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I’m still baffled how Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize.
by __turbobrew__ 6y ago
I’m still baffled how Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize.
- dehrmann 6y agoTo be fair, that was before he ordered the execution of an American citizen without trial.
- AnthonyMouse 6y agoIs there a process for revoking the prize?
- Consultant32452 6y agoYes. A certain group of people chat amongst themselves and decide what will give themselves and the award the most prestige. If you want the right kind of people to show up at your cool awards party, you have to give the right kind of person the award. That's not sarcasm, that is literally the process. There's no objective measures or anything.
- ma2rten 6y agoWhy would it matter for the Nobel peace price committee if he killed foreign or US citizens?
- sneak 6y agoThere are generally accepted rules about what constitutes the differences between extrajudicial assassination by the state ("it's not illegal if the president does it"), judiciary-based civilian execution ("capital punishment"), wartime combat that results in death, and plain ol' cold blooded murder between parties not state-sanctioned in any way. I personally don't distinguish much between these (I'm basically in agreement with Einstein's stated views on the matter) but to pretend that our global human society doesn't believe in these distinctions is somewhat silly. The US president can mass murder hundreds of children (Obama did just this) and not be seen as a criminal, even by that group, provided it falls into the correct category listed above.
- oh_sigh 6y agoCalling Obama a mass murderer is not a fair take on the matter. Obama didn't murder hundreds of children in one go. It was a few here, a dozen there, and so on. So he is more aptly called a mass serial murderer than a plain mass murderer.
- dmix 6y agoObama was also a shameless mass surveillance-er. He grew the NSA/CIA snooping like crazy because he was uncomfortable with the very public wars Bush was running. So he (and many others who still have positive images or direct power in the US) massively expanded the scale of the intelligence community and significantly moved it to secret courts. Of course it all started with the Patriot Act. But even looking at who keeps voting for that and keeping it alive and you can't just blame Bush either. It's like there's no options for Americans politically which doesn't involve massive "black budgets" and secret courts doing who knows what. It's bipartisan and even plenty of the worst Iraq war supporters all have had career revivals in recent years because the media + social media decided that only one thing was bad, the current president. All bad deeds in the past were forgotten for the old set. Endless "Secret Wars" seem terribly undemocratic and dangerous to me - for the obvious complete lack of public courts, true due process, or war crimes laws that normally are adhered to. And I also see no proper reckoning in the relevant future either as long as these same "good guys" are back in power. So I guess we're stuck with it.
- chaps 6y agoCheck out the Wikipedia definition of "mass murder" [1] and then compare that list to [2]. Many of his approved drone strikes' civilian deaths exceed the "mass murders" on the wikipedia list of mass murders. Quote from Obama [3]: "Turns out I’m really good at killing people. Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_murder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_murder [2] https://www.cfr.org/blog/obamas-final-drone-strike-data https://www.cfr.org/blog/obamas-final-drone-strike-data [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/obama-said-hes-really-good-at-killing-people-2013-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/obama-said-hes-really-good-a...
- 6y ago
- syndacks 6y agoEhhh, he also "modernized" the US nuclear arsenal right before he won the award, too.
- xxpor 6y agoNukes have have been the biggest force for peace since ww2, so I don't really see a problem with that.
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y agoThey have been, and will continue to be, until they aren't.
- Perceval 6y agoObama did not modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal. He promised to modernize it in exchange for Republican support in the Senate to pass the New START arms control deal. But he let the nuclear enterprise fall into such disrepair that a major scandal emerged in 2013, leading to a major DOD effort to repair the enterprise after a review in 2014: https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-19-29 https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-19-29. He kicked the can down the road on modernization of the arsenal itself until the very tail end of his administration, so that it was up to Trump in 2017 to follow through on the promise Obama made back in 2010. All of this occurred after Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize.
- monocasa 6y ago"Nuclear arsenal" doesn't typically evoke images of power generating nuclear reactors, but instead the nuclear warheads.
