Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize today for “offering the world hope and striving for nuclear disarmament” in an absolute surprise and shock to the rest of the world.
“The bestowal of one of the world’s top accolades on a president less than nine months in office, who has yet to score a major foreign policy success, was greeted with gasps of astonishment from journalists at the announcement in Oslo,” said Reuters. Uh, and more than a few of those gasps here in the US as well.
Says Michael Binyon at the UK Times Online:
Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and partisan intent. It was clearly seen by the Norwegian Nobel committee as a way of expressing European gratitude for an end to the Bush Administration, approval for the election of America’s first black president and hope that Washington will honour its promise to re-engage with the world.
Instead, the prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace.
The committee said today that he had “captured the world’s attention”. It is certainly true that his energy and aspirations have dazzled many of his supporters. Sadly, it seems they have so bedazzled the Norwegians that they can no longer separate hopes from achievement. The achievements of all previous winners have been diminished.
The deadline for nominations for the prize was Feb. 1 – two weeks after Obama was inaugurated. That’s right, Obama was nominated after only two weeks on the job. Can anyone tell me what earth-moving accomplishments Obama made in his first two weeks as President to garner a nomination?
“So soon? Too early. He has no contribution so far,” former Polish President Lech Walesa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, said Friday. “He is still at an early stage.” And Lech Walesa actually did something to earn his award.
Mahatma Gandhi, the iconic leader of the Indian independence movement and a symbol of nonviolence, never won the Nobel, though he was nominated five times. Obama now wins a world-wide award on peace that Gandhi never won. What does that say about the dickless Norwegians that made up the voting committee?
“It would be wonderful if I could think why he won,” said Claire Sprague, 82, a retired English professor. “They wanted to give him an honor I guess but I can’t think what for.”
Itya Silverio, 33, of Brooklyn, was also surprised. “My first opinion is that he got it because he’s black,” she said. “What did he do that was so great? He hasn’t even finished office yet.”
Robert Schultz, 62, a retired civil servant and Vietnam veteran, asked, “For doing what? The guy hasn’t solved any conflict anywhere so how can he win the peace prize? But if we don’t reelect him the next go around we will all look like idiots because the world has anointed him.”
“It looks less like an objective award than it does a political endorsement,” said William Jelani Cobb, a history professor at Spelman College in Atlanta and author of a forthcoming book on Obama.
In his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.” So what did Obama do in his first 2 weeks as US President “for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses?”
This is absurd.
Obama, Nobel Peace Prize, Oslo, Norwegian Nobel
