On the Nobel Prize for Occasional Peace (Matt Taibbi)

[kpete]

On the Nobel Prize for Occasional Peace
Matt Taibbi

.............

More likely the Obama critics who believe that Obama won this award for not being George Bush are right as well. The problem the international community had with Bush wasn’t that he believed in war and the use of force, it was that he believed in the unilateral use of these things. Bush did not believe in the use of force as an expression of a whole society’s values, he believed in it as an expression of his own machismo.

He was like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove, flying through history with a bomb between his legs, shouting “Yee, haw!” It wasn’t so much that this behavior was wrong, it was just unseemly. He was like the drunk at a Victorian tea party who during the soup course makes jokes about the hostess’s secret pregnancy in France. We Westerners, we just don’t do things like that. Decorum, sir, decorum!

.............................

This is what Barack Obama did to “earn” the Nobel Prize. He put the benevolent face back on things. He is a good-looking black law professor with an obvious bent for dialogue and discussion and inclusion. That he hasn’t actually reversed any of Bush’s more notorious policies — hasn’t closed Guantanamo Bay, hasn’t ended secret detentions, hasn’t amped down Iraq or Afghanistan — is another matter. What he has done is remove the stink of unilateralism from those policies.

They’re not crazy-ass, blatantly illegal, lunatic rampages anymore, but carefully-considered, collectively-run peacekeeping actions, prosecuted with meaningful input from our allies.

You see the difference? The Nobel committee sure did!

more:
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/10/13/on-the-nobel-prize-for-occasional-peace/

[AllentownJake]

1. Matt Taibbi under the bus in 3....2....1....

[Subdivisions]

10. Funny how that works, huh? One minute someone is a hero when

that someone is advancing our cause. The next minute he/she is vilified for straying from our pre-determined program for him/her.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

11. Al Gore got the Nobel Prize for "losing an election, growing a beard and making a movie"?

Also he writes: "The Nobel Peace Prize long ago ceased to be an award given to people who really spend their whole careers agitating for peace."


The first NPP was given in 1901. In 1906, Teddy Roosevelt won it for helping negotiate an end to the Russo Japanese War. But he did *not* "spend his whole career agitating for peace". He would be the first to say so.

[TwilightGardener]

2. Obama hasn't "amped down" Iraq? Really?

And as for the other "to do" things Taibbi mentioned--if Obama still hasn't done them after three or four years, then we can all bitch. After 9 months--it's a little early to complain that he hasn't completed his full agenda yet.

[AllentownJake]

3. Forgive me for be a cynic

I like the fact there are reporters out there on a semi-regular basis reminding the public what the agenda is.

[TwilightGardener]

4. I expect criticism for our President, and reminders of his promises, but I like it to be fair.

Taibbi says that the Nobel committee is awarding Obama simply for putting a kinder, friendlier face on Bush's policies. I think they awarded Obama for changing direction on international relations and on nukes, even if we aren't "there" yet, but that's just me. But unless Bush's bad policies remain in place at the end of Obama's term (and they might be trickier to reverse than we realize), we can't say he's the same as Bush. Taibbi is disparaging Obama for an agenda that hasn't been fulfilled yet, and I don't think that's fair criticism.

[AllentownJake]

5. Taibbi is pissed off at the administration over other things

He should stick to those other things, he's got it a little bit more nail on the head there. That being said, I'm sure the other things have jaded him on anything else.

[LynneSin]

7. The the reporter should have remmeber what Obama said during the campaigns

I'm a big Matt Tabbini fan. I get Rolling Stone magazine so I can read his articles! But Obama never EVER made a promise that this war would end as soon as he was sworn into office - I think the answer was 18 months.

Gitmo is still open but efforts are made to go thru who is in there and either release them or give them a trial. I'm not sure what is happening with the warfront but I know that talks are going on so hopefully we can stick with the 18 month plan.

[redqueen]

8. Yeah, closing 100 bases, withdrawing thousands of troops, reducing contractors by 30K...

none of that apparently counts for shit.

[geek tragedy]

6. Taibbi is lying about Iraq. We are conducting a HUGE amp down

there, as anyone who reads the NY Times would know.

[lunatica]

9. What did Taibbi say about Bush in October 2001?

When Bush had been President for eight months...

To be really fair, Bush hadn't shown his real colors by that point. He still wasn't a 'war' President, although 9/11 had already happened to help his 'trifecta' agenda. The country was still in pretty good condition and the economy was in the best condition it had been in decades after Clinton left it with a surplus.

It's stupid to summarize someone's Presidency in the first months. Just stupid. It's not like there's any training anywhere to be President. There have only been 44 men who have held the job, and some didn't make it past the first couple of years, so where do they get trained for the job? I haven't seen any of the living Presidents giving each other any advice, though I'm sure they may get asked for it.

In the job I have now it takes a couple of years before you feel comfortable with your knowledge about how to do it. It's burdened with acronyms and quite heavy with layers of policy and rules. It's work that takes memory and to build institutional memory takes time. A couple of years actually. So I'm willing to give the President a bit of a break when it comes to getting his true footing. A bit.