Barack Obama Wins the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize

Barack Obama has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The BBC opines: "In awarding President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian committee is honoring his intentions more than his achievements. After all he has been in office only just over eight months and he will presumably hope to serve eight years, so it is very early in his term to get this award. ... The committee does not make any secret of its approach. It states that he is being given the prize 'for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples.' This is of course an implied criticism of former US president George W Bush and the neo-conservatives, who were often accused of trying to change the world in their image." The Washington Post collects more reactions from around the world.

Comments

Re:For being the opposite of Bush

[Moryath]

The win was so meaningless and out-of-place that the CBS morning news anchors actually did a double-take and assumed it was someone playing a practical joke on their teleprompter when it ran across the first time.

CBS, who have their lips glued to Obama's butt when it comes to news "reporting."

You're right, the "win" was precisely a slam at Bush in particular. The reason? Unlike every sane part of the Nobel foundation, the "Peace Prize" committee is made up of 5 guys appointed by the Norwegian parliament, which is about as left-wing as they come and tilts the committee the same way. This is similar to when they handed it to Al Gore previously, a move widely recognized as having no basis in fact but being merely a slam at Bush because they were still pissed about the way the 2000 elections turned out.

Of course, they're also recognized as much for people they failed to award (such as Gandhi, whose death finally shocked them into saying "oops, no living person exists qualified for the award" for a year because according to the terms of Alfred Nobel's will they cannot award the Peace Prize posthumously) as their routine mistakes (such as Yasser Arafat, awarded a "Peace Prize" and then proceeding to go on to lead over 20 more years of terrorist attacks).

Re:Obama Ghandi?

[Kjella]

It was a screwup done in the 1940s, or even earlier. Not awarding a price the year he died is as close as they can ever come after Nobel's instructions. So it happened and they'll probably still talk about it in another 100 years but the past can not be changed. It's not Obama vs Gandhi, it's Obama vs other candidates of 2009 vs not awarding one at all. There's a lot of lesser candidates that have gotten price because there wasn't any better, perhaps that is the problem?

Re:personally

[Bertie]

(He used Keynote)

Re:For being the opposite of Bush

[Moryath]

Try again.

The point of the Nobel Prizes is to recognize people who do good for mankind. Three of them are for advancement in the sciences. One is for "in the field of literature the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency." One, a little more nebulous (and reputedly a form of attempted moral consolation after Nobel witnessed the horrors his invention of dynamite had caused), is for the advancement of "Peace" (exact wording: "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.")

Nobel's will specifies the following things:
- the prizes are to be awarded for something already accomplished.
- the prizes are to be awarded to someone living (it can't be awarded posthumously, which is why there was a "bye year" when Gandhi died and the committee realized they'd royally fucked up and missed their chance to recognize his work).
- One is to be awarded for physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and "international peace."

In the sciences, the time lag is tremendous. This is partly a result of some early awards being given to "advances" or "discoveries" which were later discredited; the downside is that a number of possible recipients have been passed over because they died before the committee had fully vetted them. Literature's time lag has evolved as the committee shifted to covering a body of long work from an author, rather than a single book.

The "Peace Prize" is the most politically charged, and many propositions have come forth to alter it and prevent bad awards being made. Left-wingers go after the 1973 choice of Henry Kissinger (for negotiating the Vietnam peace accords) based on his involvement in other conflicts. As early as 1905, the choice to award it to President Roosevelt (for negotiating the end of the Russo-Japanese War) was criticized because his administration was involved in a bloody revolt-suppression in the Phillipines at the same time. Right-wingers criticize the political handing of the award to Al Gore. The choice to give it to Yasser Arafat, given that he kept leading and encouraging terror attacks for years after (also, because it was awarded for the Oslo Accords but Arafat was recorded saying on Palestinian national radio the next week that signing the Accords was a sham on his part), is hit often, as is the award given to anti-semite Jimmy Carter in 2002. Rigoberta Menchu nearly had her 1992 prize revoked after it was revealed that much of her autobiography (which was part of the basis given in the committee's written statement on why she received the award) was a fabrication. Cordell Hull, given the award in 1945 for helping found the UN, had 5 years prior been the major decision-maker (Secretary of State) in FDR's administration when they sent a ship full of Jewish refugees back to Europe (most of those refugees then were killed in the Holocaust).

So yeah, there's ample tradition on many fronts to criticize the awarding of the Peace Prize. Given that the nomination process closed when Obama was only in office eleven days, I think anyone from any side is justified in saying that giving it to Obama is premature, since the requirements are that you have already done something worth giving you the award, not that you are "expected to" do certain things.

Re:personally

[megaditto]

Which accomplishments would those be?

Probably it's for canceling the plans for the ABM (missiles/radar) in Europe, which he did last month. While it pissed off a lot of Poles, it sure made Russia feel safer.
So the Russians canceled their new short-range nuclear missile deployment in turn, which made a lot of 'Old' Europeans feel safer.

Now, since Obama got a Nobel Prize, he should have no problem applying for an O-1 visa, leading to a green card, and eventually, one day, a US citizenship. I keed, I keed...