Just wondering what you all think about this. Obama defends US wars as he accepts peace prize
Just nine days after ordering 30,000 more U.S. troops into battle in Afghanistan, Obama delivered a Nobel acceptance speech that he saw as a treatise on war’s use and prevention. He crafted much of the address himself and the scholarly remarks — at about 4,000 words — were nearly twice as long as his inaugural address.
In them, Obama refused to renounce war for his nation or under his leadership, saying defiantly that “I face the world as it is” and that he is obliged to protect and defend the United States.
“A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaida’s leaders to lay down their arms,” Obama said. “To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism, it is a recognition of history.”
The president laid out the circumstances where war is justified — in self-defense, to come to the aid of an invaded nation and on humanitarian grounds, such as when civilians are slaughtered by their own government or a civil war threatens to engulf an entire region.
“The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it,” he said.
His winning the peace prize while at the same time ordering more troops to Afghanistan has riled anti-war activists:
The president’s motorcade arrived at Oslo’s high-rise government complex for Obama’s meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg as a few dozen anti-war protesters gathered behind wire fences nearby. Dressed in black hoods and waving banners, the demonstrators banged drums and chanted anti-war slogans. “The Afghan people are paying the price,” some shouted.
Greenpeace and anti-war activists planned larger demonstrations later that were expected to draw several thousand people. Protesters have plastered posters around the city, featuring an Obama campaign poster altered with skepticism to say, “Change?”
The debate at home over his Afghanistan decision also followed the president here. He told reporters that that the July 2011 date he set for the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan to begin will not slip — but that the pace of the full drawdown will be gradual and conditions-based.
I don’t like to see more of our young men go to war. But at the same time we must not sit back and let terrorists build their forces and plot and plan to murder mass numbers of innocent people either. War is sometimes necessary for peace.
3 comments:
I had a very difficult time listening to his Nobel acceptance speech. Frankly, I find it appalling that they would honor someone who is in the midst of escalating a war. Portions of his speech struck me as extremely Bush-like, and I found it fairly sickening.
"War is sometimes necessary for peace".... is kind of like saying that screwing is necessary for virginity.
jphysics101, not a good comparison. Screwing and virginity are a whole different topic. An analogy about sex is not the same as taking human lives, disrupting the peace and security of others, threatening other nations, and generally being disruptive to peaceful existence on our planet.
When there are those who are insistent on disrupting the peace, slaughtering others while blowing themselves up in the process with no regard for innocent lives of even their own people, then yes...war is sometimes necessary to bring about peace. It's just a cruel fact of human existence on this crazy ass planet.
My post is that it was idiotic to give a peace prize to a person who is perpetuating war. And it was hypocritical for him to accept an award for his mere intentions. He hasn't come anywhere near to bringing about peace anywhere.
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