Launch of Campaign to Revoke Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

A campaign for revoking President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize got underway today with a petition launched by a quarter-million member online group.

The petition, initiated by RootsAction.org, can be viewed along with a real-time tally of signers and their comments at: https://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=7647

Noting that the Obama administration "has widened the use of drones and other instruments of remote killing in several countries," RootsAction said in a mass email today that "President Obama has made perpetual war look more perpetual than ever."

Obama accepted the Nobel award 40 months ago with a December 2009 speech in Oslo.

The following policy analysts are available for interviews:

LEAH BOLGER
Bolger, CDR, USN (Ret), is past president of Veterans for Peace. She said today: "When the Nobel Committee gave the Peace Prize to President Obama in 2009, for 'his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,' many criticized that decision, calling it premature and politically motivated. President Carter, himself a Nobel Laureate, called the decision 'a bold statement of international support for his vision and commitment to peace and harmony in international relations.' Since then, President Obama has emphatically disproven Carter's belief by dramatically escalating the war in Afghanistan, killing thousands of innocent people with illegal drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere, and continuing to hold prisoners at Guantanamo.

Bolger added: "The Nobel Committee has deeply diminished the prize by awarding it to Obama in the first place; it is now obvious . . . that they made a serious mistake. The Committee needs to revoke the prize in order to restore its value."

COLEEN ROWLEY
Rowley, a former FBI special agent and legal counsel in the Minneapolis field office, wrote a "whistleblower" memo in May 2002 and testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about some of the FBI's pre-9/11 failures. She says that the influential Nobel Committee Secretary Geir Lundestad "has repeatedly but unsuccessfully attempted to explain how it is to be expected that the 2009 recipient Obama would be engaged in two wars as leader of the world's 'superpower.' So, how can the Prize continue to inspire peacemaking when it no longer is in keeping with Alfred Nobel's original intent but instead has been turned on its head to promote militarism and war?"

Rowley also commented: "During the last five years the dispute over the implementation of Nobel's prize for the 'champions of peace' has come to a head. The Norwegian awarders seem to reinterpret Nobel's wishes and award the prize for whatever in their judgment is good and valuable, based on their own 'broad concept of peace.'"

Rowley retired from the FBI in 2004 and is now a public speaker and writer. She interviewed Nobel Secretary Lundestad a year ago, when he was in Minnesota for the "Nobel Peace Forum." For background, see Rowley's 2012 Huffington Post article "Nothing 'Purist' -- Just Everything Hypocritical About Awarding Nobel 'Peace' Prize to Promote Western Militarism"

NORMAN SOLOMON
Solomon, who wrote the book "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death," is founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and co-founder of RootsAction.org. He said today: "If President Obama is to remain as a Nobel Peace Prize winner, then Bernie Madoff may as well be Financial Planner of the Year."