President Obama - Nobel Peace Prize

[suzyq]

Somethings missing here - honoring the President with the Nobel Medal for Peace and troops are headed to Afghanistan.  If I were in any of the Military Acadamy's I'd transfer out, don't know if it's permitted.

Guess there are lots of opinions, be interesting to have your input.

[Cato]

Somethings missing here - honoring the President with the Nobel Medal for Peace and troops are headed to Afghanistan.  If I were in any of the Military Acadamy's I'd transfer out, don't know if it's permitted.

Guess there are lots of opinions, be interesting to have your input.

It apparently has been a great  opportunity to insult the Norwegians, and of course everyone knows that America needs to insult more free, democratic countries, while cozying up to  the petty dictators and ignoring the freedom movement in Iran.   0:)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/09/obama-nobel-peace-prize-snub

[WI Dan]

[Renfield]

It apparently has been a great  opportunity to insult the Norwegians, and of course everyone knows that America needs to insult more free, democratic countries, while cozying up to  the petty dictators and ignoring the freedom movement in Iran.   0:)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/09/obama-nobel-peace-prize-snub

On the other hand, I can just see the headline: "President lunches with King as US economy suffers".

Like the Norwegians (the Nobel people) said themselves, he has a country to run that needs his attention, and I would think much less of him if he stayed there for two days, but only one in Copenhagen for the summit.

[drogulus]

     

Somethings missing here - honoring the President with the Nobel Medal for Peace and troops are headed to Afghanistan.  If I were in any of the Military Acadamy's I'd transfer out, don't know if it's permitted.

Guess there are lots of opinions, be interesting to have your input.

     I think Afghanistan became the bad war just when it became the more important one. When Iraq was the most important one it was bad and Afghanistan was good (as Obama made clear during the campaign). The problem is that war as a feature of policy is not easy to explain. If it was merely a matter of being against war and in favor of peace that would be one thing, but clearly it isn't. When a liberal gets into the White House he discovers that ideology doesn't guide policy nearly as much as circumstance. Obama did not "sell out", nor was he captured by advisors. His circumstances changed, he acquired responsibility for the policy direction of the only country that is capable of responding to the danger posed by a resurgent Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. His new position gives him an exquisite appreciation of what is really at stake. You don't like his explanation? That's because you view his reasoning on an ideological grid, not like someone who makes decisions.

      Obama is not dumb. He is not a warmonger. So he must have reasons, no doubt reasons similar to those of Bush, which should surprise no one who understands how this great responsibility weighs on those who must exercise it. Afghanistan was universally popular at the beginning, and now it's unpopular. It took longer for the public to sour on it than was the case with Iraq, which had majority support at the beginning but lost most of it within 2 years.

      It's pretty clear to me that popularity, and the loss of it, plays an important role in how a war is fought. Because Bush I wasn't willing to court unpopularity at home and abroad the first Iraq war ended inconclusively, making the second war almost inevitable. Because Bush II was terrified at the prospect of U.S. casualties in Iraq we adopted a passive strategy that didn't protect the population, and when the Iraqis died in huge numbers it made the war more unpopular. Why were we there if we weren't even protecting the people we were supposed to be liberating? Eventually we reversed this policy and adopted an agressive policy that candidate Obama opposed. But now he's President, and his adoption of an agressive strategy in Afghanistan says plenty about how being responsible changes how you view things. This speaks well of Obama. He will not hold himself hostage to his former opinions. He is capable of learning, and making unpopular decisions.

      I hope this helps.

      Oh, I forgot. I don't think the prize is very important. It was given for reasons that don't matter very much as well.

[Coopmv]

But what has Obama done to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?  He has not even served out one year of a four-year presidency.   

[Bulldog]

But what has Obama done to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?  He has not even served out one year of a four-year presidency.   

I agree that Obama hasn't done anything to deserve the prize.  However, that's the fault of the decision makers, not the recepient.

[Todd]

There's a very Orwellian tinge to this whole thing.  The man who sends another 30,000 soldiers to a war accepts a peace prize.  War is peace after all.

[(poco) Sforzando]

But what has Obama done to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?  He has not even served out one year of a four-year presidency.   

If it makes you feel better, neither did Mother Teresa.

[drogulus]

     Obama dealt with the charge that he didn't deserve the prize quite well. He mentioned Gandhi, who didn't get the prize, and who deserved it if any human being ever did.

     Walter Russell Mead is my favorite foreign policy dude. Here's his reaction to the award and Obama speech, with an unreasonably long excerpt below:

Bush's critics used to dismiss his efforts to improve the administration's diplomatic efforts as 'putting lipstick on a pig.'  The underlying policies were so ugly, the argument ran, that no effort could mitigate the catastrophic consequences for America's global image.

Obama, it turns out, is a masterly make-up artist.  It wasn't just the lipstick, of course.  It was more of a makeover.  The pig has been bathed and scrubbed and is taking a steady diet of prescription-strength breath mints.  The new administration quickly and correctly identified certain features of American policy that had become so offensive that change was urgently needed.  Guantanamo is being closed.  The rhetoric has changed.  But these represent more nips and tucks than radical surgery — botox for the pig, not a face transplant.  The pig has been to charm school.

This all needed to happen and I am very glad that it did.  I'm not sure that this achievement alone justifies President Obama's Peace Prize, but it is a real accomplishment and one that Americans should both be grateful for and take pride in.

Once when the annual list of MacArthur Foundation 'genius' awards came out, I remember complaining to a friend that one of the people who got the award was an artist whose work seemed to consist of putting found garbage on a tray and calling it art.  "How can they give him a genius award for that?" I asked.

The friend looked at me scornfully.  "What are you talking about?" he said.  "Anybody who can convince a foundation board to give him half a million dollars for putting trash on a tray is obviously a genius.  Could you do it?"

Well, no, I had to admit.  So if Obama can get the Nobel Peace Prize for following a foreign policy that is strategically rather close to George Bush's, maybe we should just call him a genius and shut up.

     

[matti]

Had he been smart, he'd not accepted the prize. But now that he has, hopefully he'll fulfill the demand of a Norwegian poster on an Oslo street the day he got the Nobel: "You got it. Now deserve it."

[Coopmv]

If it makes you feel better, neither did Mother Teresa.

Would you have spent your life in the slum of Calcutta tending to the poor and sick?

[(poco) Sforzando]

Would you have spent your life in the slum of Calcutta tending to the poor and sick?

It was just a joke.

[Scarpia]

It was just a joke.

A concept lost on some.   

[Florestan]

But what has Obama done to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?

He hasn't received it for what he has done, but for what he is: Black and Left. 

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

He hasn't received it for what he has done, but for what he is: Black and Left. 

"Left" only by American standards. Sometimes, not even that; note his Wall St. bailout, for instance:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31234647/obamas_big_sellout

[Florestan]

Well, demagoguery and deceit during elections have been a trademark of the Left ever since the dawn of the universal vote, so he is typically Left in this respect. 

(Not that the Right fares much better, but still...)

[Wendell_E]

Well, demagoguery and deceit during elections have been a trademark of the Left ever since the dawn of the universal vote, so he is typically Left in this respect. 

(Not that the Right fares much better, but still...The right, if anything, is worse.)

Corrected.   

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Rather than being Left as traditionally understood, he's a liberal internationalist, with all the "interventionist" yearnings that implies:

http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2009/12/12/yes-obama-is-a-liberal-internationalist/

[Florestan]

Actually, the real question about him is: how free are his actions?