How does a Nobel Peace Prize winner justify launching missile strikes in Syria? Or for that matter, a five-year drone war in the Middle East? Kirsten Powers says: he simply can’t.
A Swedish reporter asked President Obama Wednesday, “Could you describe the dilemma to being a Nobel Peace Prize winner and getting ready to attack Syria?”
Military action is, of course, sometimes necessary to maintain peace. Kosovo and World War II are good examples. But the president has not demonstrated that missile attacks in Syria would do anything to achieve peace. Worse, by all accounts, Obama’s “red line” threat was an off-the-cuff remark, not a well thought-out strategy. The U.S. should not attack another country because the president was careless with his words and now wants to protect his personal credibility.
But we don’t even need to look at Syria to conclude that the decent thing would be for Obama to return the prize that he never deserved in the first place.
There’s the obvious problem of Obama escalating a pointless and failing war in Afghanistan. From 2001 to the end of the Bush presidency in 2009, 625 American troops died because of the war. Under Obama’s watch, more than twice that many, some 1,500 soldiers, have died. Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed as well. But nothing undermines the notion of Obama as a leader for peace more than his five-year Middle East drone war. According to the New America Foundation, since 2004, there have been 361 American drone strikes in Pakistan. Of those, only 48 occurred during the Bush administration.
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