Robert Fisk: Obama, man of peace? No, just a Nobel prize of a mistake
source: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-obama-man-of-peace-no-jus...
-
-
- Ihatethemall
- added this
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-ob...
The US president received an award in the faint hope that he will succeed in the future. That's how desperate the Middle East situation has becomeHis Middle East policy is collapsing. The Israelis have taunted him by ignoring his demand for an end to settlement-building and by continuing to build their colonies on Arab land. His special envoy is bluntly told by the Israelis that an Arab-Israel peace will take "many years". Now he wants the Palestinians to talk peace to Israel without conditions. He put pressure on the Palestinian leader to throw away the opportunity of international scrutiny of UN Judge Goldstone's damning indictment of Israeli war crimes in Gaza while his Assistant Secretary of State said that the Goldstone report was "seriously flawed". After breaking his pre-election promise to call the 1915 Armenian massacres by Ottoman Turkey a genocide, he has urged the Armenians to sign a treaty with Turkey, again "without pre-conditions". His army is still facing an insurgency in Iraq. He cannot decide how to win "his" war in Afghanistan. I shall not mention Iran.
And now President Barack Obama has just won the Nobel Peace Prize. After only eight months in office. Not bad. No wonder he said he was "humbled" when told the news. He should have felt humiliated. But perhaps weakness becomes a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Shimon Peres won it, too, and he never won an Israeli election. Yasser Arafat won it. And look what happened to him. For the first time in history, the Norwegian Nobel committee awarded its peace prize to a man who has achieved nothing – in the faint hope that he will do something good in the future. That's how bad things are. That's how explosive the Middle East has become.
-
- groups:
- Community, News and Politics, WTF, Random, 20 more
-
- tags:
- News, Obama, Barack Obama, Nobel Peace Prize
