descendants of the jews (or the jews themselves) who had to flee arab lands get to go back and start those synagogues--just before they get someone on the ticket as vice-president in each such land. and they get to go back to the west bank, too, so that places like hebron will end up more or less jewish. the christians more or less kicked out of iraq, the bahai's and zorastrians more or less kicked out of iran, and the christians in lebanon who have suffered at the hands of the muslim majority there, all get to go back and obtain reparations to go with their new full civil rights.
3. speaking of getting "her" on the ticket for president, all muslim women get equal rights with their men.
4. in all arab countries, the children will be taught how so much of the world became muslim--which was NOT through negotiations conducted by the u.n. those children will also be taught how the jews' land was last stolen from them by the romans, and how the jews never gave up their claim to their independent, jewish, state. rather, each year at passover, the jews said, "next year in jerusalem."
5. speaking of the romans, just after mr. fisk resolves the israeli/arab conflict as stated, he will be chosen to host a conference, the purpose of which is to press israeli claims against rome. since the romans as a political force are no longer around, the only place for israeli surcease is the property the romans stole from them. as we all know, the roman colosseum was built with the money looted from the jewish temple. the colosseum will be removed, stone by stone, and moved to israel, the tourist dollars from which will be used to finance a new jewish Temple.
alternatively, i suggest that the very best thinkers in the arab lands who want true peace, get together with the very best thinkers in israel who want true peace, and they all read together about 25 books on the great civilization muslims and jews built together in the iberian peninsula before the time of ferdinand and isabella. although that civilization is not entirely analogous because the muslims had all the official political power, both sides can understand the best in each other and possibly update the model for today's independent countries made up of each other, and once again become a guiding light to the world.
keevan d. morgan, esq., chicago
I think you are right:that started 30 years ago(With plan of Disarming & dismembering to those who may threat Israel security):
THEY were using the "war against Terrorism"
to put end for (freedom,privacy,new security law,interfering with other countries,give Israel the only police in the M.E ;and make chaos in the area to fight each others,after disarming them to keep Israel safe and keep small guns with neighborhood of Israel to dismember them.AS IN (Lebanon,Iraq,Sudan,Yemen;Palestine.....
Q)is that why Israel come in the M.E?
A) No,israel will collect all the cards,to control the World under its own kingdom.
BUT THIS WILL FAIL,Jesus will kill the Beast who support them....Armageddon..!
I have been called lots of things here too, it's all part of live heated debate.
People have called me anti semitic here and I have no idea why.
I have never said anything anti semitic on these boards, so it seems people will just call you names for no good reason and they never respond when, you ask them why.
I was wondering if you could explain the word Semitic to me, it sounds like some kind of explosive, but it seems to mean different things to diferent people.
Is it anti semitic to condem the killing of civilians in Gaza, by the Isralie army?
If so, why?
Seen as we suffer from the same persecution maybe we could share.
Thanks
So what to get this Obama guy? I know. How about an award? Sure he’s hardly been in the job, but he means well. It might even encourage him. Get him to raise his game. Straight in with the carrot, but let him know the global cane is just behind. Go on, can we give it to the President? Go on, say yes.
Now, what were the Norwegians thinking? What were they hoping for? What were they drinking? Or Smoking? This was way off the radar. This was leftfield, and then some. Maybe some Chinese protest group would get a nod. Morgan Tsvangarai was in with a good chance. I mean the man had to work with Robert Mugabe. Talk about supping with the devil? There was a heap of names in the frame. And Obama was in there, in the mix. But then, so was Sarkozy, so what did anybody know?
I mean, the guy had no idea he had it coming. Those crazy Norwegians (They’re in Europe, right?) decided to announce their surprise decision when the man was still in bed. I mean they might well have been up in Norwegia (That’s where they live these Norwegians, right?), but the big guy, el presidente, was still in his pjs, in that big old white building you see in all those films. Must be a bummer living in a house on the tourist trail. I was in charge I’d like a bit more privacy. A fence is only going to do so much good. You need space. Gardens, lawns? Come on, man, I’m the most powerful man in the world. I want to be able to wander for miles in my grounds. We’re talking an estate here. With goddam water. Not some townhouse with iron railings, any Tom, Dick or Lee Harvey Oswald can gawk through. Now make it happen. Pronto. Before I pick up that red phone, and do something we all regret.
So somebody has to get the big guy out of bed to tell him that he’s landed the big one. Domestically, things may not be so hot, but internationally, you’re as hot as it can get. A touch of the Bill Clintons there. Without any messy intern shocker, of course.
