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Published on Friday, October 9, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize: OK, He’s A Nice Guy, But …

by Andy Worthington
Is it really appropriate for the Nobel Peace Prize — granted “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” — to be given to a man who, as Commander-in-Chief, is still presiding over two wars, in which, as the announcement was made, civilians may well have been dying as the result of his orders?

Is it really appropriate for the Nobel Peace Prize to be given to a man who would rather look forward than backwards when it comes to decisions, taken at the highest levels of the previous administration, to turn America from a country that upheld the universal torture ban into a country that sought to redefine torture so that it could torture “high-value detainees” in a network of secret prisons around the world?

Is it really appropriate for the Nobel Peace Prize to be given to a man who, although he ordered the closure of Guantánamo and recognizes that it “set back the moral authority” that, in his opinion, “is America’s strongest currency in the world,” and also that it “became a symbol that helped al-Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause,” endorses indefinite detention without charge or trial for some of the 221 prisoners still held in the prison?

Is it really appropriate for the Nobel Peace Prize to be given to a man who, through the Justice Department, is appealing a ruling extending the habeas corpus rights granted by the Supreme Court to the prisoners at Guantánamo to foreign prisoners seized in other countries and “rendered” to the US prison at Bagram airbase — where some of these men have been held for six years — even though the judge ruled that “the detainees themselves as well as the rationale for detention are essentially the same”?

Is it really appropriate to give the Nobel Peace Prize to a man who, although he revoked some of the Bush administration’s vilest executive orders and swore to uphold the universal torture ban, appears to be actively involved in the rendition of prisoners to the US prison at Bagram airbase?

Is it really appropriate for the Nobel Peace Prize to be given to a man who, although professing his admiration for the Geneva Conventions, has chosen to introduce Guantánamo-style reviews for the 600 or so Afghan prisoners held at Bagram, rather than the competent tribunals stipulated in Article 5 of the Geneva Conventions, and who, as a result, appears to be endorsing the Bush administration’s unilateral rewriting of the Conventions?

In conclusion, although I realize that less deserving men have been given the Nobel Peace Prize in previous years — Henry Kissinger, anyone? — and although I reiterate that Barack Obama seems to be a nice guy, and that his election victory last November lifted a cloud of tyranny from the United States, I also have to note another ironic subtext to the award: that it will, sadly, serve only to inflame the rabid wing of the Republican party, which is predisposed to believe a Democratic President is soft on national security issues, and who would only have respect for the Nobel Committee if it introduced a Nobel War Prize and handed it to Dick Cheney.

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