Political Cortex: Where Was Peace in Obama's Nobel Peace Prize Speech?

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Where Was Peace in Obama's Nobel Peace Prize Speech?

By Bill Hare
12/11/2009 08:37:04 PM EST

Many throughout the world were highly stunned when President Obama was selected for the Nobel Peace Prize since he had just taken office and had scant time to deal with global issues.

Considering the foregoing, it would seem that Obama should have delivered a speech emphasizing a sturdy global effort to make the achievement of peace a front burner imperative. Instead what he delivered was a speech defending the concept of "just wars."

Somewhere in the great beyond George Orwell could be expected to exclaim, "This is what '1984' was all about. Peace and war are used interchangeably." In this instance the "1984" concept elucidated so cleverly by Orwell was exemplified by Obama in his effort to sell the concept of "just wars" as means of sustaining peace.

The speech regrettably carried the familiar ring of the New World Order and President George Herbert Walker Bush justifying the Gulf War when Mikhail Gorbachev and others in the world community sought diplomacy short of war.

When the elder Bush's son was asked by Sweden's UN appointed weapons inspect Hans Blix and France's President Jacques Chirac to delay the launching of the Iraq War until assertions of Saddam Hussein's possession of alleged "weapons of mass destruction" could be more thoroughly investigated, we recall the response of the bellicose propaganda machine.

Sweden was maligned as a "nation of wimps" while France was belittled by the Fox-Limbaugh mentality through being referred to as "a nation of quiche eaters" while "freedom fries" were created. Such was the rebuttal to a request bearing the ultimate fruit of corroboration through non-existence.

In the manner of George W. Bush, Obama once more buttressed his case for a continuing Afghanistan War on the rationale of responding to the Al Qaeda terrorists who launched the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Also, as in the case of Bush, Obama ignores the fact that an independent investigation has never been conducted concerning 9/11.

Questions concerning the official account of the 9/11 Commission abound in a similar fashion to those regarding the conclusions of the Warren Commission concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Consider one question alone, an issue that was never resolved by the official 9/11 Commission consisting of political insiders with the exception of Max Cleland. What happened following the 9/11 attacks?

As Michael Moore and others have pointed out, members of the family of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden were allowed quick passage out of the United States.

This act was comparable to allowing the family of Timothy McVeigh passage out of the country following the Oklahoma City bombings. Could this act be in any way related to Bush family oil interests and the Carlyle Group's deep and remunerative connection to Saudi Arabia?

This is just one of many questions needing to be resolved about 9/11. This failure of resolution allows 9/11 and all of its potential ramifications to worsen in the manner of a festering wound on the global body politic.

The point that needs to be emphatically made to President Obama is, "Sir, this equation that you and your predecessor Bush constantly make between 9/11 and the need to be in Afghanistan needs to be supported with more than an ipso facto declaration without an underlying support base."