So I'm a bit slow on the uptake sometimes.
We decided to have a "war weekend" for no particular reason--maybe because of the news item about US military deaths in Afghanistan are double what they were last year at this time. Watched Platoon last night, started Jarhead this afternoon and will be progressing to Hurt Locker later (and possibly Tropic Thunder for comic relief if we have the time/energy).
I went to IMDB because I wanted some info on Brian Geraghty, who is in the latter two flicks, and saw he was in a short called Jake Gyllenhaal Challenges the Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize from this year. Of course I had to check it out:
It's now the 15th most popular short on IMDB, but has fewer than 4000 views on YouTube since January. I think we should help it go viral.
I'd intended to stop there, but something pissed me off about this video. It uses a slice of audio from President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize lecture (which he cribbed from MLK): Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.
That comes in the middle of this 3 graf passage:
We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.
I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there's nothing weak – nothing passive – nothing naïve – in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.
But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.
I'll ignore the misconceptions, cognitive dissonance and implicit American exceptionalism--let's leave it as an exercise for the student for now. I just wish he'd read more of Dr King's speech:
[M]an's proneness to engage in war is still a fact. But wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminated even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good. If we assume that life is worth living and that man has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war.
In a day when vehicles hurtle through outer space and guided ballistic missiles carve highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can claim victory in war. A so-called limited war will leave little more than a calamitous legacy of human suffering, political turmoil, and spiritual disillusionment...
Therefore, I venture to suggest to all of you and all who hear and may eventually read these words, that the philosophy and strategy of nonviolence become immediately a subject for study and for serious experimentation in every field of human conflict, by no means excluding the relations between nations.
I was not happy with Obama's prize, though I understand the rationale. It's never really a reward so much as an acknowledgment of the difficulties we try to overcome--sometimes it's for work already accomplished, sometimes it's an encouragement to people in positions to do good works to get to it. Many laureates are controversial, and some could be considered evil perpetrators of horrible crimes.
How did Roosevelt, Kissinger, de Klerk, Arafat, and Hume win when Schindler, Gandhi, Chavez, Biko, and Mitchell did not? It's all dependent on the times. With the exception of Roosevelt, the other winners shared the award with their opposite counterparts in conflict. Wholly natural when you consider that peace is not really unilateral.
Obama is not a surprising recipient of the Prize. He's in the
Roosevelt mold, an American president, not truly a man of peace but
someone who wields great power and has done some significant peaceful
work (i.e., a nuke treaty with Russia vs a treaty between Japan and
Russia). As our current executive observed, you don't negotiate with
al Qaeda, so he had nobody to share the Nobel with, which I think is
the greatest deficiency of the award last year. Unless he simply
withdraws our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan--not something he
appears inclined to do--the president won't createpeace.
Even though Barack clings to the idea of a smart war, a good war, a
just war, he could still do well to heed Martin's advice. Stop filling
the central casting role of Commander-in-Chief (as is so ably brought
home in War Made Easy). Establish a Department of Peace that would study peace and experiment to find better nonviolent solutions to the nation's and world's problems.
Then you will have come close to earning it, Mr President, and Jake Gyllenhaal can stand down.
ntodd
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