He never should have said what he said during the presentation ceremony of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway. In front of legions of journalists, President Barack Obama uttered that fateful phrase, “Sometimes war is necessary.” He tried to justify the shipment of 30,000 soldiers from his country to Afghanistan. After his screw up, he tried to rectify the situation with some sound judgment: “War is never glorious.” True. Shame that it did no good to dispel the wrong.
A head of state cannot justify a military conflict with an incalculable balance of deaths without offending humanity and the same public opinion that pays for the terrible holocaust. He should defend his nation if it is attacked and not turn into an apologist for war, which will always be immoral, tactless, barbaric and a collective murder that will never have valid justification and is a fantastic business for arms dealers.
I deplore Obama’s bad timing. The president is a Democrat; an educated man on whom rhetoric has played a dirty trick. The essential virtue of a head of state is verbal prudence. As Lawrence Durrell wrote in “Mountolive,” “Words kill love as they kill everything else.” To top it all off, Obama chose the worst venue for such a fateful phrase–the presentation of the Nobel Prizes, which are given precisely to those who have distinguished themselves by their actions in favor of world peace.
There is an evident contradiction between receiving the Nobel Peace Prize and ordering the mobilization of 30,000 soldiers to the stake in Afghanistan. This is undoing with one hand what has been done with the other. In terms of Obama’s record, escalating the war is an act that history will not forgive. Something contradictory must have passed through his mind when in the same ceremony he affirmed, “I’m responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill, and some will be killed.”
There will always be more than enough useless justifications of war. They are all immoral, except when they deal with a legitimate defense against aggression. Such was the case with Hitler and his intention to dominate Europe. The Bible says, “By their deeds you shall know them.” One must await Obama’s future conduct to know if he is a true activist of universal understanding or a hawk in the style of some of his predecessors. I think the former will be true, for the sake of humanity. I just hope I’m not mistaken.
Surely you know that the U.S. has increased its presence in Columbia by gaining access to seven Columbian military bases and..
Published on December 19th 2009, by James Suggett – Venezuelanalysis.com
Last year, the U.S. military re-activated the Fourth Naval Fleet of its Southern Command. In October of this year it signed a military pact to use seven Colombian military bases as a launching pad for “full spectrum operations” across the South American continent, according to U.S. Air Force budgetary documents.
The U.S. has had a “contract” with the Dutch government since 1999 to use air and seaports in the Dutch Antilles for what the U.S. military calls “advanced operations,” said Golinger, who has used the U.S. Freedom of Information Act many times to find information on U.S. intervention in Latin America.
Since the creation of the ALBA in 2004, the re-election of Chavez to a second presidential term in 2006, and Chavez’s increasing advocacy of “21st Century Socialism”, the U.S. has placed more than a hundred warships in Aruba and Curacao, an increase of 1000%, said Golinger, holding up newspapers from 2005 and 2006 in Curacao as evidence of her assertion.
Chávez: Netherlands and U.S. Planning Military Aggression Against Venezuela from Dutch Antilles
Shortly after Chavez made his announcements in Copenhagen, U.S.-Venezuelan lawyer Eva Golinger testified to the truth of Chavez’s accusations on a nightly Venezuelan talk show.
Prospects of Obama turning out to be a highly principled man as President look slim to none, I hope I’m wrong but it doesn’t look good right now.