Obama's Nobel Peace PrizeBy Steven T. Jones
Whether or not President Barack Obama deserved the Nobel Peace Prize – which is a subject of great debate today by the commenting class – it’s important to note how a simple change in tone by the US is being so enthusiastically welcomed and greeted with such hope by the Nobel Committee and people around the world.
Obama has long advocated talking with our enemies instead of simply threatening them or issuing ultimatums, a stand that has been criticized as naïve by Establishment voices. But it is the politically dominant American view that is naïve, this sense that we are somehow morally superior and can dictate our values to others, equating belligerence and violence with toughness, and diplomacy – listening, talking, trying to pick the best solution from a field of bad options – with weakness.
But the toughest stand Obama has taken is his insistence on talking to Iran’s leaders, as well as those from other despotic regimes. We gain nothing from isolating our enemies. Economic sanctions didn’t topple Saddam Hussein and they won’t hurt the mullahs in Iran or Pakistan. In a similar vein, Obama has advocated the creation of international efforts to tackle such difficult problems as climate change and nuclear proliferation, lending important and long overdue American leadership to those important causes.
The path to peace begins with pursuing it honestly, diligently, and with mutual respect for our myriad partners, and I think that’s the message behind this honor.
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Comments (9)
I guess sending predator drones to bomb civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan is not a barrier to receiving the Nobel.
Wonder if the Nobel Peace Prize honoree is going to send more troops to Afghanistan?
-marc
Posted by marcos | October 9, 2009 02:27 PM
He was nominated two weeks into his Presidency. I guess he got it for charming the media and people like you. The Noble Peace Prize has become nothing but a joke.
Posted by Ken | October 9, 2009 02:45 PM
My Main reason for voting for Obamma was that I thought he would wind down the war in Iraq. I feel like a Johnson voter must have felt.
Still it was hard to wade through all of Steve's gibberish. I couldn't figure it all out so I stopped reading, it was so convoluted, so I did a "find" and there was no mention of Obamma's Iraq war.
I suppose it's official, Iraq is now forgotten by the left, "Bushbots" and "dittoheads" are owed an apology by the screaming left.
Posted by glen matlock | October 9, 2009 03:16 PM
Next headline:
Obama cures cancer, Republicans blame him for unemployment among oncologists.
Posted by JWM | October 9, 2009 03:51 PM
We certainly haven't forgotten about Iraq or Afghanistan, and the Peace Prize arguably became a joke when Henry Kissinger won it in '73. My simple point is that the international community is so hungry for some reasonably cooperative American leadership that it didn't even wait for Obama's record to be established or his decisions on our wars to play out. This award seems less about Obama than about sending a message to the American people that the people of the world are waiting for us to start working with them.
Posted by Steven T. Jones | October 9, 2009 03:52 PM
The US is on the way out of Iraq and leaving a more or less stable government behind. Is that a bad thing? I hope he does send more troops to Afghanistan. How could it possibly be good for anyone---especially the Afghan people---to have the Taliban back in control of Afghanistan? Obama is the most interesting president we've had since JFK, which is what the Nobel committee recognizes.
Posted by Rob Anderson | October 9, 2009 05:10 PM
The Nobel Award was a "preemptive strike" by the Nobel Committee timed to influence Obama's decision about troop build up in Afghanistan/Pakistan. People talk about whether Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. They don't talk about whether Alfred Nobel deserved to award it! Nobel was the Swedish Industrialist who invented dynamite!
Posted by Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai | October 9, 2009 10:11 PM
The Nobel Award was a "preemptive strike" by the Nobel Committee timed to influence Obama's decision about troop build up in Afghanistan/Pakistan. People talk about whether Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. They don't talk about whether Alfred Nobel deserved to award it! Nobel was the Swedish Industrialist who invented dynamite!
Posted by Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai | October 9, 2009 10:13 PM
I wonder what it's like to read some conspiracy into everything, and then mock other people's conspiracies.
something like...
"The Nobel people gave Obama an award for some secret reason and Bush knew something about 9/11 beforehand, but those birth certificate people sure are crazy."
http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html
Perhaps its something a little more obvious, internationalists like other internationalists. Obama is one of them, looking at the list the winners since the fall of the USSR most have been internationalists. Who else are you really going to give it to at this stage of things anyway?
Maybe we can get together with the rest of the world to figure out who killed Vince Foster?
Posted by glen matlock | October 9, 2009 11:37 PM