Holy Internet Memes, Batman!
It’s official. The action to protest the nomination of Bush and Blair for the Nobel Peace Prize has now gotten more than 1,000 senders in the first 7 days. And just 700 of them are just over the past weekend. It’s taking off!
What’s it all about? Right-wing Norwegian MP Harald Tom Nesvik announced last week that he had nominated Tony Blair and George W. Bush for the Nobel Peace Prize. What for you ask? For war! No, seriously. Nesvik nominated them for "their decisive action against terrorism, something I believe in the future will be the greatest threat to peace." In a literally Orwellian fashion, Nesvik has announced that worldwide perpetual warfare is … work for peace!
You can find out more about the nomination and take action to protest it on the action page. Join us! Resistance is futile!
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As contrary as it sounds, in the world in which we live, you do have to fight for peace.
And sadly, there are people in the world today who care only for their viewpoint ,and are willing to kill themselves and countless others to put that viewpoint forward. Rational, calm and logical debate is not allowed into such equations, as much as the ‘civilised’ wish it were otherwise.
If killing 1 man saves the lives of 1,000, is it not a greater crime against humanity to let that one man live?
Worldwide perpetual warfare this is not - gain some perspective and engage the brain before spouting sensationlism ;)
Gith has accused the campaign against the Nobel Peace Prize nomination of George W. Bush and Tony Blair of (1) an unreflective pacifism that fails to understand that we sometimes need to fight for peace, and (2) sensationalism which distorts the nature of the current conflict.
These complaints are based on a few key misunderstandings, first about the nature of the present war, and second about the nature of the Nobel Peace Prize.
First, it is simply not the case that claims about worldwide perpetual warfare are nothing more than unthinking sensationalism. Rather, this is the Bush administration’s stated plan. Dick Cheney has literally said that the present so-called "War on Terrorism" may never end, at least not in our lifetimes. And it clearly is expanding, open-ended, global militarism. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al have stated very clearly that they will not limit the war to Afghanistan. They have already expanded and redefined U.S. involvement in the Colombian civil war (we are now explicitly providing counter-insurgency support to the Bogot´ government). They have already put into place U.S. military intervention in the Phillippines. And they’ve threatend Somalia, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea with increasing belligerence. Sensationalism this is not: it’s a straightforward statement of what the U.S. government itself has said it intends to do.
Gith also apparently believes that the present warfare strategy of Bush et al will actually have the consequence of increasing overall world peace, ostensibly by suppressing future terrorist violence. Suffice it to say that from what we know of the past 50 years of US military operations, this just ain’t the case. Even if the present strategy could contain international terrorism, and I don’t think it can, it has already left thousands of dead in its wake - some of them combatants, others of them civilians murdered in what we politely refer to as "collateral damage." The U.S.’s military strategy in Afghanistan and elsewhere is simply not able to "kill one in order to save a thousand," because aerial bombardment is not suited for precision attacks. Nor, for that matter, is supporting domestic warlords who had themselves slaughtered uncountable innocents for 4 years before the rise of the Taliban reign of terror.
I do not accept pacifism as a universal solution to the world’s problems. I believe firmly in the right of forcible self-defense and that armed resistence is sometimes necessary. However, whatever armed resistence is, it’s not peace, and whatever it is, the U.S.’s worldwide militaristic campaign goes far beyond mere resistence, far beyond even retaliation (since the only people to be retaliated against are those in al-Qaeda who played a role in the attacks), and into the realm of aggressive violence. The worldwide campaign that the U.S. government is rushing headlong into will not defend us from terrorism - it eradicates none of the root causes of ongoing terrorist power, and in fact only worsens them. It will not justly retaliate for terrorist acts already inflicted - that can only come about through apprehending and trying al-Qaeda terrorists before an open and just tribunal. It will only involve us further in a cycle of violence in which a lot of innocent people are caught in the crossfire.
Second, concerning the nature of the Nobel Peace Prize. Are there cases where killing one person may save 1,000, where the body-count calculus shows it’s better to start a war than to sit back? In some cases there sure are. But that’s not what the Nobel Prize is about in the first place. Alfred Nobel specified that the Peace Prize laureate "shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." The Bush and Blair campaign of endless global militarism, even if it could succeed in saving more lives than it takes, does not satisfy any of these criteria. It doesn’t even come close. It directly contradicts them. They have shoved through an agenda of aggressive unilateral militarism, repudiation of international peace congresses, and massive increase in the size and scope of standing armies. War may do a lot of things, but no matter what war does, it is never peace. The Nobel Peace Prize is, in intent as well as practice, a starry-eyed, idealist prize committed to a utopian vision of world peace, and Bush and Blair do not meet its objectives. And thank God for that. We have a world which is more than full enough of "pragmatists" and "realists" who take up the tools of the most appalling violence not out of any kind of malice, but because they honestly can’t imagine a world that works any other way. And we desperately need some starry-eyed idealists out there who are willing to confront that and affirm that the cycle of warfare and global violence is not the only way possible.
It is appalling that George W. Bush and Tony Blair would be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize. War mongering does not represent peace or even a desire for peace. Wars that the US currently supports involve disenfranchised and poverty stricken peoples as in Afghanistan and illegally occupied Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian lands with known goals by Israel to conquer from the Brook of the Nile to the Euphrates; hence the latter is a threat to Iraq, a country that is forbidden to arm itself against the rogue country of Israel! A country that has illegally occupied several countries with impunity and with the unquestionable assistance of the United States.
The United States does not appear to want peace in the Middle East because it continues to fund Israel billions of dollars no matter what it does, no matter how many people it kills and no matter how many illegal settlements it builds or how many countries it illegally occupies. And Tony Blair seems to support anything the United States does for whatever reasons, despite the fact more and more of the English people are very concerned about the protracted war plans anywhere, said to possibly last all our lifetimes!
It is a known fact nothing can be solved by arrogantly ignoring causes of terrorism, and in the case of September 11th 2001, it was very clear. It had nothing to do with our own freedoms but the foreign policies of the US that alienate millions of people who have a right to defend themselves against illegal occupations.
It also should be pointed out that the elected zionist political supporters of Israel in the United States are greedy and readily will accept bribes rather than stand up for what is right. They are more interested in the money and perks and incredible retirement benefits than integrity, and they will sell their souls in order to keep those benefits.
Last but not least, it is time for Americans of all religous faiths to realize that a loving God does not support theft of land (thou shalt not steal) or one people being chosen over another as in the eyes of God we are all equal.
A response to the last writer: When you talk about killing one man to save the lives of thousands, what exactly are you referring to?
Are you referring to the political assassinations instigated and funded by the CIA in the ‘70’s, killing Salvador Allende (Pinochet later killed approx. 3-4000)? Are you referring to the Vietnam War? Nicaragua? El Salvador? Colombia? All countries in which the US has been involved, and killed not just one man, but thousands, casualties ad hoc, with reference to some kind of greater evil…(whether that be communism, drugs, free speech).
Are trying to persuade anybody that any END justifies any MEAN?
Anyway, Nobel fabricated Dynamite, the peace prize money is interest rates from his business. I guess it’s only fair that the Godfather of military spending gets the prize. Long live Bush! Heil!
J
P.S. Resurrect Ghandi! By the way, somebody saw him in Nashville last week…!