Know Comment: At least he won the Nobel Peace Prize
The final, dismal scorecard that Obama is turning in today wouldn’t win him a local cookie-baking award from the Girl Scouts of America, never mind a global peace prize.
By DAVID M. WEINBERGUpdated: JANUARY 19, 2017 22:11US President Barack Obama (R) and Defense Secretary Ash Carter meet at the Pentagon(photo credit: OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO / PETE SOUZA)
A mere eight months after he took up residence in the White House, the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to award its coveted Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama, “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”“Obama has created a new climate in international politics,” opined the Nobel Prize Committee. “Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts... Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened...” Etc.That was in October 2009. Since then, it’s been all downhill.The final, dismal scorecard that Obama is turning in today wouldn’t win him a local cookie-baking award from the Girl Scouts of America, never mind a global peace prize.Vladimir Putin’s Russia is swashbuckling at will across Eastern Europe and the Middle East, making a mockery of Obama’s supposedly genius “multilateral diplomacy” as well as Barack’s much-ballyhooed “reset” in relations with Russia. The Russian Air Force dominates the Baltics and the skies of Syria. Putin is the fulcrum of multilateral moves in Europe, the Mideast and Asia, with America sidelined or irrelevant.But at least Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.Iran is on a hegemonic arc toward imperial rule across vast swaths of land, from the Persian Gulf to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the Arabian Peninsula. It is actively subverting the stability of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Israel, while leading the slaughter in Syria.This is thanks to Obama, who cut a sweetheart deal with the ayatollahs providing Iran with renewed international legitimacy – without Tehran having to neither recant or fully disassemble its illicit nuclear bomb program, nor forswear its support for terrorism and revolution across the region. Obama also afforded Iran hundreds of billions of dollars in financial relief, and sent his secretary of state to drum up big business deals for the mullahs.But gee wiz, Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.ISIS graduated from being a junior varsity team to a global jihadist menace on Obama’s watch. It grew from an intra-Arab threat that was “only” committing genocide against Shi’ites, Yazidis, Christians and other Mideast minorities into an Islamist juggernaut that is inspiring terrorism across Europe and North America.
Obama never could bring himself to genuinely condemn “Islamic terrorism” by name, never mind truly lead a determined international military campaign against ISIS.But thank G-d Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.Under Obama’s enlightened nose, the Syrian civil war has been allowed to metastasize into a mega-war crime conflict involving dozens of countries and hundreds of militias, with half a million Syrians butchered and half the population forced from their homes.Millions of Syrian refugees have flooded into neighboring countries and into Europe, destabilizing every country along the way, and leading to the rise of ultra-right politics in these places.Russia, Iran and Hezbollah have taken advantage of the situation to train their troops and test their weapons – on rebels only half-heartedly backed by a Western “coalition” that Obama never really formed. The Iranian axis has entrenched itself for further conquests, including an inevitable assault on Israel.Obama has blathered aimlessly about Syria, including the drawing of ephemeral lines in the sand, only to shamelessly erase them and drag American diplomatic credibility into the dung heap. If words were barrel bombs, Obama would be Bashar Assad.But let’s not forget that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.In Egypt, Obama enthusiastically embraced the freedom-fighting Facebook and Twitter youth, then seconds later cuddled with the Muslim Brotherhood government that extinguished their hopes. The stalwart Mubarak government was flippantly abandoned, and the stabilizing Sisi government cold-shouldered.No wonder that Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is purchasing Russian arms, and looking to Israel for help in combating al-Qaida in Sinai. In the many exit interviews Obama has given to the (typically fawning) press, he remains arrogantly unrepentant about all this.But Obama never errs. After all, he won the Nobel Peace Prize.Perhaps Obama’s greatest success has been turning Israel into the planet’s black sheep, leading to his last-minute spanking of Israel and pumping-up of the Palestinians, in partnership with the most morally corrupt institution on the globe – the ghoulish United Nations.It is maddening to hear Obama and John Kerry anguish obsessively day after day, minute after minute, right down to their dying hours in office, about Judea and Samaria and the peccadilloes of Prime Minister Netanyahu, while insolently referencing nonexistent “massive and illegal” Israeli construction surges in the biblical cradle of Jewish civilization.What of Palestinian intransigence and bloodthirstiness? What of Russian/Iranian/Syrian barbarism? What of North Korean and Chinese belligerency? No big deal. For the insanely possessed Obama, nothing is equal in perfidy or peril to those damn settlements in Samaria! Perhaps this partially explains why Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.Saddest of all, is the way in which Obama successfully has splintered the global Jewish community by driving a false and insidious discourse about right-wing Israeli obstinacy and iniquitous settlements. Obama has legitimized a demonizing narrative that pits Jewish liberals against conservatives, and which saps the strength of the Jewish people. Obama’s “daylight” has turned into a Jewish nightmare.The man leaves the West, America, the State of Israel and the Jewish people weaker than ever, with our common enemies standing stronger and taller.Isn’t it wonderful that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize?www.davidmweinberg.com