Afghan Taliban Response To Obama's Speech To Muslim World

[Nur]

This president has gone from charming to harming and few have noticed.

 

Yvonne Riddley

 

 

Afghan Taliban Responds To Obama`s Cairo Speech

 

By Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

 

Posted June 09, 2009

 

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

 

 

US President Obama has been trying to restore the dignity and credibility that America has lost since his election (as US president). Now he has turned to the Muslim world. Besides other preparations for this visit, the western media has been trying to mentally prepare Muslims for Obama`s speech for some weeks. The contents of the speech, which he delivered under the title “Address to the Muslim World” on Thursday afternoon (4 June) in Cairo, did not have anything which could play a crucial role in reducing the hatred between America and Muslims. Obama`s speech lasted for 48 minutes. However, he failed to deliver a clear and true message to the Muslim world. Obama`s speech mainly consisted of symbolic and political terms and its body was vague. Contrary to expectations, there was no sign of practical change in the hostile policy of America towards Muslims. The Supreme Council of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan regards Obama`s speech to the Muslim world as part of the US` misleading slogans and gives the following explanations about it:

 

1. Barack Obama claims good-will and tolerance towards Muslims at a time when their occupation forces are committing mass murder and disturbing and imprisoning Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq. They violate their legal rights and mercilessly martyr them to defend their rights. They put them in the most hateful prisons of the world. Given these wild and illegal actions by Americans, Obama`s baseless speech has no importance.

 

2. As a groundless claimant, Barack Obama justified the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq by Americans in his meaningless speech. He said the ongoing efforts of their crusader forces against the Muslim nations of these countries were a legitimate struggle to secure US interests. According to national and international laws, the occupation of independent countries and hostile war against their free nations cannot be called a legitimate war.

 

3. Barack Obama wants to create divisions among Muslims and the Muslim world and to separate Muslims from their real protectors and defence force (mojaheddin) (as published) in line with his hostile policy through such speeches. These Muslim nations have willingly trained and strengthened them (mojaheddin) with their support. He is trying to create divisions among Muslims and to exploit the divisions among them. However, the religious beliefs and relations of Muslims are not so weak that they can be broken by a few words of the supreme commander of the occupation forces like Obama. Today, all vigilant Muslims are engaged in jihad in one way or the other. Therefore, the US war against the mojaheddin is considered a war against all Muslim nations and Islam.

 

4. He claimed that Americans were not trying to permanently remain and establish military bases inside Afghanistan in Islamic countries like Iraq and Afghanistan and that it did not want to betray the nations of the world. This claim runs counter to the current facts and realities in the region because Americans are currently busy establishing major military bases and airports. They have established 12 new military airports. Some of them are very large where any kind of large military planes can land. This large number of airports and countless number of military bases are established at a time when they do not need even half of them given the number of their forces and daily military flights. This shows that Americans are intending to permanently remain in and occupy the region. Therefore, it is sending additional forces to the region. The countries and nations of the world, particularly the region should stay vigilant to foil their destructive plans in a timely fashion.

 

5. Obama said that the continuation of war in Afghanistan was costly and politically difficult for him and, therefore, if peace is ensured in the region, American forces will happily leave Afghanistan. It is quite funny that he links the end to the US occupation to the restoration of security in the region. The presence of Americans is the main cause of violence and the current problems in the region. Jihad and resistance against American forces will continue as long as they are present in Afghanistan. If Obama truly wants peace to be ensured in Afghanistan and the region, he should put an end to the (US) military presence and illegal occupation to pave the way for restoration of security. If foreign forces leave (Afghanistan), Afghans will have no intention to harm anyone. No one can use Afghanistan`s soil against the international community.

