EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Halfway Through Term, Obama Still Hasn’t Earned His Nobel Prize
When President Obama took office, he vowed to repair the damage done to America’s moral standing on the global stage. You may have hoped that human rights would become an organizing principle of our foreign policy. That the U.S. would finally try to engage pariah states like Iran and North Korea, or that Obama’s presidency would elevate the voices of grassroots movements in economic and environmental policy discussions. In 2011, you’ve probably either lowered your expectations or discarded your hopes.
About a year ago, Kenneth Roth, head of Human Rights Watch, anticipated the impending disappointment, warning in an op-ed, “President Obama recognizes the importance of redeeming America’s reputation on human rights after the dark Bush years. But it will take more than impressive rhetoric to succeed. Words must be followed by deeds.”
Of course, the president still had lofty words this week when he welcomed Chinese President Hu Jintao to Washington.
”History shows that societies are more harmonious, nations are successful and the world is more just when the rights and responsibilities of all nations and all people are upheld, including the universal rights of every human being,” Obama said at a White House ceremony Wednesday.
But a close look at the administration’s human rights record suggests a president hasn’t yet earned the moral standing to deliver such inspiring words, to the Chinese or anyone else. While the administration has made progress on some human rights fronts, it hasn’t made Roth’s connection between word and deed. And with a resurgent Republican Party in Congress, a roiling economic crisis and an increasingly restive electorate, you can expect fewer words, never mind deeds, in the next two years.
Human Rights in Wartime
Nobel Peace Prize notwithstanding, it’s difficult to imagine Obama making any gains on human rights amid the chaos haunting the Pentagon’s ever-expanding dominion.
Obama’s new Afghanistan timetable—drawing down troops starting this year with an “aspirational” goal of pulling out by 2014, plus continued “support” for local authorities indefinitely thereafter—looks more and more like exactly the kind of devastating, open-ended occupation that the White House said it would avoid back in 2009.
The one thing that might counter the momentum of the Afghanistan war is its price tag, since the new timetable is projected to add at least $125 billion in war spending to the deficit, according to the Christian Science Monitor. At the same time, the current anxiety over the federal budget also means fewer resources to devote to humanitarian aid and social programs abroad.
The other no-man’s land in the war on terror may be completely off the radar in Congress in 2011. Obama’s promise to close Guantanamo Bay has quietly lapsed, and the administration has no more political capital to spend fighting Congress on detention policy.
Meanwhile, to many observers, the latest Pentagon reports on “progress” in our terror campaigns describe a desperate downward spiral into targeted killings of “insurgent leaders” and diminishing prospects for constructive diplomacy. John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, told Colorlines:
Rather than attempt to take these targeted individuals into custody, and be criticized for rendition to a third country or treatment during detention, the Obama administration has decided simply to assassinate them. It has been able to continue this policy in part because it hasn’t come under the kind of criticism that the Bush administration endured for its policies on torture and rendition.
In a sense, then, Obama’s credibility as a defender of human rights has in fact offered cover for increased brutality.
Glimmers of Hope
Though hypocrisy is a famous hallmark of U.S. foreign policy, Obama’s overtures about restoring America’s moral standing has by turns raised expectations and courted disappointment.
Last September, Obama declared at a U.N. conference, “The strongest foundation for human progress lies in open economies, open societies and open governments.” But in recent months, the administration has cracked down on peace activists; started devising a constitutionally dubious scheme to try alleged terrorists in a separate court system; stood by as a coup upended democracy in Honduras; and propped up a dysfunctional regime in Afghanistan.
Still, there have been a few glimmers of idealism. This past week, the White House expressed restrained support for the popular uprising in Tunisia, which ousted a U.S.-backed dictatorship and stunned officials with its secular pro-democracy fervor.
Last year, the U.S. submitted to an unprecedented review by the U.N. Human Rights Council, allowing civil society groups to air criticism on an international platform.
