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In a stunning announcement, the Nobel Prize Committee has awarded the distinguished Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama. I’m not sure what to make of this. First of all, I’m extremely proud of Barack Obama with the direction that he has taken our country in the last nine months. No, I do not agree with every single one of his policies or actions. But, overall, I think he’s done a fantastic job with two wars and the worst economy in over 60 years.
Conservatives were cheering last week when President Obama went to the International Olympic Committee and made a plea for Chicago to become the site for the 2016 Olympics. As everyone knows, Chicago was voted out in the first round. Conservatives pointed at this as the result of Obama’s waning stardom. More insidiously, they implied that the prestige of the United States has been tarnished in some way. No one mentioned any of the obvious facts that surround the Olympic Committee’s decision. Nobody mentioned the chaos that surrounded the 1996 Olympics, which were held in Atlanta. Remember the bombing? That was a not good public relations move. Then, in 2002, Salt Lake City blew the whistle on the IOC. Salt Lake City exposed the corruption and the backroom deals that cities needed to make in order to win a lucrative bid. The members of the IOC could not have been pleased with this unwanted exposure. Finally, you can’t tell me that Barack Obama has erased eight years of bad feelings towards the United States. President Bush’s go it alone strategy has clearly angered the international community, which had to play a role in their decision. So, Barack Obama had little or no chance of bringing the Olympics to Chicago. I applaud him for going to bat for “his city.” If I were president, and Dallas, Texas was trying to bid for the Olympics, I would have to go to bat for Dallas. I grew up in Dallas. I love the place. I want to see it prosper.
So, as the day unfolds, look for conservatives to bash the Nobel Prize just as they did when Al Gore won. They will point to the Nobel Committee as a group of socialists or fascists. So, according to their mindset, a socialist has acknowledged and awarded another socialist when, in fact, the prize means much more than this. Barack Obama has taken a step towards changing how the world sees the United States. If you look at the world as a sandbox, President Bush made us look like the bully — you’re either with us or against us. President Barack Obama has faced the world and acknowledged our past mistakes. He also is acknowledged that together we can move forward and prosper. He has reached out to Europe, to the Muslim world and to our friends in Asia. I think that the world has responded positively to this fact. I think that this is a good thing, a very good thing.
Finally, Barack Obama is not the first sitting president to win a Nobel Prize. He is actually the third. Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Prize and Jimmy Carter was distinguished by this great honor after he left office. Congratulations to president Barack Obama for winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize! Sweet!
Update:
Many people are saying that Barack Obama didn’t deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. My response is if not him then who? Here are more than 30 reasons for Obama to get the Peace Prize:
Here is a brief list of some of the reasons President Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize: (As a side note, it took me less than 45 minutes to compile this into a diary. It took me longer to fix my HTML errors than to find a short list of Nobel Prize-winning accomplishments by our President. I am sure I have missed MANY things.)
3/18/8 – Obama caught world-wide attention for his moving speech on race relations.
7/24/8 – Obama lays the foundation for a new era of international relations and began inspiring renewed hope in American leadership during his campaign speech in Berlin.
11/6/8 – Obama’s victory was hailed as a promise of hope for the world.
12/1/8 – Obama began plans to restore U.N. ambassador to cabinet rank.
1/22/9 – Appointed a Special Envoy for Middle East peace.
1/22/9 – Ordered the closing of Guantanamo Bay.
1/22/9 – Ordered comprehensive review of detention policies.
1/22/9 – Prohibited use of torture.
1/22/9 – Signed an executive order to close CIA secret prisons.
1/23/9 – Lifted “Global Gag Rule” on international health groups.
1/26/9 – Began to address climate change by increasing fuel standards for automobiles.
1/26/9 – Appointed Special Envoy for Climate Change.
1/27/9 – Signed Lily Ledbetter “Fair Pay” Act.
2/1/9 – Expanded healthcare for children by signing SCHIP.
2/5/9 – Again addressed energy conservation by increasing standards for appliances.
2/24/9 – Directed almost $1 billion for prevention and wellness to improve America’s health.
2/25/9 – Initiated international efforts to reduce mercury emissions worldwide.
2/27/9 – Committed to responsibly ending the war in Iraq.
4/1/9 – Agreed to negotiation of a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia.
4/1/9 – Enhanced U.S. – China relations.
4/2/9 – Led global response to the economic crisis through the G20, obtaining commitments of $1.1 trillion to safeguard the world’s most vulnerable economies.
4/4/9 – Renewed dialog with NATO and other key allies.
4/5/9 – Announced new strategy to responsibly address international nuclear proliferation.
