http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5134/war_peace_and_obamas_nobel/
November 5, 2009
War, Peace and Obama’s Nobel
By Noam Chomsky

The hopes and prospects for peace aren’t well aligned -- not even close.
The task is to bring them nearer. Presumably that was the intent of the
Nobel Peace Prize committee in choosing President Barack Obama.

The prize “seemed a kind of prayer and encouragement by the Nobel
committee for future endeavor and more consensual American leadership,”
Steven Erlanger and Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote in The New York Times.

The nature of the Bush-Obama transition bears directly on the likelihood
that the prayers and encouragement might lead to progress.

The Nobel committee’s concerns were valid. They singled out Obama’s
rhetoric on reducing nuclear weapons.

Right now Iran’s nuclear ambitions dominate the headlines. The warnings
are that Iran may be concealing something from the International Atomic
Energy Agency and violating U.N. Security Council Resolution 1887,
passed last month and hailed as a victory for Obama’s efforts to contain
Iran.

Meanwhile, a debate continues on whether Obama’s recent decision to
reconfigure missile-defense systems in Europe is a capitulation to the
Russians or a pragmatic step to defend the West from Iranian nuclear attack.

Silence is often more eloquent than loud clamor, so let us attend to
what is unspoken.

Amid the furor over Iranian duplicity, the IAEA passed a resolution
calling on Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and open
its nuclear facilities to inspection.

The United States and Europe tried to block the IAEA resolution, but it
passed anyway. The media virtually ignored the event.

The United States assured Israel that it would support Israel’s
rejection of the resolution -- reaffirming a secret understanding that
has allowed Israel to maintain a nuclear arsenal closed to international
inspections, according to officials familiar with the arrangements.
Again, the media were silent.

Indian officials greeted U.N. Resolution 1887 by announcing that India
“can now build nuclear weapons with the same destructive power as those
in the arsenals of the world’s major nuclear powers,” the Financial
Times reported.

Both India and Pakistan are expanding their nuclear weapons programs.
They have twice come dangerously close to nuclear war, and the problems
that almost ignited this catastrophe are very much alive.

Obama greeted Resolution 1887 differently. The day before he was awarded
the Nobel Prize for his inspiring commitment to peace, the Pentagon
announced it was accelerating delivery of the most lethal non-nuclear
weapons in the arsenal: 13-ton bombs for B-2 and B-52 stealth bombers,
designed to destroy deeply hidden bunkers shielded by 10,000 pounds of
reinforced concrete.

It’s no secret the bunker busters could be deployed against Iran.

Planning for these “massive ordnance penetrators” began in the Bush
years but languished until Obama called for developing them rapidly when
he came into office.

Passed unanimously, Resolution 1887 calls for the end of threats of
force and for all countries to join the NPT, as Iran did long ago. NPT
non-signers are India, Israel and Pakistan, all of which developed
nuclear weapons with U.S. help, in violation of the NPT.

Iran hasn’t invaded another country for hundreds of years -- unlike the
United States, Israel and India (which occupies Kashmir, brutally).

The threat from Iran is minuscule. If Iran had nuclear weapons and
delivery systems and prepared to use them, the country would be vaporized.

To believe Iran would use nuclear weapons to attack Israel, or anyone,
“amounts to assuming that Iran’s leaders are insane” and that they look
forward to being reduced to “radioactive dust,” strategic analyst
Leonard Weiss observes, adding that Israel’s missile-carrying submarines
are “virtually impervious to preemptive military attack,” not to speak
of the immense U.S. arsenal.

In naval maneuvers in July, Israel sent its Dolphin class subs, capable
of carrying nuclear missiles, through the Suez Canal and into the Red
Sea, sometimes accompanied by warships, to a position from which they
could attack Iran -- as they have a “sovereign right” to do, according
to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.

Not for the first time, what is veiled in silence would receive
front-page headlines in societies that valued their freedom and were
concerned with the fate of the world.

The Iranian regime is harsh and repressive, and no humane person wants
Iran -- or anyone else -- to have nuclear weapons. But a little honesty
would not hurt in addressing these problems.

The Nobel Peace Prize, of course, is not concerned solely with reducing
the threat of terminal nuclear war, but rather with war generally, and
the preparation for war. In this regard, the selection of Obama raised
eyebrows, not least in Iran, surrounded by U.S. occupying armies.

On Iran’s borders in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, Obama has escalated
Bush’s war and is likely to proceed on that course, perhaps sharply.

Obama has made clear that the United States intends to retain a
long-term major presence in the region. That much is signaled by the
huge city-within-a city called “the Baghdad Embassy,” unlike any embassy
in the world.

Obama has announced the construction of mega-embassies in Islamabad and
Kabul, and huge consulates in Peshawar and elsewhere.

Nonpartisan budget and security monitors report in Government Executive
that the “administration’s request for $538 billion for the Defense
Department in fiscal 2010 and its stated intention to maintain a high
level of funding in the coming years put the president on track to spend
more on defense, in real dollars, than any other president has in one
term of office since World War II. And that’s not counting the
additional $130 billion the administration is requesting to fund the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, with even more war spending
slated for future years.”

The Nobel Peace Prize committee might well have made truly worthy
choices, prominent among them the remarkable Afghan activist Malalai Joya.

This brave woman survived the Russians, and then the radical Islamists
whose brutality was so extreme that the population welcomed the Taliban.
Joya has withstood the Taliban and now the return of the warlords under
the Karzai government.

Throughout, Joya worked effectively for human rights, particularly for
women; she was elected to parliament and then expelled when she
continued to denounce warlord atrocities. She now lives underground
under heavy protection, but she continues the struggle, in word and
deed. By such actions, repeated everywhere as best we can, the prospects
for peace edge closer to hopes.

--
Dan Clore

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