So, Barack Obama got the Nobel Prize. Talk about giving the U.S. president an anticipatory prize for what he might accomplish…someday.
I know my scepticism may not be shared — some of my colleagues think I’m missing the promise of this hopeful gesture. Sure enough, Nobel committee chair Thorbjorn Jagland told the media that the prize is meant to help Obama “strengthen his role and his policy.”
Okay, I believe in self-fulfilling prophesies, too. But just hours after receiving the honour, the president was assembling his war council in the White House basement to get back to engineering hostilities in Afghanistan.
Peace prize in the morning military strategy in the afternoon.
Despite 21,000 new U.S. troops, things are not going well. Two weeks back, U.S. General Stanley McChrystal said in a leaked document that “the overall effort is deteriorating” and that if the allies didn’t reverse the momentum of Afghan insurgents, “the U.S. risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”
McChrystal’s pushing for more U.S. boots on the ground and because the president’s advisors are split on the issue of yet another escalation, Obama will be hunkered down probably for some time, trying to figure out if he should now spin the war less as an Afghan matter and more as a showdown with the Al Qaeda hardcore In Pakistan’s border regions.
So here’s a thought: Obama was handed the Nobel bouquet for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people.” How about trying a little of this medicine in Afghanistan?
Rather than pretending to “stabilize” a government in Kabul, established explicitly to exclude Pashtun nationalists, the Taliban and anyone else pissed off by the 2001 Western aerial bombardment of the country and subsequent occupation, the Nobel laureate could chance some conflict resolution.
In this, he’d have some good company there’s an army of foreign policy experts ready to advise on a negotiations for a power-sharing deal between insurgents and the faction in Kabul.
If this sounds freaky, try considering the options. Sure, counter-insurgencies can be successful — it just requires mass murder.
Here’s hoping the Nobel laurel goes to the White House guy’s head.[rssbreak]
