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Cloud of Witnesses
January 28, 2013 | 30 comments
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Obama’s Gettysburg Address?
December 20, 2012 | 72 comments
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Glamour of Evil or Glimmer of Hope?
May 2, 2012 | 47 comments
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Catch-22 Revisited
February 24, 2012 | 70 comments
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Pilgrims and Indians and the Burden of History
November 22, 2011 | 37 comments
The Obama Watch
Cheapening the Peace Prize Eight Days a Week
Our president-laureate loves to wage war on disfavored groups of citizens.
The deliberately vague language of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 that cited newly elected President Barack Obama for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” was notable for having confused words with deeds, but it has fared even more poorly in the three years since, because we now know that President Obama collects wars the way his wife collects taxpayer-funded vacations. Fortunately for the reputations of the five Norwegians on the Peace Prize committee and anyone not directly affected by what was described as “kinetic military action” against Libya, President Obama starts more wars with domestic opponents than with foreign ones. Republican lawmakers get less of a hearing from this president than foreign dignitaries do.
Ordering American troops home from Iraq was praiseworthy but inevitable. Elsewhere in the same region, President Obama’s use of drone aircraft against enemy combatants has been more aggressive than anything his predecessor authorized, and the ongoing drawdown of American forces in Afghanistan has been complicated by rules of engagement that prolong war rather than shortening it. As many people have pointed out but Daniel Greenfield was most eloquent in explaining, “The American soldier in the ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] is expected to patrol and retreat, to smile and reach out to the Afghans while they shoot him in the back.” American sensitivity to Muslim concerns is such that just this past week, U.S. Marines in Afghanistan who gathered to listen to remarks by the Secretary of Defense were given an unprecedented order to disarm themselves for that meeting, presumably as a show of solidarity with Afghan allies who already abide by that rule.
Special Forces operators have fewer constraints than other soldiers do, but because the president neither understands the U.S. military nor expects a significant number of votes from the people who serve in it, their successful missions are publicized in something alarmingly close to real time, with an eye on news cycle management rather than operational security. Any shooting war that Americans fight now brings a cold war piggybacking with it, because Barack Obama disdains warriors, even — or perhaps especially — those warriors under his command. Michelle Obama, herself leading a “war on childhood obesity,” has tried to be sensitive to military families, but the only martial vocabulary her husband can muster is for cameras or campaign staffers, as when saying he wants to know “whose ass to kick,” or asking fellow Democrats to “get in your neighbor’s faces.”
In short, Barack Obama wages war on disfavored groups of citizens, and on the English language. He is an artful dodger, as even his fans acknowledge, and never more likely to lie than after saying “Let me be clear.” As the Catholic bishops of America have belatedly learned, his definition of “accommodation,” like his definition of “compromise,” amounts to “I won.” The president says “nuclear” without a hitch, but talks of “Pakistan” as though faculty lounge chitchat had placed an “o” in that country’s name. In meetings with the prime minister of Israel, “I’ve got your back” means “Don’t do anything that might mess up my bid for re-election.” More significantly, Barack Obama’s blame diffusion strategy has been honed to perfection: he uses first person plural to speak of anything distressing, and first person singular everywhere else. Thus, “we learned that mortgages had been sold to people who couldn’t afford or understand them,” but “I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.”
What separates war in the context of what this essay asserts from the ordinary arguments with opponents that are the bread and butter of any politician’s career is its sustained character and its willingness to commandeer several of the resources available to the man behind the world’s best-known “bully pulpit.” In describing this president as “unflappable,” much of the press corps missed the obvious point that Barack Obama is unflappable around people who agree with him, and remarkably bellicose otherwise.
Barack Obama and his surrogates have picked fights with Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona and with teachers striving to educate minority students, but neither presidential petulance on the tarmac in front of Air Force One nor fretting about the suspension rates of African-American children meets the definition of “war.” On the other hand, frequent reference to the failings of the previous administration and repeated attempts to redefine the First Amendment’s “free exercise” clause are markers that tell us a lot. Bob Woodward’s book on Obama’s wars was not as comprehensive as it could have been.
No one accusing our current president of war-mongering could fail to mention his institutionalized harassment of the separation of powers doctrine that undergirds our Constitution and shaped the debate over its ratification. On the evidence of edicts from the HHS, the IRS, the USDA, the EPA, and the Oval Office itself, Barack Obama seems more comfortable with imperial power than with running one of three coequal branches of federal government. That those edicts are supposed to promote such goods as health care, licensing, nutritious food, and clean air matters not at all when they also subvert due process and legislative review to thwart conscience, kill jobs, injure freedoms, and reward particular industries. That assessment might sound harsh, but it echoes the judgment of no fewer than 29 state attorneys general, all of whom are currently suing the federal government for overstepping its bounds.
Many people remember that Bill Clinton maintained a “war room” when he was president, yet strategizing there had mostly to do with finding ways for Clinton to finesse his way past recurring “bimbo eruptions.” President Obama’s grievance-based and entitlement-driven ire is more generalized than anything that angered his predecessors, which is why he skipped the relative simplicity of writing up an Enemies List or attempting to pack the Supreme Court, and went straight to the deployment of “Truth Teams.” That is the kind of thing that happens when you have a hazy memory of wars being won “by generals who get there first with the most,” but it drags the Oval Office into ward-level politics while shaming Peace Prize grandees and anyone else wide-eyed enough to believe that this president is above the fray.
