Gideon Polya, “Obama Nobel Says War is Peace. Nobel Peace Prizes for 4 US Presidential Warmongers”, MWC News, 14 October 2009 (no cached version from Google).
Obama Nobel Says War is Peace. Nobel Peace Prizes for 4 US Presidential Warmongers
Pro-war Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, an honour also bestowed on 3 other pro-war, warmonger and war criminal US Presidents before him, namely Theodor Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter. Below, in brief, is their blood-soaked march to Nobel Peace Prize glory.
According to Nobelprize.org: “The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded 89 times to 119 Nobel Laureates between 1901 and 2008 – 96 times to individuals and 23 times to organizations. Since International Committee of the Red Cross was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1917, 1944 and 1963, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1954 and 1981, that means 96 individuals and 20 organizations have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize” (for all Nobel Peace Prize Laureates 1901-2009 see: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/ ).
Of the 96 individuals awarded Nobel Prizes, 4 were pro-war US Presidents. Their horrible war-making records are summarized below. However, in reading the appalling warmongering record of these 4 pro-war US Presidential Nobel Peace Prize recipients simply bear in mind the commonsense notion that the Nobel Peace Prize should surely be awarded to pro-humanity, pro-peace humanitarians rather than to pro-war mass murdering, pro-war war-makers. Key references to the wars run by these 4 US presidential Nobel Peace Prize winners are William Blum’s “Rogue State” and my book “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” which includes a succinct, avoidable death-related history of every country in the world from the Neolithic period onwards: http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya .
1. Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919; Nobel Peace Prize 1906) was the 26th US president (1901-1909). As Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt was instrumental in preparing the US Navy for the Spanish American War (1898) and was an enthusiastic proponent of testing the U.S. military in battle, at one point stating "I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one". In 1898 he led a regiment in the US conquest of Cuba that had only recently been liberated through defeat of the Spanish colonial forces by the Cubans in 1898 (the most famous incident being his involvement in the Battle of San Juan Hill on July 1, 1898). In 1898-1902 the US occupied Cuba and subsequently retained Guantanamo Bay. In the period 1902-1920 there was repeated US military intervention in Cuba and ultimately the US-backed Batista dictatorship came to power (1940-1958). The Cuban Communists under Fidel Castro overthrew the US-backed Batista dictatorship in 1958 but Cuba remains subject to US economic sanctions, partial occupation and threats of further invasion. In 1900-1901 Theodore Roosevelt was Vice President under McKinley during which time he made his notorious warmonger assertion “Speak softly and carry a big stick”. As President (1901-1909) he prosecuted the genocidal war in the Philippines (1899-1913) that cost the lives of 1 million Filipinos.
In summary, Theodore Roosevelt was the quintessentially ugly American imperialist, a pro-war militarist who was personally involved as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in getting the US into the Spanish American War (1895-1898), as a solider in the conquest of Cuba (1898) and thence as President (1901-1909) in the genocidal conquest of the Philippines. His racist war policies of invasion and occupation set the tone for the next century of violent US imperialism directed against Latin Americans, Africans and Asians.
2. Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924; Nobel Peace Prize 1919) was the 28th President of the US from 1913-1921. While re-elected in 1916 on an anti-war slogan (“He kept us out of the war”), he subsequently declared war on Germany (1917). While getting great credit for the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations, Wilson’s great failure was not getting the US to actually join the League of Nations. The punitive Treaty of Versailles inevitably lead to WW2 and Wilson’s acquiescence with the Balfour Declaration led to the Palestinian Genocide and the current Zionist-backed US devastation of Muslim countries from Occupied Somalia to Occupied Afghanistan and the US robot-bombed valleys of NW Pakistan. Under Wilson the US had an ugly record of violent intervention in Latin America. In 1913 the US opposed Mexican President Madero whose assassination led to armed Mexican struggle (1913-1917). US forces invaded and occupied number of Central American countries in the Wilson era, including invasions under Wilson as president, specifically Haiti (1915-1934), Nicaragua (1912-1915) and Panama (1908, 1912 and 1918). US forces also invaded Russia in 1919 under warmonger Wilson.
In summary, Woodrow Wilson’s European policies led to American involvement in WW1, the failed Treaty of Versailles, the failed League of Nations, WW2, the Palestinian Genocide and the current Zionist-backed US devastation of Muslim countries. Woodrow Wilson’s violent Latin American policies continued those of racist imperialist Theodore Roosevelt and set the tone for a further century of US violence in Latin America. It took half a century to overcome the sorts of domestic racist segregation legislation introduced by Woodrow Wilson.
