{"id":1608,"date":"2013-02-20T20:33:42","date_gmt":"2013-02-21T01:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/hlpr\/?p=1608"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:22:06","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:22:06","slug":"hows-that-peace-prize-treating-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2013\/02\/20\/hows-that-peace-prize-treating-you\/","title":{"rendered":"How\u2019s that Peace Prize Treating You?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When the Nobel Committee awarded President Obama the Peace Prize in 2009, the world assumed that the Committee was making a political statement.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20130307133035\/http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/10\/10\/opinion\/10sat1.html\">The New York Times\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0that awarding President Obama the prize was \u201ca (barely) implicit condemnation of [George W.] Bush\u2019s presidency.\u201d Indeed, President Obama had held the office for only nine months when the Nobel Committee announced he had won the Peace Prize. That\u2019s hardly enough time to change the world. Awarding the Peace Prize to President Obama was supposed to herald a change in American foreign policy.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nFour years later, we can reevaluate. President Obama has presided over a presidency that has become more secretive and potentially deadlier than the Bush administration. Under President Obama,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20130307133035\/http:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2012\/06\/obamas-whistleblowers-stuxnet-leaks-drones\">prosecutions under the Espionage Act of 1917<\/a>\u00a0have gone up as the White House has aggressively tamped down on insiders going to the press. At the same time, the administration selectively leaks\u00a0<em>positive<\/em>\u00a0information to the press, as when \u201chigh level officials\u201d told\u00a0<em>The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0in 2012 that\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20130307133035\/http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/06\/01\/world\/middleeast\/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html\">the U.S. had placed the Stuxnet virus in computer systems<\/a>\u00a0controlling Iranian nuclear facilities.<\/p>\n<p>Consider also the abhorrent prosecution of Bradley Manning, accused of giving classified information to WikiLeaks. While disclosing classified information is indeed a crime, Manning\u2019s mistreatment while in custody has been abominable. Even though he hasn\u2019t been convicted of a crime yet, Manning has been subjected to humiliating and degrading treatment for any number of pretextual reasons; for example, Manning was stripped to his underwear and deprived of his glasses\u2014which he needs to read\u2014except for an hour a day, all under the heading of \u201csuicide watch.\u201d\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20130307133035\/http:\/\/www.wired.com\/threatlevel\/2012\/03\/manning-treatment-inhuman\/all\/1\">A U.N. Special Rapporteur investigating the situation<\/a>\u00a0found that Manning\u2019s treatment was a human rights violation.<\/p>\n<p>In the last month, we\u2019ve learned that the Justice Department under President Obama\u2014heir to the same legacy as Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson\u00a0Mandela\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20130307133035\/http:\/\/msnbcmedia.msn.com\/i\/msnbc\/sections\/news\/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf\">prepared a memo<\/a>\u00a0outlining the legal reasoning for drone strikes anywhere around the world. That the President could claim the power to assassinate anyone, anywhere in the world, at any time, so long as the person is an \u201cimminent\u201d threat to the United States (where \u201cimminent\u201d is so broad that it could encompass someone\u00a0<em>thinking about<\/em>\u00a0attacking the United States) is outrageous. People are placed on this kill list on the say-so of an unknown cabal making decisions out of the public eye with unknown evidence and no discernible process. It\u2019s more or less everything the Constitution was designed to prevent.<\/p>\n<p>Looking back, the Obama administration didn\u2019t usher in a new era of foreign policy: it just ushered in a\u00a0<em>more secretive<\/em>\u00a0era of foreign policy. President Obama\u2019s legacy may look less like Nelson Mandela and more like Richard Nixon. It\u2019s hard to do \u201cthe most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses\u201d when you\u2019re blowing people up by remote control from three thousand miles away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the Nobel Committee awarded President Obama the Peace Prize in 2009, the world assumed that the Committee was making [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-pW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}