U.S.-Cuba relations have started to thaw as Obama has relaxed restrictions on travel and communications between Americans and Cubans.
Obama also declared support of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in December—departing at least symbolically from the Bush administration’s rejection of the non-binding accord in 2007. However, advocates for native communities are wary that the administration’s proclamation does not necessarily mean the principles of the document, including guarantees of sovereignty and land rights, will ever be implemented.
Nikke Alex, executive director of the Black Mesa Water Coalition, said she was skeptical about the administration’s professed support for indigenous people on the global level while ignoring the issue at home.
“Why are they pushing for human rights in another country when they’re not even adhering to it in their own country?” Alex asked Colorlines, noting that tribal communities in the U.S. face the same discrimination and threats to sovereignty that lie at the heart of the declaration.
Good Fences Make Bad Neighbors
Long before the U.S. launched its crusade against terrorism across the Atlantic, it incubated its neo-imperialist model in its backyard. And despite the high hopes that followed the 2008 election, the rising powers in the Western Hemisphere, many of them left-leaning governments, are disillusioned that Obama has not changed the power dynamic between the U.S. and Latin America.
The White House is pressing forward with trade deals that could further erode economic and social rights in the region. While in Haiti, Bill Clinton’s vow to “build back better” still rings hollow, as the emerging “recovery” plan appears to resurrect the failed neoliberal development policies that paved the way for Haiti’s current crises.
Mexico is another unredeemed tragedy. As President Obama has militarized the southern border, he has pressed forward with a violent anti-drug strategy that has left thousands dead at the hands of drug lords and police. Failing to see the mass migration to the North as a human rights issue, he has also intensified immigration restrictions that breed exploitation both in Mexico and in U.S. communities.
In a letter demanding that the U.S. stop funding the failed anti-drug strategies, a coalition of rights groups stated last fall:
Documentation exists of killings, torture, beatings and gender-based violence committed by security forces, including the cases of Atenco, Ciudad Juarez and repression of labor unions. The U.S. provision of lethal aid and training to these same security forces violates our principles as a nation, tarnishes our reputation and implicates the U.S. government in serious and widespread human rights abuses.
U.S.-Africa policy, however, is perhaps the arena where Obama’s parallels and contrasts with Bush are most clearly displayed.
While both administrations spurred international action on conflict in Sudan and the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Obama has disappointed those who hoped his 2009 visit to Ghana would usher in a more enlightened posture toward Africa.
In the name of counterterrorism, Obama has refused to hold allies accountable for using child soldiers, despite a Bush-era law blocking U.S. funding for nations who do so, and perpetuated the militarization of Africa through Washington’s Africa Command (AFRICOM). Those conflicts in turn overshadow the lesser known but no less critical issues of mass rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo, ruthless land grabs across the continent by foreign investors, and the demonization of LGBT communities in Uganda.
The sense of urgency surrounding the HIV/AIDS crisis too has waned: Last month advocacy groups were outraged that White House’s 2010 budget for global HIV/AIDS programs actually decreased planned funding in several areas.
Our Defining Rights Fight: Climate Justice
The crises that have beset African nations may soon be aggravated by the defining human rights struggle of this generation. The social and environmental threats of climate change have galvanized grassroots activists across the Global South to connect racial, health, economic and gender equity under the banner of environmental justice. Although Obama is lightyears ahead of his predecessor in terms of understanding the gravity of the problem, the stagnant talks at the Copenhagen and Cancun summits showed that only a groundswell of public pressure can overcome the entrenched power of polluting industries.
Yifat Susskind of the gender-focused human rights group MADRE connected health and environmental challenges as twin casualties of political inertia:
As daunting as AIDS and climate change may be, the biggest obstacles to combating these threats are not financial or technical. The biggest challenge is getting the world’s powerful people to be accountable [for] crises that mainly affect the poor. We know what needs to be done, and so does President Obama. What’s missing is the political will from world leaders.
