Obama’s Nobel Prize

My first thought was, “why?” I mean, I voted for him but I can’t see anything he’s done at this point to further world peace. In fact, I’m a bit disappointed with him on a host of issues. I’m absolutely in favor of affirmative action but this is silly and patronizing. And honestly, I bet Obama would be the first to agree.

The Nobel Prizes in the arts and sciences are awarded for specific work or a body of work, but the Nobel Peace Prize has always been a mish-mash of accomplishments vs. promise vs. political messages.

To some extent, a peace prize will nearly always be a political decision, since the committee is often awarding one idea or posture in a political confrontation and not the other. We so rarely have wars end with a handshake that you have to dig into the muck of human conflict and make a political statement.

I think that peace prize committee was more awarding Obama and the American people for getting past race, but that they figured they couldn’t word it that way — or give the award to the 46% of the people who voted against him. So they settled on the diplomacy side for the text.

One note: a person interviewed on the radio this morning said that Americans are too close to Obama politically to realize the broad extent of his impact (especially relative to Bush) internationally. We may be falling into that trap as we question the decision.

Michael, I agree completely with your last paragraph. We in the U.S. are so focused on our perception of Obama that we fail to see how the rest of the world is reacting to his efforts. I also agree that the award may be a little premature, but the Nobel Committee seems to be saying “we recognize what he has done to reach out to — and listen to — the rest of the world.” In that context, the award is well-deserved.

I think Mr. Pahre makes some very valid points. While I agree it is premature, I also think that we need to recognize that this award is global in nature, not limited to OUR views of HIS impact. If it symbolizes the view of much of the world about the US, dare we minimize an impact simply because we ourselves are incapable of appreciating what it means the the “rest’ of the world? While we may feel our position in the world is diminished, perhaps the rest of the world doesn’t see it that way. To them it is likely the equivalent difference between the “cold war” an “detente”… a rather significant one. Refuse it, that would be an insult. And I dont think it necessarily has any impact or othwerwise reflects in any way on other ‘African-Americans’ recipients.. unless you’ve already concluded that it was simply awarded to him because he is black. I dont think it’s that clear or simple.

President Obama should accept the award graciously, but not make too big a deal of it. It’s a disturbing trend that many of the same people who cheered when Chicago was rejected as the Olympics site are now demanding Obama reject the Nobel or citing the award as proof that “only dem foreign Socialists” like Obama. “Isolationist troglodyte chic” should not be allowed to catch on here as the U.S. tries to undo the negative perception it has endured in the World community the past 8 years.

Should he have gotten it? Although he is a better choice than Henry Kissinger or Yasser Arafat, it probably is premature, particularly because Iraq and Afghanistan are still on the front burner and he has yet to roll up his sleeves and make any bold moves. However, Obama should receive kudos for visiting nations around the world and opening lines of communication, instead of the sword-waving favored by his predecessor.

I’m a flaming liberal and I’m not perplexed. For better or worse (worse, I’d say), it’s a political maneuver on the part of the Nobel committee. I agree he maybe qualifies someday, but not yet.

I’d be surprised if President Obama doesn’t see it that way too. Absurd as it may seem, he is probably figuring out how to make the best of it. At least he can say he didn’t ask for it.

And it’s an opportunity to give the mother of all foreign policy speeches.

Just reading the comments here – one thing I think is way off base is the idea that this has anything to do with race. This is about reversing eight long, destructive Bush years.

Just because you follow after a bad president doesn’t make you worthy of consideration for the prize. Had George W. Bush not been president, would Obama still be considered for the award? I don’t even know where to begin on Obama’s hypocrisies.

He is continuing Bush policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama’s increased the number of private contractors in Iraq (read Jeremy Scahill) and is now seriously considering a surge in Afghanistan. That’s more bloodshed and it will result in less security.

It’s not just people on the left and right, Kathy. Nobel peace prize winners are also surprised. Mairead MaGuire called it “sad.”

And then there’s this from historian Andy Worthington.

Is it really appropriate for the Nobel Peace Prize to be given to a man who would rather look forward than backwards when it comes to decisions, taken at the highest levels of the previous administration, to turn America from a country that upheld the universal torture ban into a country that sought to redefine torture so that it could torture “high-value detainees” in a network of secret prisons around the world?

Is it really appropriate for the Nobel Peace Prize to be given to a man who, although he ordered the closure of Guantánamo and recognizes that it “set back the moral authority” that, in his opinion, “is America’s strongest currency in the world,” and also that it “became a symbol that helped al-Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause,” endorses indefinite detention without charge or trial for some of the 221 prisoners still held in the prison?

Is it really appropriate for the Nobel Peace Prize to be given to a man who, through the Justice Department, is appealing a ruling extending the habeas corpus rights granted by the Supreme Court to the prisoners at Guantánamo to foreign prisoners seized in other countries and “rendered” to the US prison at Bagram airbase – where some of these men have been held for six years – even though the judge ruled that “the detainees themselves as well as the rationale for detention are essentially the same”?

