The Headline You Should Have Read: "Sima Samar Wins Nobel Peace Prize."
While everyone's wheezing about Obama's unlikely win, P.J. Tobia reports from Kabul that "the big story is about the nominee who didn’t win the prize. That would be Dr. Sima Samar, an incredibly courageous Afghan woman who has risked her life for much of the past decade, treating women and girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan."
The nominee the prize committee passed on is the chair of Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission:
Now 50 years old, she graduated from a Kabul medical school in the middle of the Soviet invasion. She was forced to flee Kabul for a more central part of Afghanistan, where, though barely into her training she began attempting to treat patients against a background of extreme poverty, war, and harassment by the Taliban, who have virtually criminalised the delivery of reproductive health services to women and girls. In an article for the New England Journal of Medicine she describes having “to walk or travel on horseback or by donkey for three or four hours in each direction” to get to a patient, often finding that she had died before she got there. In her long, but ultimately triumphant career, she has been forced to smuggle birth control supplies under her clothing; she has endured death threats and been jailed; her hospitals have been bombed and looted by Taliban, and her medical director jailed for a year without charges; she was appointed to the Karzai government’s legislature then forced to resign when she was made comments that were critical of sharia law in an interview with foreign journalist.
I spoke with Dr. Samar a while ago. This is what she had to say to Canadians tormented by questions about whether our soldiers should be in her country: "Finish the job you started. It's not just for protecting Afghanistan, or protecting Canadians. It is about the protection of humanity. This is a human responsibility. It isn't possible to escape this kind of responsibility."
A responsibility one cannot escape, but a responsibility the White House, nevertheless, isn't sure it should shoulder.
The nominee the prize committee passed on is the chair of Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission:
Now 50 years old, she graduated from a Kabul medical school in the middle of the Soviet invasion. She was forced to flee Kabul for a more central part of Afghanistan, where, though barely into her training she began attempting to treat patients against a background of extreme poverty, war, and harassment by the Taliban, who have virtually criminalised the delivery of reproductive health services to women and girls. In an article for the New England Journal of Medicine she describes having “to walk or travel on horseback or by donkey for three or four hours in each direction” to get to a patient, often finding that she had died before she got there. In her long, but ultimately triumphant career, she has been forced to smuggle birth control supplies under her clothing; she has endured death threats and been jailed; her hospitals have been bombed and looted by Taliban, and her medical director jailed for a year without charges; she was appointed to the Karzai government’s legislature then forced to resign when she was made comments that were critical of sharia law in an interview with foreign journalist.
I spoke with Dr. Samar a while ago. This is what she had to say to Canadians tormented by questions about whether our soldiers should be in her country: "Finish the job you started. It's not just for protecting Afghanistan, or protecting Canadians. It is about the protection of humanity. This is a human responsibility. It isn't possible to escape this kind of responsibility."
A responsibility one cannot escape, but a responsibility the White House, nevertheless, isn't sure it should shoulder.
posted by Terry Glavin at 9:19 PM
3 Comments:
Personally, I think it should have gone to Morgan Tsvangirai, but I'm happy with Obama getting it. I know everybody says he hasn't done anything, but his election itself and his reorientation of U.S. policy and the effect it's had on the world has been transformational. Maybe Samar or Tsvangirai will get it next year.
vildechaye, his election and policies are transformational? If merely getting elected was the criteria, which it would appear to be, what value is there in the Peace Prize (I would argue there hasn't been, given its list of laureates).
I suppose driving the domestic population into widely polarized and opposing camps could be considered transformational. As could the strong signals coming from the White House that the Obamassiah is preparing to abandon Afghanistan to the Taliban. Or his wishy washy, ill conceived and cowardly kow towing to the Ayatollahs ("reaching out" to Iran? Come on, Iran has no interest in negotiating with the West). Yep, pretty transformative.
Face it, Obama is a front man for the hard "New" left wing of the Democrats. The "I hate American values, I hate captialism, I hate globalization (unless it means submitting to a sovereign UN), and I hate Isreal cause it crushes all the Arabs camp of the Dems are now in charge, and Obama is their sock puppet.
Face it, in the 8 months since his inauguration he has achieved not one thing. Bupkiss. And he has yet to craft a cogent, definable, and comprehensive policy. On anything. Oh, but he did win the Peace Prize. Go Barry Go!
Watch the mid terms. The Republicans are gonna come back strong, and this time with properly conservative canddidates, not the RINO carpet baggers like Lindsey and that camp. Then, in 2012 Barry gets the boot.
RE: Face it, Obama is a front man for the hard "New" left wing of the Democrats. The "I hate American values, I hate captialism, I hate globalization (unless it means submitting to a sovereign UN), and I hate Isreal cause it crushes all the Arabs camp of the Dems are now in charge, and Obama is their sock puppet.
Face it, in the 8 months since his inauguration he has achieved not one thing. Bupkiss. And he has yet to craft a cogent, definable, and comprehensive policy. On anything. Oh, but he did win the Peace Prize. Go Barry Go! Watch the mid terms. The Republicans are gonna come back strong, and this time with properly conservative canddidates, not the RINO carpet baggers like Lindsey and that camp. Then, in 2012 Barry gets the boot.
I wish you dittoheads would stick to your own blogs where you can bash the "left" to your heart's content. It's almost not worth it to answer your points, but what the hell:
1-Obama put in a stimulus package. You surely don't like it, but it isn't nothing. In my view, he's the main reason there wasn't a total meltdown of the world economy.
2-Obama may "abandon" Afghanistan by not sending another 40,000 troops, but he's already sent 10,000 more. In other words, he's already paying more attention to Afghanistan than Bush did after 2003.
3-It's funny you say he hasn't done anything, when it's the party you believe will sweep up in 2010 and 2012 that's obstructing health care and other efforts.
4-You're living in dreamland if you think that a Sarah-Palin, Glenn-Beck influenced GOP is going to do anything in the above years other than go down. As they should.
5-Democrats and Obama do not hate American values. It is an american value to respect different political points of view. You and the nutcase right of the GOP fail miserably in that category, not obama.
Now be a good little boy and fuck off.
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