My thoughts on Obama’s Nobel are simple. It is all about Israel/Palestine and it is a good thing. It is an effort by the northern Europeans to give Obama political capital to put pressure on Israel. Period. Is it premature? Who cares. The Nobel people are trying to effect history. I hope they are effective. Obama secretly believes what Walt and Mearsheimer and Brzezinski and Carter say. He doesn’t have the political ability to say so. The Israel lobby has him chained to a radiator.
The Prize’s political resonance as an Israel/Palestine event can be glimpsed in two media responses yesterday. First, Andrea Mitchell (who is Jewish and married to Alan Greenspan, who said the Iraq war was about oil, which is very misleading) said on NBC Nightly News that the Nobel had been given to controversial figures in the past, including Jimmy Carter. This is an outrageous statement, and a smear. It makes me wonder whether Mitchell is a closet Zionist. (Yes I know, I wonder that about everyone.) Jimmy Carter won the prize, in 2002, partly because of the greatest achievement in peacemaking in the Middle East by the U.S., the Camp David accord of 1978. Yes it sold out the Palestinians, and Carter would make up for that problem through later efforts. Still, it was an international break through. To say he was controversial is pure slimeball reflection of the lobby’s rage at Jimmy Carter for his recent books in support of Palestinian human rights.
The second appearance was by David Brooks on NPR’s All Things Considered. I think David Brooks is a wonderful columnist. He’s smart and comfortable and insightful. He also hides the strength of his Jewish attachments. I have never heard him so angry as he was on this occasion. He mocked Obama, saying he should have gotten all five prizes this year, and said the prize was a "travesty." Then words to the effect that no one cares what "five guys in Norway" say about our foreign policy. The use of the street language, "five guys in Norway," from a columnist who is usually more dignified in his prose, was jarring.
Brooks said twice that the prize should go to the Iranian dissidents. The Iranian dissidents, who have even less of a track record than Obama (but yes more bravery, a lot of them).
Why is Brooks injecting Iran into this, repeatedly? Because he knows this is about pressure on Israel. He wants us to look at the real enemy, Iran.
This is a primal struggle in our politics, that the media never cover. It was what the McCain-Obama race was all about, whether we would put any pressure on Israel.
Brooks is, as he uncharacteristically admitted some months back, "gooey-eyed" about Israel, a country he has visited a dozen times. This is sorrowfully the essence of the neoconservative engagement in our politics, concern about Israel. And it was this as much as anything that the Nobel committee was recognizing: Obama ran as an antiwar candidate, having struck an anti-Iraq stance in ’02, and defeated two powerful inside pro-war candidates, both of them supported by neocons and their cousins the liberal hawks. That was a revolution in American politics, the end of the neocons. It is slow to be felt here, yes, because the Establishment is still possessed by the likes of David Brooks and Andrea Mitchell.
On the O’Reilly show last night Laura Ingrahm argued (to O’Reilly who also thought
the prize was not earned by Obama) the same “five guys in Norway” theme, which she
turned into her theme that the award demonstrated that Europeans like Obama because
he seems above mere American-centered politics, while Americans need to be concerned about themselves–and hence (unstated, but implied) Obama is not representing American interests. She never mentioned the I-P situation, nor did O’Reilly. Articles online I read stated when this was still-breaking news that the prize was given to Obama
to support his pro-World rhetoric (as distinguished most obviously by Shrub’s 8 years), or conversely, (a la O’Reilly) that he’s been all hat, no beef, i.e., that soaring rhetoric is no valid reason for giving out the award–with neither side mentioning the I-P conflict.
My own opinion is close to Phil’s as to the motive for giving the award to Obama, especially since nuclear arms, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan-Pakistan, the international military industrial complex, oil access, etc all cannot be addressed practically without
addressing Israel’s key role. The elephant is still in the room. I wish I had the faith
Phil has that PEP will subside. The neocons just change their uniform–and not even that much–and continue in high places with impunity.
“. I think David Brooks is a wonderful columnist. He’s smart and comfortable and insightful.”
You are such a suckup Phil, when it comes to fellow pundits. You once called Chris Matthews a “genius”–I find it almost impossible to watch the guy. You literally feel your IQ dropping every second you listen to the stupidity flowing out of his mouth.
Glenn Greenwald recently devoted a column to the garbage Brooks spewed out about Iraq’s WMD’s and the French skepticism regarding the case for war back in early 2003.
Brooks is only smart in that utterly superficial way you have to be smart to stay a respected Washington insider. He knows who he has to flatter and who he has to diss.
Brooks also wrote a column in the fall of 2003 saying that our troops would have to do terrible things in order to win, meaning atrocities. And he was supporting this as a course of action.
Brooks is a weasel, a courtier. He wants to be liked by the right people–his whole career is based on that principle.
“I think David Brooks is a wonderful columnist. He’s smart and comfortable and insightful.”
Yeah, and you’re still not sure Vince Foster wasn’t murdered and Hilary didn’t kill those two boys on the railroad tracks. What’s even worse, I think you are saying that about Brooks in full knowledge of what he wrote in the drum-up to the War on Iraq.