 

6. The issues of Middle East, particularly Palestine, were also part of Obama`s address. In his address to the Muslim world, he tried to change the mindset of Muslims (Pashto: la sara warozi) regarding Israelis. He emotionally started the story of the innocence of the Jews. He described Israel as the most innocent and worthy nation of the world and that Muslims, particularly Palestinians, should officially recognize it. He spoke on the holocaust and the massacre of 6m Jews. However, he summarized the nearly 70-year crises in Palestine in a few misleading words. Mass murders are committed every moment (in Palestine). He also instructed Arab leaders to improve their ties with Israel. However, he did not speak about those surrounded in Gaza or about the supply of medicines and basic food items to them. It seems that Obama did not come to the Muslim world with a friendly message, but with an arrogant notion to give instructions (to the Muslim world). He told Muslims what they should do in order to secure the interests of America and Israel. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan believes that Muslims` hatred will steadily rise towards America until a fundamental and true solution is found to these problems and practical steps are taken. This speech by Obama is another failed attempt to mislead the Muslim world. We call on the entire Muslim nation, particularly the oppressed (Pashto: mostazafo) Muslims to stress continuation of jihad against Americans to defend their soil and religious places. They should fight the infidel forces until they achieve their real freedom and independence.

 

It is worth pointing out that US President Barack Hussein Obama delivered a long speech, entitled “A New Beginning” in the capital of Egypt, Cairo, yesterday (4 June) in which he stressed the fight against the Taleban and Al-Qa`idah in Afghanistan. By reading out a few verses from the Koran, he tried to persuade Muslims of the world that the ongoing US war is not against Islam, but terrorists. A number of Islamic countries and organizations have called Obama`s speech a positive step. However, a number of Islamic organizations of the world are suspicious of his intentions. Obama became the US president on 20 January 2009. He said he would change the international mindset regarding America during his election campaign. However, no practical step has been taken yet to truly change the world`s, particularly Muslims`, mindset about America because there are still US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and people are being killed daily there. Observers believe that America should take practical steps on Afghanistan and Iraq to ensure peace in the region and help people achieve their independence and freedom in practice.

 

The Supreme Council of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

 

Rethink Afghan War

[Fabregas]

Nur, if Bush was the equivalent of Rustum of Persia, then Barack Obama is Caeser, who's nobles, advisors and backers wouldn't let him accept the Xaq.

[Nur]

What if Osama Calls Obama’s Bluff?

 

By Michael Scheuer

 

June 09, 2009 "Anti War" -- - As is the custom of American interventionists, President Obama spoke in Cairo as if our Islamist enemies have no vote in how their conflict with the United States will henceforth proceed. The adolescent geniuses who wrote Obama’s speech apparently spent no time at all perusing what Osama bin Laden and other Islamists have said or written over the past 13 years, and especially since 2001. At repeated points in that corpus of material, for example, bin Laden has offered a truce to the United States and its allies on terms eerily similar to those Obama described in Cairo as the intentions of his administration.

 

* Complete U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.

* No residual U.S. military bases in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

* Self-determination for Muslim peoples now ruled by tyrants.

* Termination of Israel’s gradual but unending thievery of Palestinian territory.

* U.S. and Western recognition that all Muslims belong to one nation, or ummah, and that the post-World War I subdivision of the ummah into nation-states is a Western-imposed contrivance for subjugating Muslims.

 

Now let us be clear. Obama’s Cairo positions are not optimal for bin Laden; they leave untouched, for example, such core demands as the removal of the U.S. military and civilian presence from the Arabian Peninsula and annihilation of the state of Israel. Still, the president’s stated intentions give al-Qaeda’s leadership not just food for thought, but also perhaps an opportunity to allow ordinary Muslims to judge for themselves whether the president’s offer of a "partnership" with Islam will be matched with deeds, or whether it is just more noxious Wilsonian piety covering the standard U.S. interventionist agenda.

 

In the weeks ahead, then, it is possible that the White House will hear directly from Osama bin Laden and find that the al-Qaeda chief has posed a formidable problem for Obama and his band of Islam-ignorant advisers, as well as for our interventionist elite generally. If so, bin Laden’s statement might run something like the following:

 

In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate.

