Did Obama deserve his Nobel Peace Prize?
Back in 2009 Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. What was unusual was that he won the award when he had only been president for a few months, so at that stage he had little time to demonstrate whether or not he was worthy of such an award.
So how does Obama measure up now that his presidency is over? Did Obama deserve his Nobel Peace Prize?
Here are three facts which raise questions as to whether the award was merited:
Obama pledged to end George W. Bush’s wars. However, he left office having been at war longer than any president in US history, and as the first and only president to be at war every day for the entire eight years of his two terms.
Here's a quote from The Guardian:
"What does the administration have to show for eight years of fighting on so many fronts? Terrorism has spread, no wars have been 'won' and the Middle East is consumed by more chaos and divisions than when candidate Barack Obama declared his opposition to the invasion of Iraq."1
A winner of the Nobel Peace Prize being the first and only president to be at war every day for the entire eight years of his presidency does seem to be a contradiction.
Obama's government approved a $641 million deal to sell 1,300 cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia.2
What sort of track record on human rights does Saudi Arabia have? Well, this is from the Amnesty International annual report on Saudi Arabia3:
"Coalition forces led by Saudi Arabia committed serious violations of international law, including war crimes, in Yemen."
"Throughout the year the Saudi Arabia-led military coalition ... continued to bomb areas controlled or contested by Huthi forces and their allies in Yemen, killing and injuring thousands of civilians. Some attacks were indiscriminate, disproportionate or directed against civilians and civilian objects including schools, hospitals, markets and mosques. Some coalition attacks amounted to war crimes."
And just how compatible are sales of cluster bombs with winning a Nobel Peace Prize?
This is from the Human Rights Watch page on cluster bombs4:
"Cluster munitions pose an immediate threat to civilians during conflict by randomly scattering submunitions or bomblets over a wide area. They continue to pose a threat post-conflict by leaving remnants, including submunitions that fail to explode upon impact becoming de facto landmines."
The 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions is an international treaty that prohibits the use, transfer and stockpile of cluster bombs. More than 115 states are working to implement the provisions of the treaty. The United States has not signed up to the treaty.
Again, selling cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia, a country which has committed war crimes and which has a terrible record on human rights, does seem to be at conflict with deserving a Nobel Peace Prize.
According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism5, between January 2009 and the end of 2015, strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya caused the deaths of between 380 to 801 civilians.
These figures are based on 'reports by local and international journalists, NGO investigators, leaked government documents, court papers and the result of field investigations.'
The official figures claimed by Obama's government, however, are much lower. In July 2016 the US government claimed it had killed between 64 and 116 'non-combatants' during the period January 2009 to December 2015.
This is what Jennifer Gibson, staff attorney at Reprieve, had to say regarding the official figures:
"He [Obama] published numbers that are hundreds lower than even the lowest estimates by independent organizations. The only thing those numbers tell us is that this administration simply doesn’t know who it has killed. Back in 2011, it claimed to have killed 'only 60' civilians. Does it really expect us to believe that it has killed only 4 more civilians since then, despite taking hundreds more strikes?"
After reading the above facts and statistics, here's the same question again, 'Did Obama deserve his Nobel Peace Prize?' Or will Obama be hoping they have a 'no refunds' policy?
(When Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Alexander Downer, the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, called the selection 'a political decision of gross stupidity' and accused the selection committee of a 'hideous display of cynical politics'.6
After Obama's eight years as president I suspect that Alexander Downer will be sad to see that his opinion has been proved correct.)
The examples above are just a small sample of facts which raise questions over how deserved Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was, so I'll cover more examples at a later date.
- - - - - - - - - -
Sources:
1 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/america-dropped-26171-bombs-2016-obama-legacy
2 http://www.businessinsider.com/us-to-sell-cluster-bombs-to-saudi-arabia-2013-8
3 https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/saudi-arabia/report-saudi-arabia/
4 https://www.hrw.org/topic/arms/cluster-munitions
5 https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2016-07-01/obama-drone-casualty-numbers-a-fraction-of-those-recorded-by-the-bureau
6 https://web.archive.org/web/20091013105902/http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26196226-5006301,00.html
So how does Obama measure up now that his presidency is over? Did Obama deserve his Nobel Peace Prize?
