The recent
awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to 17 year-old Pakistani activist Malala
Yousafzai have stirred grumbles in several quarters, with many claiming that
she was gifted the “holy grail” simply because she was shot by the Taliban.
“Tell me,
would you have known Malala if she was shot by a United States drone,” posed
Mohammed Wehliye, a Gulf-based Kenyan banking executive. “Do you know who
Nabila Rehman is? Her family and folks were killed by an American drone and
despite raising her voice, the Western media and governments ignored her”.
The awarding
of Malala, whose case is an example of thousands of others in Afghanistan, Iraq
and Gaza, comes at time when there have been calls to the Norwegian Nobel
Committee to strip US President Barack Obama of the Nobel Prize he won in 2008 given
the bloody wars that he is currently spearheading across the globe.
In fact,
many have argued, the committee went against the will of the award founder Alfred
Nobel who categorically declared that the prize should be granted to “someone
who has made very outstanding achievements for the promotion of world peace in
the previous year”.
Barack Obama
was barely in office for eight months and the only global piece he had promoted
remained in a mirage coloured in poetic rhetoric, epitomized by a speech he
delivered in Cairo themed on improving West-Arab World relations.
But the
reality of this lie would be manifested a few years later after the newly
hailed “angel of peace” spearheaded wars that ended bombing six Arab nations,
killing and maiming tens of thousands of civilians the process.
The seventh
one, Syria, was only saved by a defiant Russia, only for Uncle Sam to later
find an excuse in Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to rain down her
bombs.
Those
clamouring for Obama’s award revocation have claimed that he Nobel Peace
Laureate to have spilled the most blood after being declared winner.
While the
Nobel Committee said that during his consideration “emphasis was also given to
his support-in word and deed-for the vision of a world free from nuclear
weapons”, Obama’s regime have been increasing the nuclear development budget
over the years against a backdrop of protests from the opposition and global
peace lobby groups.
A few weeks
ago, The New York Times reported that
the Obama administration is planning to spend $1 trillion dollars, a
conservative estimate according to experts, to upgrade the country’s nuclear
weapons capabilities. The authors of the analytical article clearly indicated
that America was slowly preparing for a possible future nuclear war, especially
given the rise of Russian and Chinese influence in the global arena.
“With Russia
on the warpath, China pressing its own territorial claims and Pakistan
expanding its arsenal, the overall chances for Mr. Obama’s legacy of
disarmament look increasingly dim,” the Times
article proclaimed.
Expected to
spend at least $355 billion in the first ten years according to Congressional
Budget Office estimates, the plan focusses on developing and deploying nukes
that are more powerful and reliable but smaller than the current warheads.
While this will go far in serving Obama’s public rhetoric of reducing nuclear
tonnage in US stockpiles, the system will yield more destructive warheads in
terms of targeting capabilities and delivery systems.
The fact
that two powerful but controversial Americans never had their Nobel Peace Prize
medals reposed might demoralize the current campaigns to have Obama’s Nobel
revoked.
Theodore
Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States and the first
statesman to be awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize, triggered a lot controversy
with the Norwegian Left branding him a “military madman” imperialist who
furthered the bloody American conquest of Philippines. The awarding of US
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who have advocated and led a bloody
military campaign against Vietnam, in 1973 led to the resignation of two Nobel
Committee members in protest.
But the fact
that these individual’s names still remain engraved among the list of other
“angels of peace” like Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King
Junior is enough to make Obama rest easy, assured that regardless of the number
of countries he bombs his legacy as a peace maker is already cast in gold.
The story was first published in The Standard opinion pages