He’s even got a cute story about his daughter breaking the news to him. There’s a dog in it somewhere. What’s not to like? But no, some miserable bastards have to start asking questions. Like, why this guy? Like they had to ask? This is Obama. Barack. Mr goddam President. Now show some respect.
Jon Snow’s daily news email tried to fathom out the reasoning in Oslo. Was it because the world was so grateful for the end of Bush? Was it because Obama was black? Surely the first time any man could ask “Is it because I’m black?” in a good way. Search me.
Was it perhaps because he was a Democrat? He’s the fourth US president to land the big peace prize. Before him it was Jimmy Carter. Being a really nice guy. Before him Woodrow Wilson. Another Democrat. Started the League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations. And before him Teddy Roosevelt. That’s Robin Williams for all you kids out there. A republican maybe, but pretty hot when it came to arbitration between nations, rather than simply threatening them and sticking them on scary lists. Former President George W please note. Bush always reminds me of Dean Wormer in Animal House. Coming up to Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, President Ahamdinejad, President al-Assad, Colonel Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein (RIP) in their frat house, and telling them, that unbeknownst to them, they’ve been on super-secret probation. One more stunt, and he’s going to throw the book at them. Sadly it doesn’t make them mend their ways. Instead they decide on one last meaningless gesture, which involves Castro rustling up some old 50s Caddies from the backstreets of Havana. Ah, tough love diplomacy.
Article in full at: www.blogger.com/profile/0217989123778239
The expectations heaped on Obama when he was elected were always unrealistic. Too many people assumed that because he was capable of sonorous and uplifting oratory he would also be able to walk on political water. He can't. For him too, politics is always the art of the possible. But, thus far, I'm still inclined to trust his instincts and his morality, in the international scene, more than I'd trust those of the available alternatives. We were due for some disillusion - no one can live up to such expectations.
I scrolled down the first posts on this thread and was amazed not to see the inevitable frenetic Zionist v. Arabist (or, at least, anti-Zionist) sparring. But I wasn't disappointed - there it was, when I got towards the bottom!
So much splenetic nonsense gets churned out in the course of these exchanges that, mischievously (because, if you didn't laugh, you'd weep), I'll toss in my bit - and await the utterly predictable reactions. Predictable, that is, in terms of their content - of course, the protagonists, if they choose, can always opt for lofty disdain, and ignore it!
Undoubtedly there has been a continuous Jewish presence in what's now Israel, ever since the Israelite tribes first arrived in those parts over 3,000 years ago - creating quite a few holocausts of their own on the the inhabitants of the Canaanite towns, as their scriptures make clear, though indeed they were no different from a lot of other peoples at the time and since. Jews became the predominant group in that land for a long time, but were divided into two kingdoms by their own version of a north/south divide, and the two resultant states were polished off, the north by the Assyrians in 722 BC and the south by the Babylonians in 587 BC.
Apart from a brief period of independence from 135 BC, that was the end of any Jewish state until 1948 - for all those centuries, that bit of the world was a part of some alien empire or other. The Jews, of course, were still there, but their constant rebellions narked the Romans to such a degree that they demolished most of Jerusalem after 135 AD and prohibited Jews from living in or around the city that they built to replace it. There was, unsurprisingly, right across this period a lot of Jewish emigration as a result of the disturbances, some forced, but most probably voluntary; and, unlike so many emigrants, Jews tended not to assimilate; many maintained a sense of their own identity, and a form of their own religion - though in the early days, the folks back home sometimes thought it a bit heretical.
So there were still Jews in what the Romans called "Syria Palaestina" instead of "Judaea" - so inventing a new name that's lasted to replace the old one! Just, and, over time increasingly, not so many of them, and utterly uninfluential in an increasingly cosmopolitan country. To complicate things still further, later on a significant proportion of the ethnic Jews who were there weren't Jewish in religion, but Christians. When the Arab Muslim armies finally took Jerusalem from the Byzantine Roman empire in the seventh century AD, it was the Christian bishop who formally surrendered the city to the Caliph.
So Jews were always there. But then, when the invading English were spreading through Britain round about that same time, there were lots of Welsh people living there. In the west along the border, there are still plenty of villages with Welsh place names, and some border people even talk English with a Welsh accent. But, if the UK eventually disintegrates and there's an independent Wales, does that mean that the Welsh can claim Shropshire and Herefordshire, or more, because they were Welsh long ago, and the cultural marks of Welshness are even now discernable?
I just struggle with the Zionist logic here, once you start to apply the same arguments to other situations in the world ...