 

 

Having studied President Obama’s speech in the Mubarak-controlled prison for Muslims that is called Egypt, we retain serious doubts about the seriousness and honesty of his words. But the Prophet Muhammad, God’s peace and blessings be upon him, has not only instructed Muslims to fight against those who oppress them and attack their faith, but has told Muslims to incline toward peace if their enemies appear to be so inclined. Therefore, because Muhammad, the best of mankind, may God’s peace and blessings be upon him, requires us to give the foe the benefit of the doubt, we today offer President Obama a long truce and require from him only that which he so clearly promised in Cairo.

 

We first thank God that Obama sees that, with God’s help, the mujahedin – may God be pleased with them – have defeated U.S.-led Crusader forces in Afghanistan and Iraq and that their full withdrawal is essential. We also praise God for Obama’s pledge to leave behind no U.S. bases in either country, a promise verifying that America did not need to invade either in self-defense, and did so only because Bush and his Zionist advisers wanted to kill Muslims, destroy their religion, occupy their holy places, and rob their territory.

 

Obama likewise pledged to stop the Zionist-Crusader theft of more territory from the oppressed and persecuted Palestinian people, may God shield them. All Muslims know that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are merely a prelude to the Zionists’ goal of destroying all Palestinians and taking all their land. Muslims know too that only two things can stop this catastrophe: Obama must order Israel – a state that exists only because of U.S. power – to dismantle the settlements, or, with God’s aid, the mujahedin must wage jihad on the U.S. and Israeli murderers until all Palestine, from the river to the sea, is restored to Islam.

 

Also at Cairo, Obama plainly admitted what we and other believers have long argued, and what God has ordained; namely, that all the world’s Muslims belong to one Islamic nation and that the separate nation-states into which the West divided Muslims are illegitimate and governed by tyrants, against whom Muslims – like all other peoples – have the right to battle until self-determination is achieved.

 

Because of Obama’s words and, more important, because of our prophet’s instructions, may God’s blessings and peace be upon him, to incline toward peace if the enemy so inclines, we hereby offer a truce that will end attacks on America and its interests if Obama matches his peaceful words with peaceful deeds – as God has demanded. For this truce with the United States, we ask only that Obama fulfill the three pledges he made voluntarily in Cairo by the first day of 2010:

 

* By completely withdrawing U.S. and Western forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, and dismantling and destroying all military bases and diplomatic facilities in those countries.

* By ordering Israel to cease the construction of settlements in the West Bank; by forcing it to dismantle and destroy those already built; and by providing before-and-after videotapes and satellite photos proving the efforts were successful.

* By ending all economic aid and military protection for the tyrant rulers who are oppressing and torturing Muslims. We do not ask Washington to remove the tyrants; the mujahedin – with God’s permission – will tend to them after the Americans are gone.

 

O, my fellow Muslims, in God’s name please watch closely for Obama’s response to this fair offer of ours. Abiding by our prophet’s guidance, may God’s peace and blessings be upon him, we have made it easy for the Americans to take a giant step toward peace and to end much of their war on Islam. We in the al-Qaeda organization and you around the ummah can now judge how far Obama’s promises can be trusted. He has only to do what he has pledged to do, and may God help him do so. But if Obama fails, we in al-Qaeda and all Muslims will know that he is no different than Bush, except that he uses honeyed rather than hateful worlds, and that jihad in God’s path is the only means of victory.

 

My closing prayer is that all praise is due to Allah, Lord of both worlds, and may His peace and prayers be upon our master Muhammad and upon his family and companions.

