War is Peace…Killing is Saving…Wrong is Right…
By: Al Soci
Issue date: 12/14/09 Section: News
President Obama's "Nobel Peace Prize" speech was used predictably as an opportunity to advance and support war: it reflects the growing US culture of militarism. Those in the US who believed Obama's "Hope and Change" campaign-slogan failed to understand the dominant institutional imperatives and systemic structures of US economic and political power that shape policies and condition any president's decisions. War is insane and deadly for the victims; the victimizers make out like the bandits they are. Obama is mostly a "pawn in their game."
The Nobel committee, one assumes, expected the "Peace Prize" to encourage a US move away from military aggression, but that too was a deeply uninformed and na've expectation.
US power (as distinguished from the people), since before the end of WWII has been bent on global domination (see Imperial Brain Trust, by Shoup and Minter), and as a consequence has been engaged in direct or indirect forms of military aggression nearly 100% of the time since 1950 (i.e. regularly undermining the fundamental tenet of the UN Charter and thus of US law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution - "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war" and to "protect human rights").
Furthermore, the Pentagon budget (more than $1 trillion per year) represents roughly 50% of yearly federal discretionary spending, the US is the only country in the world with military bases dotting the global landscape (more than 700 bases located in more than 100 countries), and the number of people killed as a consequence of US direct and indirect military violence surely totals more than 10 million since 1950 (see Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Congo, Indonesia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Somalia, Angola, Mozambique, Iraq, Haiti, Chile, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, etc, etc.).
We arrived years ago in the Orwellian nightmare world where "war is peace." Obama is simply confirming, again, the perverse reality. To emphasize the US commitment to the "war is peace" mantra, Obama announced 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan two weeks prior to the "Peace Prize" speech. In other words, he proclaimed an escalation of the illegal US invasion (now opposed by most US citizens, and always opposed by large majorities across the world).
The Nobel committee, one assumes, expected the "Peace Prize" to encourage a US move away from military aggression, but that too was a deeply uninformed and na've expectation.
US power (as distinguished from the people), since before the end of WWII has been bent on global domination (see Imperial Brain Trust, by Shoup and Minter), and as a consequence has been engaged in direct or indirect forms of military aggression nearly 100% of the time since 1950 (i.e. regularly undermining the fundamental tenet of the UN Charter and thus of US law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution - "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war" and to "protect human rights").
Furthermore, the Pentagon budget (more than $1 trillion per year) represents roughly 50% of yearly federal discretionary spending, the US is the only country in the world with military bases dotting the global landscape (more than 700 bases located in more than 100 countries), and the number of people killed as a consequence of US direct and indirect military violence surely totals more than 10 million since 1950 (see Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Congo, Indonesia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Somalia, Angola, Mozambique, Iraq, Haiti, Chile, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, etc, etc.).
We arrived years ago in the Orwellian nightmare world where "war is peace." Obama is simply confirming, again, the perverse reality. To emphasize the US commitment to the "war is peace" mantra, Obama announced 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan two weeks prior to the "Peace Prize" speech. In other words, he proclaimed an escalation of the illegal US invasion (now opposed by most US citizens, and always opposed by large majorities across the world).