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A Nobel Peace Prize winner using his acceptance speech to justify war?

The same Peace Prize winner citing NATO’s brutal intervention in the Balkans in the 1990s as an example of a 'just war’?

It’s beyond Orwellian. We have a Noble peace prize winner, who is so committed to peace that he won’t even sign a landmine ban.

At least Obama conceded that there were many people more deserving of the prize than himself. Hundreds of millions of people in fact.

The problem with Obama is not that he's a wicked man, but that he's the prisoner of a wicked, corrupt system. As commenter Deloki puts it in the First Post:

Silly naive people to believe that the elected President of the USA has any say over policy. The people who financed and effectively "bought him", are the ones who decide, not the front man reading pre-prepared speeches. The same applies to Tony Blair who in return for doing what he was told, has a wonderful future ahead of him, clear up the little nonsense and misunderstanding about Iraq and then he can move on to greater things. To believe that there is "democracy" in the USA or Europe is really dumb, for it does not matter which party wins an election, the people with the money remain the same and it is they that "call the shots".

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To initiate a war of aggression....is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

Robert H. Jackson, Chief US Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal.

As we mark the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War Two, we should ponder very carefully Robert Jackson's words.

I hate war, but I am not a pacifist. I would defend World War Two, and the military action taken against the Third Reich and its allies for the very same reasons that I opposed the Iraq war and the NATO attack on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Hitler had to be stopped not because he was a dictator, but because of the way he arrogantly over-rode the sovereignty of other European countries and his contempt for international law. But in 1999 it was the NATO powers who were the illegal aggressors against Yugoslavia, and in 2003 it was the US-led coalition which attacked Iraq.

Attacking and invading other countries is wrong. Period. In international affairs the true heirs of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis are the neocons who share the little man's arrogant disregard for national sovereignty and his utter contempt for international law. And in the same way that the Nazis were brought to book at Nuremburg for committing the 'supreme international crime', of launching a war of aggression, let's hope that one day the neocon warmongers- (who at this very moment are doing all they can to propagandise for yet more aggression- this time against Iran), are also held to account for their crimes.

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Exactly 95 years ago this week, World War One broke out.

I’ve been busy trawling old newspaper archives and the internet to see what the commentariat/blogsphere/and various public figures were saying in what was arguably the most momentous week of the 20th century.

Here's a selection of what I've found.

If I find out that the stories of Huns raping nuns and bayoneting babies are not true, I will never believe another thing that I am told by our government. Well, at least not for another 89 years.
Sir David Aaronovitch, The London Times.

Let’s be under no illusions as to whose fault this war is. The Serbs. And in particular, one man: Slobodan Milosevic. Of course, leftwing apologists for Milosevic and Serbian aggression will point out that Milosevic will not be born until 1941 and so couldn‘t possibly be held responsible for World War One. What nonsense. It was Milosevic’s plans for a ‘Greater Serbia’, which inspired Gavrilo Princip to shoot Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Slobo was to blame (he was to blame for World War Two and the Spanish Inquisition too), and I‘m going to draw up his indictment right now.
Professor Mark O’Attila (Not the Hun) Hoare, European Director of the Andrew Jackson Society.

Let us be under no illusion as to what is at stake in this war. If the forces of civilisation do not prevail then the whole continent of Europe will be taken over by the fanatical Islamists who are hiding beneath the Kaiser’s cloak. A victory for Germany would be a victory for Islam. And then there’s those Turkish weapons of mass destruction….
Dame Melanie Phillips, The London Spectator.

What joy to be alive at this magnificent hour. Thousands of people going off to die for freedom and democracy. I would love to enlist for the front, but sadly I am in a reserved occupation (I’m a V.I.B. a Very Important Blogger)- so instead of fighting the Hun like those plebs and public school types, I’ll be blogging 24/7 on developments.
Mike Blogger.

I cannot believe that war does anything else but debase and demoralise mankind.
George Lansbury, anti-war politician and editor, The Daily Herald.

Once again sections of the so-called left, such as George Lansbury, have shown their depravity by opposing the war and becoming apologists for German fascism and totalitarianism. This is a war all those who claim to be on the left should support. It's hard to think of a more progressive cause.
Sir Nicholas Cohen, political pundit.

I’m supporting the war because my statistical analysis reveals that it will be over in a few weeks- with a quick victory being as probable as a Woolwich Arsenal victory over Clapton Orient. And if I’m wrong, it’s not my fault because you can’t judge the quality of a decision by its outcome.
Sir Daniel Finkelstein, chief leader writer, The London Times.

The lights are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary.

What an awful bore.
Noel Coward.

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"Wars, conflict- it's all business"- sighs Monsieur Verdoux, the eponymous anti-hero in Charlie Chaplin's classic film. This report from today's Mail on Sunday hardly disproves the thesis.

The man who acted as go-between for Tony Blair and George Bush in the run-up to the Iraq War has been given a senior post worth an estimated £50,000 a year with U.S.-owned arms company Lockheed.

Sir David Manning (pictured above, on left, next to George Bush), Britain's former ambassador in Washington has also joined a shadowy UK intelligence firm set up by former spies.

Sir David was Mr Blair's foreign affairs and defence adviser. He stepped down as the UK's envoy in Washington two years ago.

He played a key role in planning the Iraq War, and secret memos published after the conflict revealed how he knew Mr Blair had promised to go to war with Mr Bush a year before the conflict.

Sir David has become a non-executive director of Lockheed's subsidiary, Lockheed UK. He will also act as personal adviser to the firm's chief executive, Ian Stopps.
A company spokesman said: 'He has joined because of his distinguished career and experience in diplomacy as well as in government.'

Lockheed is one of the most powerful defence firms in the world. It is proud of its role in the Iraq War and published an 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' brochure that described how its 'stealthy F-117 Nighthawk opened the Allied operation with a strike aimed at Saddam Hussein's leadership'.

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I was watching the Remembrance Day commemorations on television today with my father, who served in the army, when I heard something that neither of us much liked. The presenter Alistair Stewart said that while Remembrance Day was originally about remembering those who died in The Great War, and then World War Two, it's now about remembering other conflicts in which British forces were involved, including Iraq.

If that is indeed the case, then it's wrong.

Remembrance Day should only be about the two World Wars.

In neither the First, nor the Second World War, was Britain the aggressor. In Iraq, it was (alongside the US). While in the Second World War, Britain's role in helping to defeat Nazi aggression, was an honourable one, in Iraq it was not. A largely defenceless country, which posed Britain no threat, was attacked on the basis of a colossal lie. The Iraq war, together with the earlier, equally unlawful- and equally deceitful aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999, was a dark moment in Britain's history. It was a shameful episode, and those who planned and orchestrated it should, if there was any justice in this world, be behind bars. The Nuremburg judgement after all, held that the greatest of all crimes was to launch a war of aggression.

So let's wear our poppies today and remember those brave soldiers who gave their lives in two world wars. But let's make sure that any attempts to 'normalise' the Iraq war and put it on a par with World War Two are resisted.

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