 

 

With such words, Osama bin Laden could provide a useful service for both Muslims and Americans by forcing Obama and his talk-softly interventionists to either fish or cut bait. Not since the ever lamentable Woodrow Wilson’s "Fourteen Points" speech has an American president provided the enemy a scorecard on which his veracity can be quantified. Once the Great War ended, of course, the hypocrite Wilson abandoned the Fourteen Points as fast as possible, and because German power had collapsed, he paid no price for lying. President Obama has no chance for such good fortune. If he fails to deliver on his Cairo promises, America will confront an undefeated and growing Islamist enemy that will have on its side tens of millions more Muslims who have decided for themselves that Obama cannot be trusted and that U.S. intervention can only be stopped by jihad.

[Nur]

Smile On The Face Of The Tiger

 

By John Pilger

 

June 11, 2009 "ICH" -- At 7.30 in the morning on 3 June, a seven-month-old baby died in the intensive care unit of the European Gaza Hospital in the Gaza Strip. His name was Zein Ad-Din Mohammed Zu’rob, and he was suffering from a lung infection which was treatable.

 

Denied basic equipment, the doctors in Gaza could do nothing. For weeks, the child’s parents had sought a permit from the Israelis to allow them to take him to a hospital in Jerusalem, where he would have been saved. Like many desperately sick people who apply for these permits, the parents were told they had never applied. Even if they had arrived at the Erez Crossing with an Israeli document in their hands, the odds are that they would have been turned back for refusing the demands of officials to spy or collaborate in some way. “Is it an irresponsible overstatement,” asked Richard Falk, the United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories and emeritus professor of international law at Princeton University, who is Jewish, “to associate the treatment of Palestinians with [the] criminalised Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not.”

 

Falk was describing Israel’s massacre in December and January of hundreds of helpless civilians in Gaza, many of them children. Reporters called this a “war”. Since then, normality has returned to Gaza. Most children are malnourished and sick, and almost all exhibit the symptoms of psychiatric disturbance, such as horrific nightmares, depression and incontinence. There is a long list of items that Israel bans from Gaza. This includes equipment to clean up the toxic detritus of Israel’s US munitions, which is the suspected cause of rising cancer rates. Toys and playground equipment, such as slides and swings, are also banned. I saw the ruins of a fun fair, riddled with bullet holes, which Israeli “settlers” had used as a sniping target.

 

The day after Baby Zu’rob died in Gaza, President Barack Obama made his “historic” speech in Cairo, “reaching out to the Muslim world”, reported the BBC. “Just as it devastates Palestinian families, the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” said Obama, “does not serve Israel’s security.” That was all. The killing of 1,300 people in what is now a concentration camp merited 17 words, cast as concern for the “security” of the killers. This was understandable. During the January massacre, Seymour Hersh reported that “the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of ‘smart bombs’ and other hi-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel” for use in Gaza.

 

Obama’s one criticism of Israel was that “the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements . . . It is time for these settlements to stop.” These fortresses on Palestinian land, manned by religious fanatics from America and elsewhere, have been outlawed by the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice. Pointedly, Obama made no mention of the settlements that already honeycomb the occupied territories and make an independent Palestinian state impossible, which is their purpose.

 

Obama demanded that the “cycle of suspicion and discord must end”. Every year, for more than a generation, the UN has called on Israel to end its illegal and violent occupation of post-1967 Palestine and has voted for “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination”. Every year, those voting against these resolutions have been the governments of Israel and the United States and one or two of America’s Pacific dependencies; last year Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe joined them.

 

Such is the true “cycle” in the Middle East, which is rarely reported as the relentless rejection of the rule of law by Israel and the United States: a law in whose name the wrath of Washington came down on Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait, a law which, if upheld and honoured, would bring peace and security to both Palestine and Israel.

 

Instead, Obama spoke in Cairo as if his and previous White House administrations were neutral, almost divine brokers of peace, instead of rapacious backers and suppliers of the invader (along with Britain). This Orwellian illogic remains the standard for what western journalists call the “Israel-Palestine conflict”, which is almost never reported in terms of the law, of right and wrong, of justice and injustice – Darfur, yes, Zimbabwe, yes, but never Palestine. Orwell’s ghost again stirred when Obama denounced “violent extremists in Afghanistan and now Pakistan [who are] determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can”. America’s invasion and slaughter in these countries went unmentioned. It, too, is divine.