We see the complacency playing out this week with Chinese President Hu Jintao’s summit with Obama. The most the leaders can expect from the talks is a mutual pledge to keep up the flow of trade and capital, while avoiding uncomfortable chafing between their respective geopolitical agendas. China’s abysmal human rights record might get a brief mention, but Obama, at the helm of a declining superpower, lacks the political leverage, and will, to press hard on the issue.
The Obama administration could earn back some moral influence by adopting a multilateral approach toward universal rights, encouraging political freedom alongside sustainable development, self-determination and government accountability. But for now, the White House has no incentive to redeem the hope many social movements invested in it two years ago. Obama’s record on human rights shows that even a relatively clear-minded leadership won’t stray from the established course until pushed from below.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
67 Comments so far
Show AllWow. You're just now catching on to this....?
Really? Are you serious?
YOU JUST KNOW NOTICED THIS GLARING CONTRADICTION IN MR. WHITE KNIGHT?!
Glad you didn't wait until ANOTHER 20,000 died...
How tight ARE your blinders?
To this day I cannot figure out how he got the Nobel so early on. It must have been based on all those shadow promises of "CHANGE" that never occurred.
Sadly, of all the categories, the Nobel Peace Prize is the most susceptible to being used as a political football. This loosely breaks down into two categories:
The "No Hard Feelings" version given to Kissinger, and the triple play of Rabin/Peres/Arafat; you're all steeped in blood up to your eyeballs, but what the hell!
And the "Most Likely to Succeed" version given to Obama.
The latter puts me in mind of a kindly old grandpa sitting on the front porch reading the newspaper when his handsome, smiling teenaged grandson comes bounding out the door carrying a basketball.
Grandpa lights up, says "Come over here!", and fishes a twenty-dollar bill out of his vest pocket; he stuffs it in his grandson's free hand, exclaims, "You're a good kid, you know that?" and sends him on his way with a beaming smile.
Grandpa never notices the outlines of the Glock stuck in the back of the kid's waistband.
The Nobel prize is apparently just like the filibuster-- you only have to threaten to do something.
Good call! I've been dying, just DYING to actually see a damn filibuster. Any really, theater is as theater does...
Giving President Obama the Noble Peace Prize was an abomination; something right out of Orwell. Obama is nothing but a lying con man and a Chicago, corrupt politician, who is allowed to stay in the White House as long as he minds his MIC masters. Not much different than if they would have given Al Capone the Peace Prize, except Al Capone probably deserved it more than Obama! To quote General Smedley D. Butler: " During those years, I had as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents".
The MIC is organized crime sanctioned by the White House and Congress.
The Mafia is otganized crime not sanctioned by the White House and Congress, at least not overtly sanctioned.
The MIC is organized crime sanctioned by the White House and Congress.
The Mafia is otganized crime not sanctioned by the White House and Congress, at least not overtly sanctioned.
Spot on!
Visiting Professor,
Thank you so much for taking the time to write this analysis!
You raise so many good points about how we think of terrorism, drone strikes and other things. I learn a lot whenever I read your comments, and I want you to know that many of us really appreciate your work.
In fact, a lot of what you write is better than the articles themselves. I'm not kidding. Have you thought of publishing these commentaries as articles yourself, either here or elsewhere? I think people would value the chance to gain the benefit of your clear thinking and analysis. You are an outstanding writer.
Anyway, thank you sincerely for all of your fine work. I know it takes a lot of time to organize your thoughts and put them down, so I value this gift even more.
MIC? What does that mean? Thanks.
Dang. Halfway through the term? How 'bout immunity for telecom spying and insisting he'd crank up the Afghan war before he was even nominated?
Again, glad to see the idea finally in a working writer's head, but one can't but wonder WTF took you and so many others so long...
What CAN a war criminal do to merit a peace prize? Let's ask the thousands of his victims that.