4/13/9 – Began easing tension with Cuba through new policy stance.
4/17/9 – Secured $5 billion in aid commitments “to bolster [Pakistan’s] economy and help it fight terror and Islamic radicalism.”
4/22/9 – Developed the renewable energy projects on the waters of our Outer Continental Shelf that produce electricity from wind, wave, and ocean currents.
5/8/9 – Proposed International Affairs budget that included funds to create a civilian response corps — teams of civilian experts in rule of law, policing, transitional governance, economics, engineering, and other areas critical to helping rebuild war-torn societies; Provided $40 million for a “stabilization bridge fund,” which would provide rapid response funds for the State Department to help with an international crisis situation.
6/4/9 – Gave historic address to the Muslim World in Cairo – “American is not at war with Islam.” Foreign affairs experts insist that Obama’s engagement with the Muslim world has been remarkable. “He has been able to dramatically change America’s image in that region.”
8/4/9 – Used DIPLOMACY to free two American journalists from a North Korean prison.
9/18/9 – De-escalation of nuclear tension through repurposing of missile defense prompting Russia to withdraw its missile plan.
I mean this comment with due respect but this is the one thing that Americans do wrong and thats what really needs a chage. You are not the center of the world. Without a doubt America is a great national and has achieved a lot in the previous decades along with your influence but that does not mean that everything else in the world goes around the US.
Agreed that Obama has done a lot to change the image of the US and everything else you have mentioned but in no capacity does that put him in a position to win the award of its highest standing (that too peace!). I would be, along with many who share my views, celebrating had this happened say in another 5-8 years where everyone saw what a great international change he has been able to bring, but right now he has way too less to show and this is way to early.
The nomination was made by Feb 1, which was less than 11 days into Obama being President. Can someone tell me his accomplishments prior to Feb 1? At least the other two Presidents had actually accomplished something. It is not that I object to Obama but to the timing of the prize.
The headline might read “Obama awarded Nobel Peace Prize for not being George Bush (his oratory is clearly superior).” Nominations for this award were closed Feb 1,2009, less than two weeks (TWO WEEKS!) after the Obama inauguration. I used to think the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded for significant achievement, not for having “The Audacity of Hope” for peace…we all WANT peace. It is far too early to bestow any mantle of greatness on this president; so far, oratorical skills notwithstanding, he has not revealed himself to be strong enough (or willing) to be a truly transformational leader. He has shown himself to be a good partner of the powerful corporate lobbys. Jimmy Carter brought the Arabs and Israelis together; Al Gore did much to raise world awareness regarding issues of climate change…Obama says the world community should be nice and respect each other, and for this he is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize? Surely, there are individuals far more deserving out there who have worked tirelessly in their efforts to bring about peace. Obama may achieve greatness; we will see. Maybe this award will pressure him into actually pursuing policies that will allow peace to happen (no indication of this yet)? But for now, not only does this award diminish the significant achievements of previous recipients, it relegates the prize itself to the category of “Irrelevant” to this reader.
Let me start by saying that President Obama is not just a great orator but also a visionary. Yes, he has taken a lot of steps that bring hope for peace into our world. But I thought the Nobel prizes were given for achievements, not plans.
Look at all the accomplishments you mentioned. I’m going to point out a few words: lays the foundation, plans to restore, promise of hope, ordered the closing, began to address, announced new strategy, proposed budget.
How many of them have tangible results shown. Yes, he is a huge change from Bush (thankfully), but it seems like he was given this award because he promises us hope, not because he’s shown tangible results that show that he has achieved peace (or helped the world take steps towards it).
I think he would have been a deserving winner in a few years, once we had seen tangible results from his term. But this is premature at this point in time. This award has been given to him for promising the world peace, but as one of (if not the) most powerful men in the world, how is that difficult for him to do? I think this award could have gone to other nominees who have shown tangible results despite having a lot less resources than the President of the United States.
thanks for your thoughtful comments.
I added a list just for you.
Thanks for your comments.
I dare you to tell an Iraqi whose relatives Obama killed that Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. This is the WTF moment of 2009.
Responding to comments questioning this award, you (indignantly) ask “…if not him, then who?” Unfortunately, the world will not know the names of the other 208 (I believe there were 209 total) nominees or how the votes of the Nobel committee were cast until the year 2059. That’s right, the nominee list and committee voting record are sealed for 50 years! The world can only guess at the names of those nominees who have made real accomplishments and contributed much to the cause of peace. The committee may have awarded Obama solely based on #3 on your list: 11/6/08 “Obama’s victory was hailed as a promise of hope for the world”; I don’t know. But this falls under the category of “not being George Bush.” Choosing to use the Nobel prize as a policy statement, rather than an acknowledgment of significant achievement has undermined its very credibility. Knowing how precious your time is, I applaud you for your efforts, but that list (?)…45 minutes(?)…the words “Things that make you go hmmm…” come to mind.
