Nobel peace prize for rhetoric?

The one man who can put the brakes on two wars destroying the lives of millions of people instead puts his foot on the gas. Barak Obama's campaign promises were full of hope and promise that the illegal wars of the Bush administration could be drawn to a close; if not immediately, within a reasonable time frame. Of course he couldn't say one way or the other what his true intentions were due to the childish game we call campaigning. Instead he chose language that sounded reasonable and sympathetic to the cause of peace, without sounding too soft as to become an easy target for the predictable onslaughts of the McCain campaign. If mastering rhetoric was a criterion for winning the Nobel peace prize then I suppose he has earned it.

The only actions he has done thus far in his first two seasons as president is to back peddle on rhetoric that was already lite on substance. It's hard to find instances where Obama has delivered for those who voted for him, but the examples of his favors to corporate campaign contributors abound. It would be difficult to argue with the fact that his voter base was largely due to a war weary population when there have been two simultaneous wars both of which have gone on longer than twice the duration of Americas involvement in World War II. If one could only see the actions of the white house without knowing who won the presidency, we might think McCain had won. Would things be so different if he had?

McCain may have deliberated less over sending more troops to both wars, but there's not many troops to send anyway. So the big choice we all had last year was to vote for someone who will escalate wars without much thought, and someone who will do the same after much deliberation. It's true that the war in Iraq is ever so slowly winding down, but it was already there when Obama took over. And though it has wound down from calamity beyond description, it could only hope to stabilize into a continuous state of calamity of a lessor degree. The best Obama can do for Iraq is to let it be the waste land we have created with enormous US military bases and a permanent residual occupation, Hooray! Victory?

So let's not look at Iraq, it's just too depressing. Instead lets look at that really great war in Afghanistan spilling over into Pakistan, that's where Obama is really shining. Sure he said he would escalate Afghanistan and he admitted he would bomb Pakistan to his hearts content before he was elected. Wouldn't you know that would be the one promise he could keep. Millions of Americans are not returning to the homes they were kicked out of or the jobs they were laid off from, but we get to kill more people in a far away place. With no clear goal and no way of achieving anything but more dead soldiers and civilians, Afghanistan is somehow a good war. I didn't know that there was a Nobel peace prize for rhetoric, but that is the only thing Obama has accomplished resembling peace.