On second thought, how do you ask the dead?
Yes, the poor souls who had the human right to live in the country of their birth. Mowed down by the Peace prez's drones. Who the HELL is this asshole to lecture other leaders on HUMAN RIGHTS.
Bring America Back !!!!
give team obama another 4 years and they still will
not earn that Nobel==Peace is a foreign concept to
our leaders and Obama is a knave of the Military
Industrial Complex--with no intent to end wars of any
kind.
the million is now in baraks retire to Hawaii account.
so who will step up with a more rightful claim to
the Nobel ???? that is the main problem dashing our
Hopes for any real future Leader adopting Peace as an
objective. How about Gov Howard Dean and giving him a
spinal tap of fortitude and courage ???
"While the administration has made progress on some human rights fronts..."
"Obama’s record on human rights shows that even a relatively clear-minded leadership..."
It's phrases like this that make me wonder just how stupid this writer is. These days, if writer isn't angry, he/she isn't worth reading. Angry words may not have much impact, but sterile, above-the-fray writing like this means the author doesn't want to get his/her hands too dirty.
"He hasn't disappointed his bosses yet."
Boy, is that right. There is not one single industry that man has not gone to bat for. Not one.
The only thing that gives me any hope--and it's a terrible thing--is that the masses will be so destitute and angry, there won't be a chance in hell of him ever getting elected again. They'll blame him for their situation, as they should. And without that "charismatic" puppet at the helm, people will start to fight back.
Ian Welsh has a short piece at ianwelsh.net. He predicts that we have a year to a year and a half before we have another economic meltdown. Here's an except:
"If you can work right now, do. Earn as much money as you can, reduce your costs as low as you can and get ready for the next downturn."
"Times are bad, they will get worse, especially as this type of austerity is happening in virtually every western country. Expect both high inflation in what you actually need (food, for example) and high unemployment (the return of stagflation), whatever the “official” rate of inflation says."
Damn right. This particular writer really seems to go out of her ways to avoid looking at the dead. She also has the blinders on regarding the gays-in-the-imperial-wars thing, which she also shills for.
The right guy at the right time, Hates America, Hates Americans, Will do anything to make their lives hell! Too bad the Nobell prize can't be taken back, Or at least give one to Hitler.
>^^<
It is telling that at his inaugural address he LITERALLY blamed all 300 million of us for what about 12,000 actually did.
Very telling.
I hear that, the only lefties around keep urging me to defend that horrible health care insurance bailout, claiming it as a holy 'victory' of some kind.
Repairing america's moral image is nowhere in o's mind. He is having as good a time as w had in playing the commander-in-chief and decider. The sorrowful thing is o enjoys this power thing so much that he wants another term. Hopefully the people will not let that happen. Then it will be time to rename the noble peace prize the noble 'genocide prize', something o can claim he legitimately won.
The most important quote of recent time is this,
"It depends upon what the meaning of the word is is."
This quote, by the great dis-integrator Clinton, is the clearest example of the almost universal mindset of Washingtonians.
So, to update;
It depends upon what the meaning of the term "human rights" is.
Clearly, to Obama and most of the United States of Global Domination, some of the most important human rights are the rights to deceive, to use force for monetary profit, to kill people without legal justification, to dismiss habeas corpus as un-pragmatic, and to insist that corporations are more human than are individual human beings.
So, when Obama talks about "universal rights of every human being", these clearly include the right to be crushed into submission or even non-existence in the name of so-called "free market" corporate profits.
Why would he criticize China?
As far as we know, he, and most of Washington see China as a role model.
As far as we know, he, and most of Washington are hoping to teach China to be more harsh.
It depends upon what their definition of "peace" is.
BIRD: Excellent post.
JILL: You picked the quote I intended to respond to. Although Ms. Chen comes close to using the "B" word (betrayal), she can't let herself toe that line. For all the carefully crafted critiques of Obama's performance, her final quotation placing the ONUS on the population for all the president's misdeeds is deplorable, to say the least.
