Week of December 7, 2009
If it is true that the Nobel committee awarded President Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize for not being George W. Bush, they must have been dismayed to discover that Bush's war on terror remained the framework for Obama's acceptance speech.It was a great speech, with it's references to Gandhi and King and its emphasis on human rights and economic justice. It was not a speech Bush could or would have given.
But Obama ultimately failed to escape the pull of the GWOT. Accountability is demanded of others but not of the US. No high official will be prosecuted for war crimes in Iraq.
The fringe terrorist group al-Qaeda is depicted as a challenge for the Pentagon, not the Interpol. Then Afghan insurgents are equated to al-Qaeda. Iran, which has no nuclear weapons program, is equated with North Korea.
Obama implied that peaceful conflict resolution is preferable, but that challenges do arise that require a military resolution. But he has unwittingly stacked the deck in favor if the military-industrial complex by adopting Bushian rhetoric at key junctures--speaking of enemies as 'evil,' militarizing the response to terrorism, and asserting false equivalences that help make war seem inevitable.
Obama has yet to decide whether he is a visionary or a technocrat. The prize committee hoped for the former. In this speech they got the latter.
Mr. President, War Is Not Peace
Why don't most American senators and congressmen have the gumption of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who called climate change deniers"flat-earthers", and"anti-science"?Would global warming just mean it is hotter? No. If mountain ice and glaciers melt, the people who depend on seasonal melting of such highland ice will be left without a water source and thrown into drought. Over a billion people in the Indian subcontinent are at risk. And, 60% of Bangladesh is at risk from rising sea levels.
Has global warming been flat since 1998? No, this assertion depends on a stupid little trick. 1998 was unusually warm because of an El Nino, so if you take it as the baseline, you get a false picture. Take 1997 or 1999 as your starting point (normal years), and th en you see the clear continuing warming trend. It would be like starting with the 2005 tsunami and saying the ocean levels have fallen mysteriously and dramatically since then in Thailand and Sri Lanka.