3. Jimmy Carter (1924- ; Nobel Peace Prize 2002) was the 39th president of the USA from 1977-1981. Jimmy Carter was ostensibly one of the more enlightened US presidents (and was certainly so in his post-presidential life). He secured a treaty for the return of the Panama Canal Zone to Panama (1977), negotiated the Israeli-Egyptian Peace treaty (1979) and participated in the key Strategy Arms Limitations (SALT II) negotiations. However US-backed atrocities continued in Central and South America, Asia and Africa under Carter. In particular, the US-backed coup in El Salvador lead to 30,000 people being killed by US-backed death squads in 1979-1981. The 1972-1992 violence in El Salvador was associated with 75,000 people killed and excess deaths from violence and deprivation of 0.4 million. Similarly, the US-backed military suppression in Guatemala (with genocidal Israeli involvement) was associated with 0.2 million people killed, 1 million refugees and a 1960-1996 excess mortality of 1.9 million. The US-backed Nicaragua civil war (eventually with the illegal Irangate funding of the right-wing Contras) was associated with excess mortality of 0.2 million (1979-1992). The abortive US invasion of Iran over the student takeover of the US embassy in Teheran damaged Carter’s image (they evidently didn’t kill enough Asians to satisfy racist American bloodlust). However the 2 monumental disasters of the Carter Administration were his backing of the Iraqi invasion of Iran and the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war (1.5 million killed, excess mortality 2.1 million) and the US organization of the 1978 overthrow of the pro-woman, secular, Communist Afghan government, leading to the USSR invasion and the subsequent 1979-1989 Afghanistan War involving Russian invaders and Communist Afghans versus US-backed Islamic Mujaheddin (excess mortality 2.9 million). In marked contrast, Carter’s retirement was associated with extensive human rights activity around the world that have earned him high praise.
In summary, Jimmy Carter was “officially” less interventionist than Theodor Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson but dirty tricks interventions under his Administration had devastating consequences in Central America, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan that are still being played out today under Obama in Occupied Iraq, Occupied Afghanistan, acutely threatened and heroin-devastated Iran, and US robot-bombed NW Pakistan and with growing US re-militarization of Latin America (more US bases in Colombia and a US-acquiesced military coup in Honduras).
4. Barack Hussein Obama (1961-; Nobel Peace Prize 2002), the 44th and current president of the US, had only been president for 262 days when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It is estimated from UN Population Division data that In this relatively short period Commander-in-Chief Obama was responsible for 0.5 million avoidable deaths, including 0.3 million avoidable under-5 year old infant deaths, in the US Occupied Territories – and those are just the non-violent avoidable deaths from deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease (see “War-maker, war maker, war criminal, pro-war Obama Nobel Peace Prize – for war crimes & climate crimes?”: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article19265 ). . However the number of countries whose territory is presently violently occupied by the US or its surrogates now totals 7, namely Occupied Haiti, Occupied Somalia, Occupied Palestine, Occupied Syria, Occupied Diego Garcia, Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan. Obama adumbrated expansion of the Afghanistan War and war in NW Pakistan and has lived up to his pro-war election promises – 2.4 million Pashtun refugees have been generated in NW Pakistan during Obama’s first 9 months in office. Obama’s Vice President Joe Biden has called for US intervention in the Sudan and this has been partially realized by an Israeli air raid on that sovereign nation. Obama continues extraordinary bellicosity towards peaceful, remote Iran. However it is Obama’s failure to address man-made climate change that will be his most deadly legacy – it will ultimately cause the deaths of literally billions of people in the Developing World.
According to Professor Jules Dufour (2007): “ the US operates and/or controls between 700 and 800 military bases worldwide…confirms the presence of US military personnel in 156 countries. The US Military has bases in 63 countries. Brand new military bases have been built since September 11, 2001 in seven countries. In total, there are 255,065 US military personnel deployed Worldwide. These facilities include a total of 845,441 different buildings and equipments. The underlying land surface is of the order of 30 million acres” (see “The worldwide network of US military bases”, Global Research: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5564 ). Pro-war Nobel Peace Price winner Obama heads up this global state terrorist network.
In summary, Barack Obama presides over a huge world-wide US war machine and the US Alliance under Obama is involved in the violent US or US surrogate occupation of 7 Occupied Territories. Obama has expanded war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and continues to threaten war on remote, peaceful Iran. However the US under Obama is a world leader in absolute greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution and annual per capita GHG pollution, and the failure of Obama to effectively tackle man-made global warming is contributing to a worsening climate genocide that is predicted to kill 10 billion non-Europeans this century.
Back in 2006, shortly after the inception of MWC News, it published an article by me entitled “Orwellian Bush War on Terror is a LIE “ (see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/7197/26/ ). The article compared the nightmare of Orwell’s novel “1984” with the reality of endless war permitting endless US occupation of a swathe of Muslim countries and commenced thus: “George Orwell described an “endless war” in his 1949 novel “1984” that has considerable similarities with the current “endless” and semantically absurd “War on Terror” announced by US President Bush in 2001 after the 9/11 atrocity … [“1984” involved] re-writing of the English language (as progressively reduced and simplified Newspeak) … untruth became truth (thus “war is peace, slavery is freedom, ignorance is strength … and 2 plus 2 does not equal 4”)”.
The shabby history of a century of awards of the Nobel Peace Prize to a succession of murderous, war-making US Presidents (as well as to other US war-makers, most notably Henry Kissinger) turns truth on its head after the fashion of Big Brother in George Orwell’s novel “1984” and is telling the world that “war is peace”.