Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

[fatfencer]

It's about time they gave the NPP to a man strong enough to stand up and hold Israel to some level of accountability.

Here's to a large Palestine and a tiny Israel.

FF

[OROD]

I know it's October, but honestly when I heard this I had to double check and make sure it wasnt April 1st. I guess the NPP really doesnt mean what it used to.

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[I_luv_saber]

A lot of people think so, including Obama. He expressed his reactions to the prize in what I thought was a modest and appropriate way, saying it was 'he did not feel he deserved "to be in the company" of past Peace Prize winners' and it was 'less as a recognition of his own accomplishments and more as "a call to action."' (from CNN site). I heard that he's giving the prize money to charity, which I think is a classy move.

Yes. I think the way he went about accepting it was more than proper, and I don't think he had a hand in it. He handled it very well. Just not the best choice, IMO.

[lindajdunn]

From AP:

"The five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee - four of whom spoke to The Associated Press, said awarding Obama the peace prize could be seen as an early vote of confidence intended to build global support for the policies of his young administration."

I translate this as: It looks like his movement is gaining traction and we want to grease the wheels.

[OROD]

I translate this as: It looks like his movement is gaining traction and we want to grease the wheels.

Then maybe they should call it the Nobel Political Agenda Prize.

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[Inquartata]

Why start now?

Looks like nobody understands this one...

[kmwong]

I haven't killed anyone, nor am I planning to.

Can haz peace prize??? PLZ!!

[Bayou Bum]

No big deal. The NPP demonstrated its political bias when Gore won for global warming. Has anyone ever won while leading a country in two wars? I'm not sure why people are surprised at the committee selecting him with no accomplishments, he was elected President without any accomplishments.

I do think Obama showed a lot of class in his comments and actions regarding the award.

[Hauptman]

Maybe since he's our first black president they thought that put him on par with Nelson Mandela.

....well... it's as plausible as anything else...

[OROD]

Maybe next year they can give him the Nobel prize for physics.

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[lindajdunn]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3HEm...layer_embedded

[telkanuru]

This is great, because my life isn't surreal enough.

[lindajdunn]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle6868905.ece

The award is also an example of what Nobel scholars call the growing aspirational trend of Nobel committees over the past three decades, by which awards are given not for what has been achieved but in support of the cause being fought for.

Thorbjørn Jagland, the committee chairman, made clear that this year’s prize fell in that category. “If you look at the history of the Peace Prize, we have on many occasions given it to try to enhance what many personalities were trying to do,” he said. “It could be too late to respond three years from now.”

I also think that this presents a good argument as to why Obama was nominated:

http://www.newstatesman.com/human-ri...ma-bush-norway

But it is also worth bearing in mind the particular worldview of the Peace Prize Committee itself. The Peace Prize Committee is the only part of the Nobel bureaucracy (which includes the prize for literature and the four prizes for the sciences) to be based in Norway not Sweden. Alfred Nobel himself was a Swede, of course, and Norway was long colonized by Sweden - gaining independence in 1905. Built in to the Prize is thus a strong desire to promote the work of those who deal in alternative, more emancipated futures.

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My opinion is that Obama has thus far handled the situation as diplomatically as possible but that the committee was misguided in awarding this award to him. I think it's going to hamper, rather than assist, Obama's efforts.

[lindajdunn]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph..._b_316385.html

I think this one nailed it with this wording:

...Americans should use this Nobel Prize as yet another Obama-inspired "teaching moment" to come to terms with just how much George W. Bush's foreign policy scared the hell out of the rest of the world. And we should understand how the world is relieved Americans came to their senses ...

Bush & Company claimed WMD to declare war upon Iraq and found no WMD. They institutionalized torture and then punished low ranking people who got caught doing it and called them a few bad apples. We've imprisoned people in GB with little evidence for doing so and we've kept them there.

We became the evil that we claimed we opposed.

The terrorists won.

[I_luv_saber]

I understand the idea behind it (or guessed at it) - but I still think it was a poor decision with political motivations, and didn't really embody the spirit of the prize (or rather, what it should be).

[Phaeton]

Honestly, any peace prize that's been given to Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, Yasser Arafat, the Dalai Lama, and Henry Kissinger already doesn't mean much.

[pigeonmeister]

I understand the idea behind it (or guessed at it) - but I still think it was a poor decision with political motivations, and didn't really embody the spirit of the prize (or rather, what it should be).

I think the 'spirit' of the prize is itself rather difficult to pin down. Historically, most of the recipients have been either statesman involved in some kind of international arbritation or those involved in various humanitarian NGO's. The number of 'activists', such as MLK, Mother Theresa, Shirin Ebadi, are relatively recent, small in number, and appear quite sporadically.

[I_luv_saber]

Granted. But by "in the spirit of" I meant along the lines of being awarded due to accomplishments in the field, rather than being awarded as a means to help someone accomplish in that field (or if it was for accomplishments already made, they were so few and far between at this point that I must question the decision on that basis).

[telkanuru]

Honestly, any peace prize that's been given to Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, Yasser Arafat, the Dalai Lama, and Henry Kissinger already doesn't mean much.

Arafat and Kissinger, sure, but you're grouping the other 3 with them?

Seriously, drugs aren't good for you.

[migopod]

Arafat and Kissinger, sure, but you're grouping the other 3 with them?

Seriously, drugs aren't good for you.

The Arafat/Rabin/Peres prize actually made sense at the time. At least two of the recipients were former terrorists making an active effort to achieve peace. Sure they failed in the end, but at the time they were at least trying to resolve the conflict.

Kissinger/Tho was the same kind of thing.

After some reflection on the reasoning the Nobel committee have expressed, giving it to Obama was totally not outside the realm of precedent.