Here are three facts which raise questions as to whether the award was merited:
1) Only president to serve two complete terms at war.
Here's a quote from The Guardian:
"What does the administration have to show for eight years of fighting on so many fronts? Terrorism has spread, no wars have been 'won' and the Middle East is consumed by more chaos and divisions than when candidate Barack Obama declared his opposition to the invasion of Iraq."1
A winner of the Nobel Peace Prize being the first and only president to be at war every day for the entire eight years of his presidency does seem to be a contradiction.
2) Sold cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia.
Obama's government approved a $641 million deal to sell 1,300 cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia.2
What sort of track record on human rights does Saudi Arabia have? Well, this is from the Amnesty International annual report on Saudi Arabia3:
"Coalition forces led by Saudi Arabia committed serious violations of international law, including war crimes, in Yemen."
"Throughout the year the Saudi Arabia-led military coalition ... continued to bomb areas controlled or contested by Huthi forces and their allies in Yemen, killing and injuring thousands of civilians. Some attacks were indiscriminate, disproportionate or directed against civilians and civilian objects including schools, hospitals, markets and mosques. Some coalition attacks amounted to war crimes."
And just how compatible are sales of cluster bombs with winning a Nobel Peace Prize?
This is from the Human Rights Watch page on cluster bombs4:
"Cluster munitions pose an immediate threat to civilians during conflict by randomly scattering submunitions or bomblets over a wide area. They continue to pose a threat post-conflict by leaving remnants, including submunitions that fail to explode upon impact becoming de facto landmines."
The 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions is an international treaty that prohibits the use, transfer and stockpile of cluster bombs. More than 115 states are working to implement the provisions of the treaty. The United States has not signed up to the treaty.
Again, selling cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia, a country which has committed war crimes and which has a terrible record on human rights, does seem to be at conflict with deserving a Nobel Peace Prize.
3) Killed hundreds of civilians.
These figures are based on 'reports by local and international journalists, NGO investigators, leaked government documents, court papers and the result of field investigations.'
The official figures claimed by Obama's government, however, are much lower. In July 2016 the US government claimed it had killed between 64 and 116 'non-combatants' during the period January 2009 to December 2015.
This is what Jennifer Gibson, staff attorney at Reprieve, had to say regarding the official figures:
"He [Obama] published numbers that are hundreds lower than even the lowest estimates by independent organizations. The only thing those numbers tell us is that this administration simply doesn’t know who it has killed. Back in 2011, it claimed to have killed 'only 60' civilians. Does it really expect us to believe that it has killed only 4 more civilians since then, despite taking hundreds more strikes?"
After reading the above facts and statistics, here's the same question again, 'Did Obama deserve his Nobel Peace Prize?' Or will Obama be hoping they have a 'no refunds' policy?
(When Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Alexander Downer, the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, called the selection 'a political decision of gross stupidity' and accused the selection committee of a 'hideous display of cynical politics'.6
After Obama's eight years as president I suspect that Alexander Downer will be sad to see that his opinion has been proved correct.)
The examples above are just a small sample of facts which raise questions over how deserved Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was, so I'll cover more examples at a later date.
- - - - - - - - - -
Sources:
1 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/america-dropped-26171-bombs-2016-obama-legacy
2 http://www.businessinsider.com/us-to-sell-cluster-bombs-to-saudi-arabia-2013-8
3 https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/saudi-arabia/report-saudi-arabia/
4 https://www.hrw.org/topic/arms/cluster-munitions
5 https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2016-07-01/obama-drone-casualty-numbers-a-fraction-of-those-recorded-by-the-bureau
6 https://web.archive.org/web/20091013105902/http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26196226-5006301,00.html
No comments:
Post a Comment