I have mixed feelings about the angry reaction to Oslo’s decision to bestow its highest honor on President Obama.
On the one hand, I’m very ready for the outrage surrounding the decision to subside. Frankly, it should not come as a surprise. The Nobel Peace Prize hasn’t been about rewarding peace efforts since 1906 (when T. Roosevelt got it). Also, consider this: the committee in 1938 couldn’t decide whether to give it to Hitler or Gandhi. (The Nansen Office of International Refugees got it instead). And then there’s Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter and Henry Kissinger. I really could go on. The choice of Obama may be disappointing, but it’s not outrageous given the larger context of prize recipients.
On the other hand, that much of the resentment being expressed is coming from the president’s (heretofore) strongest supporters is quite gratifying. I’d have expected, for example, a more celebratory tone from the likes of people such as Michael Moore (though he later defaulted on his initial response: “Now earn it!”), but, to my astonishment, a great many progressives have developed something of a spine and have not lost the idealism I thought must by now be absent from their thinking, having voted for and defended his presidency to now. So, all is not lost.
Yet.
I’m not sure if that’s enough, but it’ll do for now.
I’ve been straining for some time today to imagine the experience of being thrown out of a house that’s been home to my family for several decades.
Apparently the two families evicted today were expected to continue paying rent to a Jewish association who has yet to demonstrate the authenticity of the property deeds they were using to collect such payments. The NYT reports that the Israeli court issued eviction notices despite the fact that these deeds might well have been forged in the first place.
Fifty people (19 of them children) out of a home to make room for settlers, who wasted no time claiming the vacated homes. In fact, the Israeli police showed up before dawn to get the eviction underway and allow the settlers to move in.
None of this, needless to say, befits the much-talked about “peace process” (a phrase I’m coming more and more to associate with house demolitions and starving masses). The US response, though it came packaged together with the “international community’s” chorus of condemnations, was an interesting one. It was delivered by State Department spokeswoman Megan Mattson.
”Unilateral actions taken by either party cannot prejudge the outcome of negotiations and will not be recognized by the international community.”
What I find particularly interesting about this response is the implication that there were “sides” represented in yesterday’s gunpoint evictions. As if the two families being forced out onto the streets were, simply by virtue of being Palestinians, to be thought of as some sort of antagonistic Other, an opposing enmity rather than the defenseless victims they were. (Though certainly they’re more inclined to hate their persecutors now).
Mattson’s comments serve to validate my suspicion that the US depends on such manufactured dichotomies in order to sustain its increasingly burdened support of Israel. Should the government actually respond to such blatantly one-sided acts of aggression as they are, without the conventional formula of mutual antagonisms, surely its persistent, unconditional support of Israel would have to be reigned in.
It must then be the goal of conscientious people to break the narrative trappings that give form to the widely held assumptions permeating our society. We can do this by simply making use of the plethora of “raw materials” available to us. There is no shortage videos, photos and other primary source accounts detailing the what takes place in the Palestinian territories everyday.
In the meantime, my thoughts are with the al-Ghawi and al-Hanoun families. May justice be swift.
I was only hoping, for a moment or two, to narrow in on an issue a smidge more important: Obama’s approach to what has been termed “Bush’s wars.” Yes, Obama inherited a mess. The expectation, at least before his election campaign got headlines-significant, was that he would make a serious attempt to clean it up. He has not.
He has, however, attracted a lot of praise lately for simply acknowledging what anyone else who reads already knows: the US is not winning the war in Afghanistan. Another “bold” move Obama is drawing praise for is his mere suggestion that the US military should negotiate with the Taliban, a suggestion that might seem a lot more original had it not followed so logically from the cause of the aforementioned acknowledgment (also had it not already been the conclusion of Nir Rosen’s excellent piece in the Rolling Stone late last year).
Regardless, even if Obama’s “pragmatism” wins out and he recognizes the only hope of thwarting the empire’s military demise in Afghanistan and Pakistan is pretty much to plead with the area’s real influence (i.e. the Taliban) not to fight us (amusingly enough what Petraeus calls implementing the same successful strategies as Iraq which involved the US paying members of the Sunni Awakening movement not to kill US troops). Like the Awakening in Iraq, the Taliban likely knows it has the US in a position to throw assloads of cash its way.
But painfully obvious assessments aside, reasonable people can appreciate that at least President Obama is grounded enough (again, compared to Bush-McCain, too for that matter) to abandon the power projection game in the interest of preserving what little credibility the US has to work with. Power projection only works when your audience is convinced.
The problem is that, while this acknowledgment is a significant gesture coming from the world’s self-proclaimed leader, its meaning is lost in the vastly more significant gesture of increasing troop levels, which to Afghans means more death and destruction. I’m sure Obama’s engineers of “Afpak” (so cute) are orchestrating another “extremist outreach” to coincide with increases in troop levels, so that whatever perceptible reduction in violence results, the Obama administration, like its predecessor, can enjoy a chorus of cheers in the US press, falsely attributing the hard-won appearance of peace to his administration’s military prowess.
Really?
I’d have guessed that your last resort-you know, something you might fling at me from a sort of panicked desperation with absolutely nothing left to fall back on.
The obviousness (bordering on sheer crudity) of that statement notwithstanding, I think I can understand why you said it. You said it because you supported Barack Obama and shooed obnoxious naysayers (i.e. Nader or McKinney supporters) like me aside. You were so confident in your certainty that Barack Obama was it; he had but to cross the threshold of inauguration and poof! out would come that progressive populist we all knew he was.
And now, faced with the sobering realization that the wink-wink-nudge-nudge he was casting was actually directed at the row of casually dressed CEOs sitting in front of you, you (correctly) perceive that the only remaining rationalization at your disposal is “well, he’s better than BUSH!”
This, you were hoping, would perhaps conjure up an image of Harvard’s finest buffoon hunched over the podium, stumbling his way through yet another yarn about dangerous weapons, freedom-haters and/or would-be Daddy assassins. The jarring contrast produced as a result of this juxtaposition, I take it, was supposed to check my ingratitude and nurse my wound of resentment toward failed (perfectly reasonable) expectations back to a manageable and impotent sigh.
Very well. I never argued otherwise, but you can have it. It’s yours. I’ll even second it.
He’s better than Bush.
The sound of Obama’s voice is far more soothing and his sentences better constructed/executed than that of his predecessor; he’s clearly the better orator.
He’s also better read on matters of substance like-I don’t know-the world? (I’m recalling, specifically, his reading preference of Fareed Zakaria versus Bush’s choice of Bernie Goldberg) and seems to know how to get along with the governments of other countries (minus Karzai in Afghanistan, whose outspoken criticism of Obama’s “Predator” drone attack murders could scarcely be tolerated, and Hamas, of course).
Obama’s tech savvy crew blogs, tweets and addresses the nation on YouTube.
And don’t get me started on the new website. It is so much more chic and better designed than it’s ever been. His inspired choice of fonts alone (what is that, “Perpetua Titling MT” with “Snell Roundhand” and, a classic, “Times New Roman”?) is almost enough to win my support for another term. Obama is without a doubt the more skilled typeface rhetorician.
I’ve clearly given you the wrong impression if you thought my concern was how Obama compares to Bush, superficially.
“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle-be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.”
- Mark Twain, from “The War Prayer”