Is it really appropriate to give the Nobel Peace Prize to a man who, although he revoked some of the Bush administration’s vilest executive orders and swore to uphold the universal torture ban, appears to be actively involved in the rendition of prisoners to the US prison at Bagram airbase?

Is it really appropriate for the Nobel Peace Prize to be given to a man who, although professing his admiration for the Geneva Conventions, has chosen to introduce Guantánamo-style reviews for the 600 or so Afghan prisoners held at Bagram, rather than the competent tribunals stipulated in Article 5 of the Geneva Conventions, and who, as a result, appears to be endorsing the Bush administration’s unilateral rewriting of the Conventions?

It’s all documented here at Common Dreams.

And of course, my pet peeve, Obama should not be considered precisely because of drone attacks that have killed innocent civilians (which he authorized), he caved on Israeli settlements in Palestine, and he also prevented the UN Security Council from dealing with the Goldstone Report on Israel’s atrocious human rights abuses.

Engaging in diplomacy is not trailblazing work in international relations. Not only has Obama not accomplish anything significant yet, but I always thought the Nobel Committee gives out awards to those who do something new or different. Obama doesn’t meet this criterion.

OK, you have your opinions, fine. I’m just sharing mine. If people want to follow real peace awards follow The Right Livelihood Award, The Goldman Prize, or my favorite the Martha Gellhorn Award for Journalism. Consider these more worthy than the Nobel Peace Prize.

There is SO MUCH more I could point out, but I just don’t think Obama deserves it. It’s more than just the right and left.

To Treg and Bob Fontaine: Here’s part of what the Nobel Committee said in awarding the prize to Obama: “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.”

Now let’s be honest. A large part of the reason he captured the world’s attention and gave people hope for a better future was for what he represented to progressives, to nonwhite people around the world. I don’t think a liberal white guy would have captured the world’s attention and given people hope in the same way. Certainly John Kerry’s candidacy didn’t.

So yes, I do think race enters into Obama’s appeal and this sense of hope and change that the Nobel Committee mentioned.

If you disagree, what has he done in concrete terms, what action has he taken, to inspire such hope and capture the world’s attention?

You don’t get a prize for simply showing up to work.

I think Obama was given the award for his foreign policy of engagement which is in marked contrast to the Bush/Cheney pre-emptive warfare doctrine and their isolation of enemies aka the “axis of evil.” The award also recognizes the exceptional influence the US still has over world peace.

Obama received the award nominally for his work in the Senate on nuclear arms control but the real reason he won the award was because he was the not-Bush. Nominations were do in February, long before he engaged the Muslim world with his speech in Cairo.

The biggest single thing he could do to earn the award besides having won the election is get Israel and Palestine to agree to a two-state solution, to stop lobbying missiles at Israel and to stop building settlements on Palestinian land.

He has already boxed in North Korean disestablishing export of WMD technology and he has already brought China and Russia into a coalition of the worlds biggest economies offering carrots and sticks in response to Iran’s military nuclear ambitions.

Conservatives, needless to say, are going to have a field day with this, comparing it to previous Nobels they think were undeserving, such as those given to Jimmy Carter and Al Gore.

There’s a logistical problem giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Bush. If Bush traveled to Oslo to receive the award, he’d likely be arrested for war crimes (war of aggression Iraq and torture) and then be extradited to The Hague.

Esther – you make very valid points – appreciate the contribution.

To suggest, as Newshound does, that “President Bush was equally devoted to world peace and to allow those Peoples who wanted to enjoy freedom to be able to do so, even if it meant dire, and perhaps irrelevant consequences to the enemy of freedom and peace” is perhaps the worst case of revisionist history since the Japanese issued textbooks that failed to mention that nation’s role in WWII.

Ikape, you need to back and reread your Teddy Roosevelt, the part about the man is who’s not afraid to enter the arena, and who, if he fails, at least has dared greatly. Words such as those used to inspire Americans to dream of doing big things. I’d love to see old TR’s reaction to his party’s cheap disparagement of Obama’s idealism.

The Europeans hate America almost as much as Obama does.

Nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize closed 11 days into Obama’s presidency, so this has nothing to do with his current job. This is a reward to Obama for his close associations with Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers and the rest. The anti-American crowd feels as though they have one of their own in the White House, so naturally they give him an award. Why are people surprised?

“The Europeans hate America almost as much as Obama does.”
Fish, that’s the kind of lunacy that will consign the Right to the very fringes of American politics. Argue the Peace Prize up or down, debate whether Obama should have won, criticize the policies that you disagree with, all of that. But when you say that the president of the United States “hates” his country, that places you out on the farthest frontier, out beyond farce. Take a look throughout U.S. history at where such sentiments have led. Limbaugh, Beck and their disciples (you?) can’t control their hyperbole, and are riding the Republican Right into well deserved obscurity.