- roenxi 6y ago> To be fair, that was before he ordered the execution of an American citizen without trial. He'd became president January 20 and was awarded the prize on October 9 - he hadn't really had time to do anything meaningful for international relations. The only way to interpret the prize was as a rebuke on former president George Bush for gleefully upping the ante from a localised tragedy in America into annihilating two countries, countless deaths and destabilising half a continent. It was a passive aggressive "well we can't stop you America, but we saw what you did". There was a lot more to those invasions history-wise, but the basic message was clear.
- xienze 6y agoNot sure why you’re getting downvoted, except that perhaps there’s a lot of younger folks here who don’t remember just how utterly despised GWB was. He was Trump before Trump — both “literally Hitler” and the dumbest man on the planet at the same time. Obama’s Nobel prize was most certainly a “congratulations on not being Bush” prize. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if Biden picks up one this year.
- jldugger 6y agoTrump has done precious little in the war department, so I don't think Biden will pick one up without actually doing something this go around.
- TheCoelacanth 6y agoMaybe he can shoot for the Medicine category instead.
- dehrmann 6y ago> both “literally Hitler” and the dumbest man on the planet at the same time I never got how Bush was supposed to be both an idiot and a mastermind.
- stretchcat 6y ago
- 1cvmask 6y agoObama only killed non-whites and blacks. The Nobel committee is white Swedes.
- corty 6y agoThe Nobel Peace Prize does have it's share of madmen, dictators and terrorists on the list of nominees and holders. Obama is by far not the worst on that list. Doing something for peace is not dependent on being a universally good person. You can still save more lifes than you have butchered.
- rmrfstar 6y agoObama isn't even the worst American on that list. Henry Kissinger has one.
- Perceval 6y agoAt least Kissinger ended a major war. Obama ended none and started U.S. involvement in more.
- Apocryphon 6y agoIf anything, some winners seem to dive into bad behavior after they're awarded. Aung San Suu Kyi and Abiy Ahmed being two recent examples.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- baskire 6y agoEspecially since Trump actually brokered more peace deals/treaties.
- Triv888 6y agoObama was a good speaker but his actions were quite a bit different... maybe that's why. At least with Trump, you know what you're getting because he appears to be brutally honest.
- bilekas 6y ago> because he appears to be brutally honest. Being ignorant and loud at the same time, does not make someone honest.
- Triv888 6y agoFor a politician he was honest about what he wanted to accomplish.
- mav3rick 6y agoBeing honest about doing terrible things is not a virtue.
- StavrosK 6y agoIt's better than being dishonest about doing terrible things, though...
- mav3rick 6y agoHere you go about trump's "truths" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poxvEir-HWA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poxvEir-HWA
- mav3rick 6y agoComparing him to horrible doesn't make him great.
- StavrosK 6y agoI'll never get used to people reading more into what I said than what I said. No, they're both horrible, but one is slightly more horrible than the other.
- fwip 6y agoNobel invented high-yield explosives, so there's a bit of poetry there.
- dimensi0nal 6y agoby being black?
- cortesoft 6y agoIt was clearly an f-you to Bush... Obama had been in office for 9 months when he got it, he hadn't don't anything much at all.
- beamatronic 6y agoPeace, Through Superior Firepower
- Technically 6y agoObama indicates in his recent autobiography he was baffled, too.
- justicezyx 6y agoAfter reading Obama's recent biography, it comes to be that Obama saw that as a push for him to be able to achieve results that merits the medal. Then after a series of complicated political decision making, he started more. And there are always perfect legitimate reasons, as judging from Obama's perspective and described in the book, that make those things happen. After a while reading the book, I started to see how futile it has been for US to truly behave as the nation aspires to. Without a equal counter weight, there seems no possibility for the nation's political machine to follow common sense, it's always enemy or ally, and dealing with enemy always involves military power.
- xwdv 6y agoSome will say it was just to spite George Bush, but I remember the atmosphere at the time and that wasn’t it. Back then, being the first black president was a big deal, and Obama’s campaign inspired a lot of hope for the future in many Americans and the world. Hopium levels were still high when he was awarded the prize and the doomsday clock I believe even went backward a bit, remember that when Obama was a senator he worked to secure loose nuclear weapons around the globe. Unfortunately, things started taking a more sinister turn as the years went on, so it seemed the prize had been given too prematurely.