Warmonger Wins Peace Prize
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
link to counterpunch.org
“He doesn’t have the political ability to say so. The Israel lobby has him chained to a radiator. “
Kissenger almost said as much to Nixon in this remarkable memo attempting to deter Israel from obtaining nuclear weapons (h/t lewrockwell.com):
On the other hand, if we withhold the Phantoms and they make this fact public in the United States, enormous political pressure will be mounted on us. We will be in an indefensible position if we cannot state why we are withholding the planes. Yet if we explain our position publicly, we will be the ones to make Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons public with all the international consequences this entails.
link to nixon.archives.gov
(PDF)
I think the Nobel Peace Prize should have gone to Izzeldin Abu Laish, the Palestinian physician who works in Israeli hospitals and works ardently for peace between Israelis and Arabs.
He was on-air with an Israeli journalist during Israel’s assault on Gaza when his daughters were killed by Israeli fire.
I was at a conference where Izzeldin spoke to a predominantly Jewish crowd. Not a work of rancor crossed his lips; he insisted on ‘waging peace,’ never vengeance. He repeated that, as a physician whose life’s work it is to heal and save life, it would be irrational for him to succumb to hate, which stifles life and kills. Izzeldin persisted in this explanation of his inner dynamic even after three Jewish members of the audience declared that they were Holocaust survivors, and that it was the Palestinians’ fault that they were still refugees.
It is painful to contemplate that anyone would use the death of Neda and the dissidents in Iran as a rallying point and pretend they are about peacemaking. It increases my suspicion that the election upheaval in Iran was, at least in some part, orchestrated by US-Israeli infiltrators.
I would agree wholeheartedly. Giving Obama the Nobel Peace Prize in some vague hopes of influencing him to be sincere is a nice thought, but wouldn’t it be nice if that medal maybe went to someone who had earned it?
If it went to an American, then someone like Greg Mortenson would have been an infinitely better recipient that Obama. And the money would have gone to a great cause.
It increases my suspicion that the election upheaval in Iran was, at least in some part, orchestrated by US-Israeli infiltrators.
Your suspicions are warranted: link to informationclearinghouse.info
It increases my suspicion that the election upheaval in Iran was, at least in some part, orchestrated by US-Israeli infiltrators.
Liz Cheney worked with Elliot Abrams in 2006 as part of the Iran Syria Operations Group, technically part of the State Department, on using the media in Iran to polarize the country. They worked out of the same Pentagon offices as the infamous Office of Special Plans that probably produced the fraudulent Iraq WMD.
Anyone who thinks the flare-up in Iran was just democracy in action needs to pass me the joint NOW.
Carter’s choice for the Nobel Prize in 2002 was controversial because it reflected a rebuke of Bush who was the American president at the time. Most commentators viewed it as such and that was the source of the controversy. This was before the “Peace not apartheid” book which came out a few years later and it was the anti Bush aspect of the prize which was the essence of the controversy to which Andrea Mitchell was probably referring. When you view everything through the Israel-Palestine prism, sometimes, Mister Weiss, the image is distorted.
This would be a rebuke of Bush policies like allowing Israel under the table to break their treaty arrangements and escalate their ethnic cleansing and colonization of the West Bank? Or Bush policies of distributing American arms to countries which are openly hostile and war-seeking toward their neighbors, including Israel?
I’m sure there are plenty of Bush policies that you wish to rebuke him for, Chaos, but the fact is that the Nobel prize for peace was announced in October of 2002, as it was becoming increasingly clear that Bush intended to launch the war against Iraq, which Carter opposed. And this was the source of the controversy that the Nobel committe was awarding Carter as a way of signing up against the war against Iraq.
So what, exactly? By your logic the Nobel committee has done a complete 180 and is signing up for escalation? Because that’s what Obama is talking about now.
That is your interpretation of what Obama stands for. The Nobel committee sees the potential of his rhetoric and wishes to encourage him to follow the rhetoric with action. As Noriega who didn’t smell sulfur anymore after following Obama to the podium at the UN the Nobel committee is pleased to be in the post Bush era. Personally I don’t think it was a great choice, largely premature and it will not help Obama with white voters in America, who view the UN and the Nobel committee as European effete snobs, who don’t understand what America really needs.
I would have preferred an Iranian dissident, but you would see that as a drum beat for war against the Iranian regime and I suspect that’s why the Nobel committee didn’t head in that direction.
Yes well, lucky for the Nobel committee they live in a country that hasn’t sent tens of thousands of their compatriots off to fight two “wars on terror” against civilian populations. For that matter, they’re lucky enough to live in a country with shameful mortality rates and a complete lack of universal health care whatsoever.
Gee, I’m glad to have you around to tell me what I’m thinking! Kind of nice to see Zionists branching out a bit more often from merely browbeating their fellow Jews into conformity and falsified historical mythology.
Pingback: I was surprised as anyone else at the ‘… « Talk Islam
MR. FISH’S CONTRIBUTION
Pingback: ‘The mistake of the bright is worth 1,000 mistakes’
Andrea Mitchell is not in the closet. Her unbalanced coverage when ever the I/P conflict is even whispered about on MSNBC is apparent. Brooks is almost in the same league as Kristol.
Now I am not sure just what that group of “five guys in Norway” had in mind when they shoved Obama in a corner and announced the prize, but it sure had a lot of people I know saying “he did not deserve it” A real theme song. So not sure what those “five guys in Norway’ were up to.
If Mitchell and Brooks are really concerned about Israel they should do what they can to be more fair in their reporting about the issue and do what they can to encourage the government of Israel to start abiding by the same demands that they expect their neighbors to abide by.