 

Naturally, unlike George W Bush, Obama did not say that “you’re either with us or against us”. He smiled the smile and uttered “many eloquent mood-music paragraphs and a smattering of quotations from the Holy Quran”, noted the American international lawyer John Whitbeck. Beyond this, Obama offered no change, no plan, only a “tired, morally bankrupt American mantra [which] essentially argues that only the rich, the strong, the oppressors and the enforcers of injustice (notably the Americans and Israelis) have the right to use violence, while the poor, the weak, the oppressed and the victims of oppression must . . . submit to their fate and accept whatever crumbs their betters may magnanimously deign suitable to let fall from their table”. And he offered not the slightest recognition that the world’s most numerous victims of terrorism are people of Muslim faith – a terrorism of western origin that dares not speak its name.

 

In his “reaching out” in Cairo, as in his “anti-nuclear” speech in Berlin, as in the “hope” he spun at his inauguration, this clever young politician is playing the part for which he was drafted and promoted. This is to present a benign, seductive, even celebrity face to American power, which can then proceed towards its strategic goal of dominance, regardless of the wishes of the rest of humanity and the rights and lives of our children.

[Nur]

Top Secret

 

The Speech Barack Obama Won’t Deliver

 

As dictated to Daniel Simpson

 

December 08, 2009 "ICH" --

 

 

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Excellencies, Distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Dear Friends around the world, My fellow Americans.

 

I stand here today humbled, more than ever, by the task before us, grateful for the honour you’ve bestowed, and mindful of the sacrifices we must make to do it justice.

 

Twenty Americans before me have lent their names to this most eminent of prizes, among them three presidents, two sitting. Though challenged by the upheavals of fractious eras, their skill and vision hewed faithfully to the spirit of our forebears, who travelled across an ocean to seek sanctuary, and declared all who made their home there to have been created equal. Where possible, they worked to stem those tides in humankind that would drown us in the storms of violent conflict. And so we recall these efforts, and their fruits, praising Theodore Roosevelt for brokering peace, not chiding him for wielding his trademark stick to subjugate Cuba and the Philippines.

 

Others were inspired by a higher calling, rising above themselves to speak truths we shirk from hearing. Of these trans-formative figures, none was more righteous, more perspicacious, than Dr Martin Luther King, who accepted this award 45 years ago. I was surprised to be asked to follow him, and shared with you my doubts that I deserved to be doing so. But I’ve come here on the understanding that this ceremony is a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the challenges of the 21st century, and for America to lead.

 

Putting America first should not require us to put the lives of other peoples second. When our nation became mired in Vietnam, sacrificing millions to its quest to contain Communism, Dr King called us “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world”. A year to the day after speaking those words, he was murdered.

 

As I was raised in his shadow, whirlpools of destructive logic sucked Americans ever deeper into worldwide battles. From Vietnam, the fog of war spread. We laid waste to Cambodia from the skies, before Pol Pot’s brutal forces tilled its killing fields. And for the sake of defeating the Soviet Union, we armed Islamic extremists in Afghanistan, spawning a terrorist menace that defined the first decade of this century.

 

I do not seek to defend these actions here, or those of an earlier September 11th, when a coup hatched in Washington robbed Chile of its elected president, because he was a Marxist. Thousands “disappeared” under the market-friendly despot we supported, like so many other enemies of freedom, before and since, from the Congo to Cairo, Central Asia to Latin America, always in the name of a greater good. Ours. Whatever thwarts those who might challenge us, we can live with.

