Obama's name had been mentioned in speculation before the award, but many Nobel watchers had believed it was too early to award the president. Obama would have been in the White House for less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline for this year's prize.Now, I understand that the voting took place much more recently, but still. I mean, I like the guy, but aside from a completely rational reset of America's relations with the rest of the world and an equally rational tilt away from retard-strength unilateralism I don't know what concrete thing he's accomplished in the realm of global peace. Beyond that, it seems to me like the Nobel prize is best awarded to individuals whose causes are either unknown or in desperate need of some good PR. Is this going to make things any easier for Obama, or will it just add more fuel to the Obama-is-worshipped-as-God-by-socialists-and-pussies criticism as it exists on the right in America, giving him a tougher and more intransigent domestic audience? Anyway, just an instant reaction on my part, without any analysis or bloggy opinion to distill it, as it is currently only 7:00 am in North America (but 8 pm here).
What do you guys think? I already miss your erudite, sensually composed opinions.
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I mean, uh, I can think of worse people to give it to. They could've honored Sudan's Omer Hassan al-Bashir, for instance. On the other hand, I'm really not sure, as you are, what the prize is supposed to be for. Another nominees, Denis Mukwege, runs one of two hospitals in Eastern Congo, and also has the honor of being the only gynecologist treating victims of rape there. I mean, Obama's great and all, but Mukwege has absolutely no publicity and operates in atrocious conditions on what could generously be termed a shoestring budget. Mandela went to prison for most of his life for his NPP; doesn't this all seem a little excessive?
ReplyDeleteThere's a possibility, though, that something reasonable was behind the decision. It may be that the Nobel committee is trying a bit of positive reinforcement. The prize is a potent public relations tools. It can accrue a fair bit of political capital to the recipient. Maybe they hoped, by bolstering his image, to help him believe that he's really a great statesman? And if he did believe that, he'd lock horns with the diseased underbelly of American politics with further gusto? I know this scenario makes the committee seem like a team of wizards who hang out in a tower in Sweden, searching the globe for the Hero who will liberate the Land from the Evil, but hey, you never know.
President Wilson won the peace prize in 1919, after pushing the world to establish a great multi-national body that would forever prevent a catastrophe like the "Great" War. Like some other freethinking politicians of academic brilliance, he had a great deal of trouble pushing his policies through in his own country, and the League of Nations proved to be a beautiful theory that managed little more than contributing to the unending shitshow to the east of the Mediterranean (see 1994 Laureates). Wilson was hailed in Europe as an "evangel of peace," but a look at the
ReplyDeleteNobel Peace Laureates over the past century shows a tendency to award principles, if not mere stubborn idealism, nearly as often as concrete accomplishments. The Fox newscaster who announced that Obama won "because of his speeches," not his actions, was probably offering a condemnation that the team of wizards would acknowledge as simple fact.
The other sitting US president to take the prize was Roosevelt, but not the UN-envisioning, legislature-overhauling, fireside-chatting FDR to whom Mr. Obama is often compared. The prize went to his older cousin, the famed "rough rider" Teddy Roosevelt, who was acclaimed as a "collaborator of various peace treaties," (presumably not including the 1898 Treaty of Paris, which gave us our perpetual lease on a small Cuban harbor with the mellifluous name "Guantanamo Bay"). Unlike Wilson, Teddy was a man who got things done, but he didn't get his head on a mountain for speaking softly.
Carter was the other Presidential winner, almost 30 years out of office, apparently for "most inflammatory conflation of two long-term human rights violations"
Maybe he won for sort-of-kind-of ending the war in Iraq...in order to step up the war in Afghanistan.
ReplyDeleteOther than that, and some not insignificant but in no way Nobel-proportional diplomatic tussling with Iran, I can't think of a whole lot else the guy has done (or proposes in any serious way to do) for the cause of global peace. And while I understand what Dan is saying--that ideals often seem to attract the prize over results--Obama isn't exactly known for his political idealism.
But like Lion said, it could have gone to worse people.
I think we're all skirting the real issue here - this award clearly proves that every single person who has ever been on the Norwegian Nobel Committee is a Communist Kenyan Muslim.
ReplyDeleteI have nothing more to add to that except to say that I actually thought the BBC homepage had been hacked when I saw the headline.
ReplyDeleteTo be perfectly fair, though, I do think that if Obama or even whoever is president after Obama does make any real headway in the Middle East, history will hold Obama's whole missile defense dealie as a very important part of that. That's at least one concrete thing he's done, even if it's been overshadowed by Iraq and Afghanistan. And no, he still probably shouldn't have won, but I also don't think it's the craziest thing that's ever happened.
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