About the Author
Patrick O’Hannigan is a writer in North Carolina.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (18) | Leave a comment
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Timothy L. Pennell| 3.16.12 @ 7:20AM
First of all, to be perfectly honest, the Muslim has not Cheapened the Nobel Peace Prize. You cannot "Cheapen something that's already Worthless". That's like saying that the "Pulitzer" has been Cheapened. President Soetoro was the logical choice for the LEFT'S Political Oscar, following a long line of Deserved Champions of PEACE.
Who can deny that Yasser Arafat was nothing less than a beam of light, when it came to Peace? I remember how Peaceful it was in MUNICH, when the Israeli Olympic Team was murdered by this Man of Peace' little group. I remember how Peaceful the Achille Lauro was, when his buddies took over that ship, and how Peaceful Mr. Klinghoffer was, after being taken out of his Wheelchair, and thrown in to the Sea. All of the Hijackings, over the years. All of the Intifadas. All of the Car Bombings and Suicide Attacks on School Buses and Weddings.
Our previous Worst President Ever received a Peace Prize. I can't imagine why, except that he is an Old Friend of the late Yasser, and a Fellow member of the: "I hate those MFing Jews Club".
Al Gore has one. (No. Not for inventing the Internet.) Like Carter, this recipient is a Mystery. Unless one wins a Peace Prize for Losing a Presidential Election because you LOST YOUR OWN STATE, I don't understand how he got one. I remember that a woman was nominated that year, who had Rescued Hundreds of Children from the Warsaw Ghettos, right under the watchful eyes of George Soros' Nazi Buddies. She risked her life, so that these Children could live. Although............those were JEWS she was saving. Hmmmmm. (I'm detecting a pattern.)
Which brings us full circle. The Muslim Boy, born to a Muslim Father, raised in the Muslim Schools and Mosques of Indonesia, and surrounded by ANTI-SEMITES his Entire Life: His Mother/Father/Step Father/Grandparents/1st Mentor/2nd Mentor/Ayers/Dohrn/Farrakhan/Rashidi/Black Panthers/Valerie Jarrett/Van Jones, and on and on and on.
If they wanted to be honest, they would shape the Prize in to a figure of an Emaciated Jew from the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, and be done with it.
Like I said: "It's just like a PULITZER".
Alan Brooks | 3.17.12 @ 3:31PM
Give Obama a big trophy for merely preventing McCain ("dickweed", "douchebag", Ann Coulter called him) from being elected in '08.
Appleby| 3.16.12 @ 7:31AM
The only consolation as Obama runs riot with a shredding machine through the American Government is that once he's back in Private Life ("back" in it? Pitchforked into it for the first time, maybe), the Sixties will finally be over. Now the rest of you know what we who went to college with these twerps knew in 1968, and I hope the lesson will be seared deeply enough to keep it from escaping your notice again.
Dick Nome| 3.16.12 @ 8:13AM
If he gets re-elected, the 60's radical chic will be the new norm and won't go away without a long struggle.
Louis Jenkins| 3.16.12 @ 9:54AM
A Nobel Peace Prize? It's a worthless piece of junk. Even more so now that Obama has one. I thought he hang it around his neck using a gold chain while he sings to the audience. Baby needs a new pair of shoes.
Al Adab| 3.16.12 @ 9:54AM
The Nobel Peace Prize has been nothing but a political play at least since it was not awarded the year President Nixon was a nominee and was split the following year between Kissenger and Le Duc Tho. Then it was awarded to Yassir Arafat. Great peacemakers those people were. It is a money award for political hacks like Gore, nothing More.
Bob| 3.16.12 @ 10:06AM
I wonder how the Nobel Peace Prize people feel that the man to whom they gave the "peace" price has to be reminded by Congress that committing troops to war without the authorization of Congress is an impeachable offense.
FiddlerBob| 3.16.12 @ 12:42PM
It probably doesn't bother them at all. You can safely bet that the Nobel committee cares less about our Constitution and Rule of Law than the man who currently usurps our highest office.
Stan REdmond| 3.16.12 @ 3:54PM
They didn't care about giving it the inventor of the suicide vest.
Dana Brigham| 3.16.12 @ 11:02AM
Your writing clearly shows that BHO defines truth differently than those he is addressing. Langer wrote "The Mind of Hitler" after a full psycho evaluation. Someone should do that on BHO after studying two writings mostly unknown to the contemporary writer:
Few today recognize the mechanics of communism as reference by:
1) Whittaker Chambers book “Witness”
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/p.....etter.html
2) Dr Fred Schwartz “You can trust the communists”
http://www.schwarzreport.org/r.....communists
That defines the real war.