 

We armed Saddam Hussein to fight the Islamic Republic of Iran, ignoring his use of poison gas while it suited us. But once he’d threatened our interests by invading Kuwait, this became grounds for deposing him, though the weapons we claimed to fear no longer existed. As the last head of the Federal Reserve said, “it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

 

Whether we control it, or prevent others from doing so, this is why we care about the Middle East. Since the British Empire fell, we’ve guarded what our State Department called “a stupendous source of strategic power” and “one of the greatest material prizes in world history.” As every Iranian schoolchild knows, but Americans rarely recall, we once overthrew their government, to ensure it kept pumping oil to our satisfaction. So hated was the regime we installed in Tehran, and so vicious its secret police, that we helped to foment an Islamic Revolution. And so we conjured enemies anew.

 

Rather than remain trapped in the past, I want to move forward. We are not alone to blame for the world’s problems; and for all that’s wrong with America, much is right. But our delusions make us a menace to ourselves, and even the civilised order we say we’re defending. Americans aren’t alone in being hypocrites. Nor are we by any measure the worst. Our reference points for wickedness are the tyrannies of Stalin and Hitler. However, when senior Nazis were tried at Nuremberg, it was the American chief prosecutor who said: “While this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn, aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment.”

 

For much of this past American century, as in others bestridden by Empires that came before ours, the morals guiding relations between states have been those of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. To quote the murderer Raskolnikov: “he who can spit on what is greatest will be their lawgiver, and he who does the most will be rightest of all.” It’s ugly, so we prefer to cover it up and tell ourselves stories, most often about our benevolence, or “the shining city upon a hill” we call our homeland.

 

When the Spanish-American war brought us to primacy, Mark Twain surveyed our impact on the Pacific. “We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors,” he observed. “And so, by these Providences of God – and the phrase is the government’s, not mine – we are a World Power.”

 

But without our cherished myths, or the lies that led us into Iraq and Vietnam, there’d be fewer conflicts. No one welcomes war, and Americans aren’t by nature belligerent people. Even our “Greatest Generation”, among them my grandfather, was reluctant to join World War II until Pearl Harbour. And their fight in the name of a larger freedom has served us since as a rallying call.

 

There’s always an axis of evil that needs vanquishing. And as Hermann Goering chillingly warned: “the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.” It’s easy, he explained: “All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

 

I don’t need to remind you that we were attacked, on American soil, eight years ago. At that moment we faced a fateful choice: whether to seek justice, or debase it. The armchair warriors won. Hundreds of thousands of civilians have died, in the name of avenging three thousand of our own. We don’t even count how many we’ve killed.

 

I’ve said before I don’t oppose all wars. I supported the pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance. But can we do that by killing more innocents? Where would we need to send troops? Saudi Arabia? Pakistan? Somalia? And how many corpses might convince a hostile horde to change its thinking? Before we rained destruction on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Americans firebombed dozens of Japanese cities. Up to half a million were slain, and millions more lost their homes before surrender was so much as discussed.

 

As I said at the start of the decade, let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and al Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and shutting down the financial networks that support terrorism. It’s work for policemen, not soldiers; our armed forces should defend us, not attack. War by the one percent doctrine of pre-emption is aggression.

 

To repeat, I’m not here to look backwards. We’re here to remember the urgency of now. This is no time to indulge in the narcissism of self-flagellation, or to take the tranquilising drug of mass denial. A nation that believes its hype is heading for disaster. Now is the time to rise from the valley of hubris, to walk the sunlit path of accepting limits. Now is the time to obey the same rules we impose. Now is the time to admit that our actions have consequences, that we’ve been al Qaeda’s top recruiter.

 

Our pursuit of “full spectrum dominance”, our ambition “to hold unquestioned power”, has not made the world any safer. We started a nuclear arms race, and doused it in gasoline. We helped Pakistan get the bomb, and looked away while it ran a weapons hypermarket. Now we’re helping India break the rules, just as Israel has for decades while it stockpiled warheads. Exactly how many isn’t clear, because Israel denies access to foreign inspectors.

