Friday, October 09, 2009
Obama's Delusional Nobel
Given the difficulty of detaining high-value terrorists in the United States, Cuba, Afghanistan, black sites or foreign countries, another possibility exists.The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama has been widely described as "aspirational." It may be, however, that delusional is a more apt description in light of Obama's campaign promises and track record as president. Consider the following partial list:
"To be perfectly blunt, I don't think that they'll pick them up at all," says Ken Anderson of the Hoover Institution and American University's Washington College of Law, who has written about these issues. "I think that we've actually allowed the courts to arrange the incentives to kill rather than capture."
Many national security experts interviewed for this story agree that it has become so hard for the U.S. to detain people that in many instances, the U.S. government is killing them instead.
Last month, American forces staged a raid on a car in Somalia. The man inside the car was a suspected terrorist on the FBI's most wanted list. American troops did not seize him. Instead, helicopters fired on the car, and commandos retrieved his body.
- Candidate Obama pledged to expand the combat forces of the Marines and Army
- Candidate Obama pledged to escalate the war in Afghanistan
- President Obama authorized killer drone attacks in Pakistan in his very first week in office
- President Obama has not ended the US occupation of Iraq
- President Obama has not closed the Guantanamo prison
- President Obama has not ended the little discussed but deadly American military intervention in Somalia
- President Obama has been utterly unable to go beyond tepid, hollow rhetoric concerning murderous US-backed Israel
- President Obama has left "all options on the table" when it comes to US arm-twisting vis-a-vis Iran
See also: "Professor Hakimi's Solution to Gitmo"
Labels: Afghanistan, drones, Empire, Iran, Iraq, Israel, militarism, Obama, Somalia, United States, War