Sent to Reuters journalists and editors this morning
To: Wojciech Moskwa, Mark Trevelyan
Cc: Sean Maguire, Matt Spetalnick
Subject: Obama and disarmament
Dear Mark and Wojciech,
I hope future coverage of Barack Obama’s Nobel prize award won’t just source scepticism to Islamic Jihad:
“Why should Obama be given a peace prize while his country owns the largest nuclear arsenal on Earth and his soldiers continue to shed innocent blood in Iraq and Afghanistan?” [asked Khaled Al-Batsh in Gaza, before being edited out of later updates.]
Perhaps Reuters could note high up in the story that for all his talk about disarmament (and media hype about “defence” cuts) Obama has increased American military spending (by four percent for 2010).
To quote a recent commentary, “it is wise to attend to deeds, not rhetoric and pleasant demeanor.”
In which case, how about asking the White House if Obama plans to spend his prize money on buying back some of America’s vast military exports?
It would make a nice kicker.
Best regards,
Daniel
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UPDATE: For more on the American militarist future, see here:
Eventually, American decline will cut defence spending, but even those who want to see it yesterday can’t picture it happening inside a decade. Instead, the more things “change” under Obama, the more change it seems likely to cost. Some day, surely, those who finance the Empire will pull the plug. Obama seems powerless to do more than steady the ship as it sinks. Turning it round, or evacuating, would take radical shifts in priorities, of which there’ve been few signs. Instead of burning out in End Times, or fading away into autarky, he’s trudging a lonely path towards managed decline. History suggests it’s probably the least worst option, unless America’s suicide pact with militarism beats him to it. “We should take nothing for granted,” President Eisenhower warned in his farewell speech to the nation. “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper.” Instead, warns Chuck Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity, the U.S. remains racked by “a constant struggle between capitalism and democracy,” and “the fundamental reality is that most of the government’s decisions today are substantially dictated by powerful corporate interests.”
As we were then.