 

Iran is the only oil-rich state in the Middle East that’s beyond our influence. Together with Israel, we keep threatening to attack it. But while we talk up “the Iranian threat”, our intelligence agencies say Iran halted its weapons programme years ago, and wants nothing more than the option to reactivate it. The idea it could wipe Israel off the map is absurd. The Israeli nuclear arsenal guarantees that. Israel’s prime minister calls Iran an “apocalyptic cult” that “glorifies blood and death, including its own”. But for years the two countries were allies, and Israel accepted the rhetoric was mostly for show. Its priorities only changed when Iran became the region’s number two power. And that only happened when we invaded Iraq, and installed a pro-Iranian government.

 

So what do we do now to solve these problems? Bombing Iran would not bring us closer to a world without nuclear weapons. It also wouldn’t make Israel more secure. I rule it out categorically, and withdraw all plans for a nuclear first strike on Iranian bunkers. Destructive power can only be tempered by restraint.

 

There’s no longer a technological difference between the process that generates fuel and the process for building bombs. Once you can enrich uranium for reactors, it just takes time and investment to enrich it for missiles. If we’re serious about disarmament, we also need to restrict enrichment by everyone, outsourcing it to an international agency. This alone makes nuclear power no answer to climate change.

 

It’s no less misguided to pretend we can clean up coal. Plans to bury carbon dioxide are unproven, and they won’t work any time soon. The global demand for energy will be hard to meet without making radical changes. If we carry on insisting that “the American way of life is not negotiable“, we can hardly expect others to think differently. But we all have to, immediately, or there won’t be a future to get rich in. If everyone consumed like Americans, we’d need another half dozen planets. And if the one we live on heats up as scientists forecast, much of it will be uninhabitable this century. Ice caps and glaciers will melt, seas will rise and crops will fail. Billions of people will struggle to find food and water, and the world will be full of refugees.

 

We’re almost past the point of no return. Long-term targets are irrelevant. The gases we’ve emitted already will heat up the atmosphere for a century. Unless we stop adding to them quickly, we’re committing ourselves to a runaway warming process, unlike any this Earth has seen for millions of years. Faced with that prospect, and the deadlocked talks on a climate treaty, there’s no alternative left but to act unilaterally.

 

I’ve signed up to a British initiative called 10:10, and promised to reduce my personal emissions by ten percent in 2010. I’m also committing to bolder executive action. I pledge the United States will cut output of carbon dioxide, and other heat-trapping gases, by a tenth next year from current levels. The year after, we’ll cut another tenth, and again, and again, for ten straight years, until we’re free of fossil fuels by 2020.

 

To achieve this, we need to transform our economy, on a scale unseen since the start of World War II. Converting our factories to rearmament was what finally dragged us out of the Great Depression. To support our transition to a less destructive paradigm, America will turn itself over to sustainable energy. Trillions of dollars will be spent on a new Manhattan Project; only this one won’t build an atom bomb. Instead it will share clean technology through the United Nations. There can be no solution to climate change that doesn’t include such partners as India and China. Even if they burn coal, we should stop, and help them cut their carbon output however we can.

 

Domestically, we won’t just scrap subsidies for fossil fuels. We plan to nationalise and liquidate our oil companies, and switch the nation’s cars to electric power. They’ll be charged from a network of wind and solar farms, hooked up to a direct-current smart grid. And we will pay for this by ceasing to arm the world.

 

America spends almost as much on weapons as every other nation combined. The Pentagon gets more money today than at any time since World War II. And our exports dwarf those of our rivals, creating the opponents of tomorrow. As President Eisenhower warned: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed.”

