I heard this first thing this morning when news broke on NPR. The Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize committee awarded Barack Obama this year’s prize. Since nominations had to be in by about 12 days after Obama took office, the award is based on nothing whatsoever in the way of accomplishments.
Of course, eight months on, it still is.
East-West relations are little better than they were six months ago, and any change is probably due largely to the global economic downturn; and America’s vaunted determination to re-engage with the Muslim world has failed to make any concrete progress towards ending the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
There is a further irony in offering a peace prize to a president whose principal preoccupation at the moment is when and how to expand the war in Afghanistan.
The spectacle of Mr Obama mounting the podium in Oslo to accept a prize that once went to Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi and Mother Theresa would be all the more absurd if it follows a White House decision to send up to 40,000 more US troops to Afghanistan. However just such a war may be deemed in Western eyes, Muslims would not be the only group to complain that peace is hardly compatible with an escalation in hostilities.
NASA bombed the moon today, too. So much for peace with the neighbors.
The people I work with were livid about this today. They are not at all impressed with the Nobel , it’s recipient or the group who bestows the award. Personally, I think this will backfire.
Obama could have rejected the award and I think that would have raised a few people’s opinions about him, if only a little. But Obama’s not built that way, folks. He’s accepting it and says he’ll donate the prize money to charity. (I do not think that is up to him under existing law, though. Doesn’t the money go to the Treasury? Anyone got a pointer on the law regarding this sort of thing?)
At what point in time after Arrafat got the award in 1994 did people start to take the thing seriously again? Remember, they gave it Arrafat because he _said_ that he was renou ncing terrorism and violence.
OTOH, it did anger me as well.
” Since nominations had to be in by about 12 days after Obama took office, the award is based on nothing whatsoever in the way of accomplishments.”
Now hold on a sec, Gaius!
Within that 12 days he managed to take the Oath Of Office of the POTUS not once but twice … and F*#KED it up both times.
I doubt any American President in history can claim that accomplishment.
I stand corrected, Maggie.