Barack Obama: A Pacifist turned Hawk, Threatens the Use of Nuclear Weapons
By Kourosh Ziabari
Global Research
May 17, 2014
When Barack Obama was surprisingly elected as the U.S. President in the 2008 elections, the world came to believe that a new phase of relationship and interaction between the United States and the international community would begin soon. That is why more than 150 world leaders rushed to send congratulatory messages to him, praising him as someone who can usher in a new era of constructive and peaceful cooperation after 8 erosive years of confrontation, militarism, despotism and bullying by President George W. Bush and his like-minded cabinet.
At that time, people across the world had come to the understanding that Barack Obama, the nation’s first African-American president, can be a reminiscent of Abraham Lincoln’s peaceful reign and extricate the United States from the scaffoldings that George Bush had created: the scaffolding of quarrel and conflict with the whole world with the ruthless ideology of “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
Obama’s election as the U.S. President, especially given his promise for “change”, which the American people and the whole world alike were awaiting for a long time, left the Norwegian Nobel Committee with no option but to award the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama, even though he had not practically taken any significant steps or made remarkable decisions during the first year of his presidency which could qualify him as a prominent peace advocate worthy of being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which according to the late Alfred Nobel’s will, should be granted to someone who has made very outstanding achievements for the promotion of world peace in the previous year.
However, as many commentators and observers noted at that time, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize simply because he was not another George W. Bush!
Obama’s coming to power had revived hopes that the tarnished image of the United States as an aggressive, bullying and warmongering superpower would be repaired in the eyes of the subjugated nations of the Middle East, Africa and Latin America and that instead of war threats, it would be the message of hope that will be transmitted by the United States. The new President’s electoral promises, including the closure of the Guantanamo bay detention facility, the withdrawal of military forces from Iraq, drawing a conclusion to the Afghanistan war, helping the Palestinian people regain their stolen rights, taking up diplomacy and rapprochement with the Islamic Republic of Iran and refraining from going into war with the other nations on baseless grounds had made the American people and the world citizens optimistic that something is happening in the United States. However, the optimism and hope did not last for long, and President Obama gradually began revealing his true face, which unfortunately, was the face of another hawkish politician who simply uttered his words with a more moderate and lenient tone and was virtually deceiving everybody with his softened rhetoric; a rhetoric which was never translated into concrete action.
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