 

It is time to start changing priorities. Next year, we will cut military spending in half, and shrink it as we scale back our presence. Over the coming decade, this will free up trillions of dollars. So far we’ve been tentative, scrapping a few costly weapons while increasing the total we spend. But an overhaul of energy policy will enable us to shut down bases overseas. No longer will we need hundreds of foreign outposts to protect resources, or the shipping lanes and pipelines that ferry them. We can leave that work to regional powers, and resume our rightful place in our own backyard.

 

Every last soldier will leave Iraq next year, and our bases there will be bulldozed. We will also withdraw at once from Afghanistan. A generation ago, Mikhail Gorbachev said he wanted to do the same, but he first raised troop levels above 100,000. As a result, 1985 was the deadliest year of the Soviet occupation. We will not repeat the same mistake. I’m reversing last week’s announcement of escalation, and our draw down will begin from tomorrow. We can’t just arm warlords and pay off the Taliban. All the money and blood we spill achieves nothing. We can only destabilise Pakistan, and the government there won’t help us do that. The only constructive way forward is to face our impotence.

 

We cannot provide security without peace, and we cannot impose that by will, or force of arms.

 

We cannot build abstractions like good governance. We can only pay reparations and send aid. Afghans have to shape their own future.

 

We cannot defend against terrorism by bombing civilians. And even the most surgical air strikes can’t stop terrorists plotting in Europe, or training in Florida.

 

We cannot privatise war by funnelling taxpayer dollars to mercenary contractors.

 

Our suicide pact with militarism has to end before it bankrupts us, strategically, financially and morally. We cannot keep stalking the world creating new enemies.

 

No, we cannot.

 

Half a century ago, Eisenhower warned us what was happening. To win World War II, he said, we created “a permanent arms industry of vast proportions”, and “only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful methods and goals.”

 

This is a challenge we’ve ducked until today. And make no mistake: it will not be easy. The military-industrial complex has no fixed address. Arms companies spread production nationwide, so Congressmen and women defend their business, for fear lost jobs will cost them votes. Other lobbies complicate things further, like those pressing Israel’s case in Washington. To underline our resolve to curb the arms trade, all military assistance to Israel will be scrapped, and no sales allowed until it retreats within its 1967 borders, and dismantles illegal settlements on Palestinian land.

 

Capitalism has been at war with democracy, and winning. We’ve blown trillions in the banking casino, privatising its gains and socialising the cost. Not for nothing is Goldman Sachs called “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” For a more sustainable world, we have to dismantle the structures that shape it.

 

I can’t achieve that alone. We all have obligations to prevent our national priorities being perverted, as Martin Luther King understood. “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defence than on programmes of social uplift,” he said, “is approaching spiritual death.”

 

The day after Dr King was killed, Robert F. Kennedy spoke of “another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions, indifference and inaction and slow decay.”

 

In words as relevant now as then, Kennedy said we “tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilisation alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they require.”

 

Weeks later, he was assassinated too, campaigning for the presidency, and an early retreat from Vietnam. Instead, the war dragged on, and Cambodia was mercilessly bombed. For that, and other crimes, a previous winner of this prize should face prosecution. But if Henry Kissinger stands trial some day, he shouldn’t be alone in the dock. Cases can be made against presidents too, and I plead no special immunity ahead of time. I should be held to account like anyone else.

 

The press should never become the president’s men, and the public need to organise against him, to force his hand like Martin Luther King, to collectively make change we can believe in. Together we’ll enact these commitments. In themselves, they won’t end violence, they won’t end lawlessness and they won’t end disorder either. But they’d warrant the faith you’ve placed in my work, and they’d leave our children a legacy of justice. And for that small measure alone, we can be thankful.

 

God bless us all. Thank you.

 

Daniel Simpson has worked as a foreign correspondent for Reuters and The New York Times. He lives in London.

[hodman]

interesting

[Nur]

" "A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water." Eleanor Roosevelt

 

eNuri believes the above wisdom holds true for men as well!

 

Now, President Obama is in hot water!

 

Obama a "Closet Muslim" rumors are growing!

 

 

Nur