Thanks
Bob K.| 3.17.12 @ 9:50PM
The Langer book is a poor analogy and has received serious historical criticism. Whether anyone can receive a full psycho evaluation without being examined in person is open to question. This from the eminent historian of Hitler, John Lukacs:
"This is not the place to argue against, or even to sum up, the essential and, yes, shortsighted faults of Freudianism, save to say that if their application to the diagnosis and the therapy of living human beings is often questionable, this must be even more so when it comes to the application of psychoanalysis to the dead. I cannot avoid at least a passing observation about the intellectual climate of the 1960's when there arose a swelling of neo-Marxist and neo-Freudian interpretations across the academic landscape. In the American historical profession, this swelling arose after December 1958, when the respected senior diplomatic historian William L. Langer of Harvard entitled his presidential address to the American Historical Association "The Next Assignment," exhorting his fellow historians to follow the "speculative audacity of the natural scientists" and proceed "to the urgently needed deepening of our historical understanding through the concepts" of modern Freudian psychoanalysis. And while it is not legitimate for historians, including myself, to attribute motives to their colleagues, a proper indication of their purposes is valid."
Professor John Lukacs; "The Hitler of History" pp. 24-25. 1997 Vintage Books. Random House.
Lukacs notes that Walter Langer, who was William Langer's brother asserted this application of psychoanalysis to Hitler in his book written in 1971 long after Hitler was dead. It was based on a "rehash of a psychological projection of Hitler Langer had constructed in 1943 in behalf of the OSS (much or the material culled from an interview with the then interned Stephanie Hohenlohe in Texas).
p. 25 "The Hitler of History." Op. cit.
Occam's Tool| 1.29.13 @ 12:03AM
Unless I have seen the patient in person, I do not. Ican extrapolate from data and give initial admission orders, but I want to see the aptient in person.
To do the type of evaluation that you folks are suggesting above would require family interviews, co-worker interviews, etc.I would need a 360 vview of the patient. This is commonly not done, as I usually am interested in enough information to figure out what the life threatening issues are and treat them in the short stay hospitalization which is what I usually get nowadays.
In looking at Obama, it is best to consider him a black box, and merely work off his actions and the known history of those he surrounds himself with.
It paints a dark picture all on its own.
Occam's Tool| 1.29.13 @ 12:04AM
Eeps. "I can," "the patient."
William L. Gensert| 3.16.12 @ 12:56PM
In Afghanistan, he changed the rules of engagement, preventing American soldiers from firing first, or returning fire against positions where civilians might be present. Fighting a war and not being able to shoot first or fire back has increased casualties. Does our President believe American lives are worth less than other lives? Withdrawing our troops early, he is well on his way to giving Afghanistan back to the Taliban -- another victory for Barack.
Read more of my article: http://www.americanthinker.com.....z1pIZGmCkN
The American Spectator | 3.16.12 @ 2:50PM
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Radioman777| 3.17.12 @ 7:22PM
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, a Nobel Prize might have actually been worth something, but no longer. That the zero was awarded one for doing exactly... nothing at all, should tell you something about what it is and isn't. It is an award for politically correct marxists and isn't based on any sort of merit whatsoever. That Stephen Chu, PhD, was awarded one is but further proof of its utter worthlessness. But, how fitting to award a worthless prize to worthless people to pump up their already massive egos to superhuman proportions. Then, with all the new found cred they've just gotten, they can use it to run all over the rest of us, who might be smarter and more practical, but not as politically connected.
ebonystone| 3.17.12 @ 11:41PM
My acceptance speech at the next Peace Prize awards ceremony:
"Your Majesty, honored members of the Nobel panel, ladies and gentlemen:
"When I was first informed that I was to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for 201X, two questions came immediately to my mind:
[1] Was I being insulted?, and
[2] Should I accept the award?
I asked myself the first because what else could a prize awarded to such murderers as Le Duc Tho and Yasser Arafat, and such preposterous phonies and liars as Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, and B. Hussein Obama, be but an insult? Surely being included in their company was no compliment.
With that in mind, I considered my second question to myself. I was tempted to refuse the award, not wanting my good name smeared by association with previous scoundrel-winners. But then I decided that I should accept, on the basis that I could do more good with the million-plus dollars than the Nobel Committee could. So my answer to each question was 'Yes'. I accept. Thank you, and good night.
POST American| 3.19.12 @ 12:33AM
INFORMED VOICES
"The US has one final task before
its own takedown is completed and
the Globalists roll in RED China as
'Model for the World' --and 'World
Enforcer' ---and that's to 'bring in'
(ie pornography/ USURY and EUGENICS)
the recalcitrant middle east."
Elsewhere
"Giving Obama the 'peace prize' was
a perfect move ----so now every war
he authorizes ---is a 'peace initiative'."
And most recently
"---And now we get 'Obama CAN SING'
--in other words he wants to be 'cool'
again. ----And that's just what a PSYCHOPATH
would do---"
FINALLY AGAIN
"We are living in a psychopathic
system. It's given us a psychopathic
culture that celebrates and promotes
psychopaths ---and directs all human
enterprise toward its psychopathic
agenda. WE LIVE in a PSYCHOPATHIC
SIS---STEM ---RUN BY PSYCHOPATHS."