A bamboozled population led to think one thing (words) while undermined by another (actual policies) is not exactly in a position to clearly understand the magnitude of what's taking place. This is where control of media comes in so handy. Where many are fired up, they've been directed to shoot (literally, too!) at all the wrong targets.
O.S... I like your parable.
To be fair, the John Feffer quote is good, and when one clicks on the link (his name), one can navigate to the following interesting little video:
http://demilitarize.org/featured/video-figure-cost-save-world/
So...I guess the morale is: even little gems can be found in out-of-date material.
Why drag Clinton into it? Clinton was a real Democrat.
Under Clinton, poverty went down, the economy boomed, we were paying off the deficit, we were at peace, government and military spending were brought down, the government and military were significantly downsized, taxes were raised on the rich, and Microsoft's monopoly was broken up. It was the exact opposite of Obama.
Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Glass-Steagall. The Telecommunications Act. NAFTA. He set the table so future politicians could gorge on our surplus. But you know that.
But he's a real Kennedy Democrat! Talks a lot, does nothing but chase interns. Thats our Clinton.
As the old joke went, as long as he was screwing interns he wasn't screwing us!
Maybe we can encourage Obummer to branch out?
>^^<
The real disgrace isn't so much that he was awarded it, as others have pointed out it has been granted to questionable folks in the past, it is that he believed he deserved it (for nothing) and accepted it.
This may be the first time the Nobel Prize has been awarded to a war criminal.
1994: Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin
1973: Henry A. Kissinger, Le Duc Tho
Dare I include Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt?
Dare I mention that Gandhi was glaringly excluded?
Le Duc Tho refused the prize. He must have smelled something odious about the Nobel Peace prize....
"may you live in interesting times"
So did Jean Paul Sartre
I call that 'moral backbone'. Something Obomber clearly lacks.
AND HE NEVER WILL.
"Still Hasn't Earned His Nobel Prize". The question is what *has* he earned, Ms. Chen.
Well, he's earned a bump in his approval ratings since his visit to Tucson.
All the Obama-friendly sites are crowing about it.
The trouble is, Obama and those who "approve" based on his golden words are passing around counterfeit currency. No real value. But you know that. :-)
Ranks right up there with Henry Kissinger's. Well, we pretty much know that prize is meaningless.
The article presumes that the Nobel Peace prize is something worthy to be won. Perhaps sometime in the past that might have been true...not anymore....
"may you live in interesting times"
This article is not worth posting. Can we try finding articles by authors who are not still waiting for obama to be the man they believed he was because he promised, cross his heart and hope to ??????
It is repetitive tripe and the same points are outlined over and over again. Obviously, there are many who get published on CD who will definitely vote obama in 2012. He needs one more good speech and maybe come up with a new holiday called, "Let's All Be Nice Today". Oh. And he will have a "Hello Kitty" day for children.
"Our Defining Rights Fight: Climate Justice"
Speak for yourself. This is at odds with judgement of the Nazis handed down by American jurists at Nuremberg, where Germany was condemned first and foremost for the crime of organizing wars of aggression, which was condemned as the supreme crime against humanity. Of course, defenders of the American Empire have gone out of their way to expunge these judgements from the historical memory of most Americans, because the greatest violator of the principles laid down in the judgements at Nuremberg in human history is the U.S. government. Stopping the fly-by-wire drones and the U.S. war machine is the defining human rights fight of the 1st half of the 21st century.
