Thursday, August 9, 2012

Barack Obama: Judge, Jury and Executioner




In 2009 Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. He now resides on a list which includes such names as Martin Luther King Jr, Mother Teresa and Desmond Tutu. However there is a massive difference between these winners and the current President of the United States. The ideology that these people preached was of peace. Now Obamaniacs may resent this view but the Obama administration has not been the peace maker much of the world expected. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict still rages, the Syrian uprising has claimed tens of thousands of lives and the tensions between Pakistan and the US are at an all time high. President Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize after only being in office for nine months and there were many people who were astounded that the Prize went to him. I also wondered how they could pick a candidate who appeared to have done nothing, said a lot however but acted very little. With every passing moment of the Obama administration the decision to award Obama the prize seems even more ridiculous.
The continued drone strikes in Pakistan have angered many Pakistan civilians as well as angering diplomats. Wajid Shamsul Hasan the High Commissioner to London has claimed the US drone strikes on Pakistan are undermining Pakistan’s sovereignty and weakening democracy in a “violation of territory”. Hasan also realises that Pakistan has no real power to try to stop the drone strikes from the US unless public opinion throughout the world is against the strikes. The strikes have been deadly in Pakistan and to the US’s credited it has wiped out a large number of militants in Pakistan. However the number of civilians killed doesn’t justify the drones use. Including the civilian deaths the missiles have also killed a number of Pakistani soldiers. One of the main arguments against the use of drones is that all the civilian deaths, creates more militants for the groups you are trying to wipe out by leaving victims’ families  with a resentment of the west and NATO. Hasan also said that “the drone strikes won’t end extremism, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in general”. The goal of winning hearts and minds cannot be won by using drones.

The effect this could have on the American elections is also substantial. The liberals in America cannot be satisfied with an Obama administration that claims peace but practices anything but. The liberals however will also not vote for a gaffe prone conservative republican like Mitt Romney. This leaves liberals with only one option, to not vote for either. This will affect the result of the election as many election pundits view the result as those who do not vote will decide the outcome of the election which will be many liberals due to Obama’s stance on Pakistan.
The outcome of the drone strike which killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, was for Pakistan to demand an end to drone strikes and for the NATO supply line into Afghanistan to be closed for a duration of time until the Americans conducted an investigation.  The effect this had on NATO troops was worse than NATO would have cared to admit however the effects were bad. The actions of the Obama administration on Pakistan have been labelled Terror Tuesday meetings where President Obama will decide with CIA chiefs who should be targeted in drone strikes and most likely eventually killed. How any liberal will vote for Obama in the next election is beyond me.
Pakistan must be able to remove Taliban and Al-Qaeda using their own methods, they will get help from NATO and the US. To show the world that droning must stop they must take a more active role in trying to stop these groups. How Obama sleeps at night is beyond me.     

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