‘’ So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace” Obama said.
In fact, the very nature of the pacifism theory, which supposed to be adopted by the Norwegian Nobel Peace committee, adopts nonviolence struggle and rejects the just war tradition as whole and it dismisses any attempt to justify the war morally.
Still, however, the US wars on Iraq and Afghanistan do not fulfill some of the basic criteria of just war theory like having right intention, using proportional force and the use of force as a last resort. It is very known by now that the war on Iraq did not have right intention as it has hidden agenda and the issue of weapons of mass destruction was fabricated. Moreover, the US violated the international law and used force against Iraq in the time when there was intense diplomatic efforts to avoid the war which means the resort to war cannot be justified. Apart from that, the US troops used ‘’nonproportional” force and banned weapons like white phosphorous in Iraq and Afghanistan, causing mass killing of civilians and huge devastations.
One must also note here that Obama’s speech in the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony revealed high level of hypocrisy. While he mentioned countries that violated the international law, he did not refer to Israel which, according to several human right watch organizations violated the international law many times. While Obama referred to the persecutions in places like Zimbabwe and Burma, the Israeli occupation of Palestinians was not worthy crime for him to cite in his speech. If anything must be said here, it would be that these double standards of president Obama would make the dreams about peace go with winds.
In fact, The Norwegian Nobel committee dropped a thunderbolt on the world, when it awarded President Barack Obama the world’s foremost peace prize as many wondered what he had contributed to the peace. In fact, it is ironic and Scandalous that while Obama’s army is occupying Afghanistan and Iraq; the Nobel committee decided creatively that he is the year’s man of peace.
“His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.” The Norwegian committee said in a statement.
In the midst of the praising and criticism of the Nobel committee decision, the blood of the hundred innocents who were murdered by the Obama’s diplomatic army in Afghanistan would drag the Nobel Peace Prize onto the court of ethics and wipe any beautiful trace of the peace award.
For the sake of the politicized objectivity, nothing more, one must acknowledge that Obama declared many sugary and peacefully sounded statements, but sadly his guns speak louder than his rhetoric. The US tanks roam Baghdad and Kabul’s streets and the aircrafts fly over there according to Obama’s orders, the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner. President Barack Obama has become the director of the Afghani tragedy. Regarding the so-called Israeli-Palestine conflict, Obama has yet to force Israel to end up its brutal occupation. As a matter of fact, his efforts towards complicating the problem are more serious than his peace initiatives as the US administration gives Israeli milliards every year that are used to expel Palestinians out of their homes and build Jewish settlements on Palestinian land in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. Needless to mention, the US supplies Israel with highly sophisticated weapons that are dedicated to massacre Palestinians and destroy their properties.
Nevertheless, no one has a right to be surprised as it has become an established fact that the Nobel Peace Prize has been politicized and diverted away from its honorable goal. Struggling and fighting against the Nazi oppression and against the Soviet dictatorship and being anti-Iranian and Chinese’ regimes are highly appreciated in the Nobel academia. On the other hand, the struggle against the Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestine has not perceived as an act of lauding by the Nobel Peace committee. For example, not exclusively, even though the holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel supported the Israeli occupational policy, but he won Nobel Prize for Peace in 1986 on the basis of that he is a “messenger to mankind” advocating the rights of oppressed people in different parts of the world but of course not in Palestine. it seems that the struggle for civil rights and peace has been selectively awarded.
In fact, it is not that the Nobel Peace Prize has been only politicized; but unfortunately, it was awarded to murderers and war criminals several times. The former American foreign minister Henry Kissinger, who orchestrated and institutionalized the war crimes in Vietnam, is a glaring instance for that. The wining of three former Israeli prime ministers of the prize, namely Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Menachem Begin formed other shameful cases in the history of Nobel Peace Prize as they chaired an occupational force and committed endless massacres against Palestinian people. Shimon Perez is the founder of the Israeli nuclear weaponry and he was the author of Qana massacre which resulted in killing 106 Lebanese civilians when the Israeli aircrafts shelled a UN compound south Lebanon in 1996. With regard to Yitzhak Rabin, apart from his direct participation in 1948 in expelling Palestinians out of their homes in Jerusalem, he was famous internationally as a ‘’bone broker” of the Palestinians youth who demonstrated against the Israeli occupation in the first intifada between 1988-1992. It is worthy of notice that Menachem Begin, the 1978 winner of the Swedish Nobel Peace Prize, who partook in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and was wanted to the British authority, was involved in assassinating the Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadotte in 1948.
Alfred Nobel wanted his prize to be human-oriented after the catastrophic usage of the dynamite which he invented. However it is pity that his will is not respected and the prize which bears his name is biased. Probably Nobel is turning over in his grave every year the prize is announced