It's so easy to adopt abstract nonsense like "climate justice" when the cruise missiles aren't being aimed at the community you live in. How does the fight for so-called "climate justice" save the lives of people getting killed by Obama in Afghanistan and Pakistan? How does this mobilize resources in Pakistan to save earthquake survivors when the priority in that country is to help Washington fight its wars against al-Queda and the Taliban? How does "climate justice" provide the millions of internal and external Iraqi refugees of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq with a safe and stable country to live in? Ditto for earthquake refugees in Haiti. All of these problems have roots in existing human institutions and can ultimately be solved humans in the political arena, not by looking at maps of the climate scientists. All the "climate justice" movement is going to do is channel a lot money into the same UN-NGO-Government Racket that is doing such a bang up jump helping Haiti recover from the earthquake. Count me out of supporting that movement.
I'm reminded here of what Rev. Wright said close to three years ago back when he was the Goldstein of moment among the Vulgarian apologists for U.S. aggression world wide. He said that after Nov. 4, 2008 he would still be a pastor and Obama will still be a politician. I say give his Prize to Rev. Wright, rather than using it to make the aggressor state Obama leads look nicer in the eyes of the world.
I only voted for Obama because I figured that putting the first African-American in the White House would be good in and of itself. I certainly wasn't expecting him to be much better than Bush, and I have to say that he's ended up being worse than I thought he would. I doubt there will ever be a politician in my lifetime who could make me regret voting for him more than Obama.
What was so bad about the Bush years, especially 2003, particularly February of that year? Give me those days over what we have now with Obama. Today we would be lucky to organize anti-war demonstrations 1/10th the size of those demonstrations. Thanks a lot Kerrycrats and Obamacrats for killing the anti-war movement.
If we're going to have an imperialist warfare state like the one we currently have, then better to have a vulgar man, or woman, running it. At least with Bush you could mobilize an opposition to him, albeit a mostly partisan, unprincipled opposition, which is better than next to no opposition with Obama in charge. I'm committing myself to voting third party in presidential elections. Choosing between the Democrat and Republican candidates is kind of like choosing between whether you would like to have a good cop or bad cop at your water-boarding interrogation at Guantanamo. You're still getting water-boarded at Guantanamo, whether it is the smooth talking snake oil salesman Obama, or leader of the Vulgarians Palin, doing the interrogating. If we end up with Palin, then great. She's uncouth, vulgar and one should note very honest. Forget the feel good talk with President Palin. She'll come right and say it's skull cracking time when it comes to foreign policy. It's skull cracking time with Obama. He just uses nicer sounding language to describe what he's doing. With a President Palin we might finally be able to mobilize demonstrations the size of the ones we saw back in '03.
I tend to agree with you, Oswaldwasaleftist.
Although, as i have said way too often, i couldn't bring myself to vote for obama. I smelled the snake oil right through the television. But i thought he would play his game for at least a couple of years.
jesus christ, you're waiting for him to earn the prize?
i'm waiting for the day that he and his massers will be tried and convicted for their monstrous crimes against humanity.
Yes.
The man is a cold blooded killer
One of the main problems with having a problem with Obama being war president is that few offer a peaceful solution. It amounts more often than not to an insurmountable problem who's only solution is war. If we marched against him, we would face convictions of treason and we would face the legal ramifications therein. The world would stand by and watch because they are still on his side. I see the insurmountable problems that Obama faces and I could take on those problems with him and who ever else wants to take them on, but blaming him for the problems is such total nonsense. It is no wonder he has nothing but growing disdain at this point for the ignorant so called radical progressive masses, if they amass to much. It is no wonder such imbalanced loathing does nothing but cause more loathing, for self by self of for self by others. Come on folks, what do you think you are succeeding at doing here beyond becoming mired in your loathing and what is loathing if not a crippled form of war against self and anyone who dares deny your actions as worthy of peace?
"Roll back the empire bases" ?
Would you not also feel incredibly important if you were a member of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee? That is what keeps this nonsense going. If no person on Earth would agree to serve on that Committee the Nobel Peace Prize would die. Shame on the Committee members who perpetuate this abomination that was intended to give "the merchant of death" Mr. Nobel a "good name". This issue is not worth the megabytes it is written on.