I haven’t paid attention to the Nobel Prize for years. May-be that’s what the Nobel committee was trying to correct.
In the past the committee would use the Peace Prize to highlight someone’s heroic effort to bring peace. I think former winners like Martin Luther King and Ghandi may have been somewhat unknown on a worldwide basis until the Nobel prize. The other approach that the committee has used was to highlight an outstanding effort which brought about peaceful resolution to a violent conflict (Teddy Roosevelt for the negotiations endingthe Sino-Japanese War, Woodrow Wilson for the VersailleTreaty ending WWI and Nelson Mandela / F.W. deKlerk ending the war in South Africa).
Lately the committee seems to want to attract attention to itself by awarding the prize to a celebrity.
Obama’s award was better than the ones given to the Kofi Anan ( in charge of the UN Peacekeeping Taskforce during the Rwandan Genocide) or the International Atomic Energy Agency or Yasser Arafat.
If not Obama then who? Preferably someone with a life time of work and some success. Most of those folks wouldn’t be celebrities or Americans. I have a couple of people who I think would have been better choices- Bono and Vaclav Havel.
Matt —
I appreciate your comments. I don’t know, I truly don’t know. If I was on the Nobel peace prize committee, I know I would not have nominated Barack Obama but I probably would’ve voted for him. I’m concerned about civil liberties and how he is following some of Bush’s policies. Glenn Greenwald had a very thoughtful post on this back on Friday. As you know, he’s been highly critical of the president.
I think it sure is possible that the Nobel Peace Prize committee decided to give the award to anybody who “wasn’t Bush.” For my money, that’s good enough.
Now, I do want to see more out of Barack Obama. We need to get out of Iraq. Now! More and more I think that we need to draw down troops in Afghanistan. At the same time, we need to increase aid to build roads and infrastructure. Hopefully, that would help stabilize the region. Increasing troops, after President Bush’s surge, will tax an already strained military. Finally, I’m also not certain on our goals in Afghanistan. If our goal is to keep the pressure on Al Qaeda than we need to focus on things that stabilize Pakistan. Guantánamo Bay needs to be closed. Now. There’s a maximum-security prison somewhere in Minnesota or Montana that is completely empty. We need to house the prisoners there. We need to sort through these prisoners as quickly as possible and release those that do not need to be held any longer. The Patriot Act needs to be torn up. We need to start again with a clean sheet of paper and rationally decide what laws we need to fight terrorism. We need to engage the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We need serious dialogue and not rhetoric. On the domestic front, we need economic reform that seems to be pushed so far to the back burner that I don’t see it on the stove anymore. After the first of the year, we need serious clean energy. (I will wait till after the first of the year in order to get momentum to go into the midterm elections.)
My two cents. Thanks for your comments.
If not President Obama then who:
U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.
🙂
Obama was nominated 11 days after he took office…Ask yourself honestly has he done anything Nobel Peace prize worthy during his first 11 days in office or prior to that? ::Awaits Obama Zealotry:: :-[
Thank for your comments.
I would say what I said above –
3/18/8 – Obama caught world-wide attention for his moving speech on race relations.
7/24/8 – Obama lays the foundation for a new era of international relations and began inspiring renewed hope in American leadership during his campaign speech in Berlin.
11/6/8 – Obama’s victory was hailed as a promise of hope for the world.
12/1/8 – Obama began plans to restore U.N. ambassador to cabinet rank.
1/22/9 – Appointed a Special Envoy for Middle East peace.
1/22/9 – Ordered the closing of Guantanamo Bay.
1/22/9 – Ordered comprehensive review of detention policies.
1/22/9 – Prohibited use of torture.
1/22/9 – Signed an executive order to close CIA secret prisons.
1/23/9 – Lifted “Global Gag Rule” on international health groups.
1/26/9 – Began to address climate change by increasing fuel standards for automobiles.
1/26/9 – Appointed Special Envoy for Climate Change.
1/27/9 – Signed Lily Ledbetter “Fair Pay” Act.
You forgot Obama’s most decisive moment which I actually do think was a victory for peace over lawlessness:
4/12/2009- President Obama orders the raid on Somali pirates resulting in the deaths of 3 pirates and the release of Captain Richard Phillips of the American cargo ship Maersk Alabama warning Somali pirates not to mess with Americans.