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:personally

[RazorSharp]

I can't believe people modded you insightful. Yeah, I'm sure the Nobel committee consists of people ignorant of how the U.S. government works - that's a bunch of BS. As far as they're concerned a "US President acting only in the interest of the US" is a bad thing because they award people for contributing to INTERNATIONAL PEACE. The deciding factor was probably the multiple times Obama addressed the Muslim world and APOLOGIZED for the policies of Bush and the fact that he is actively dismantling his most unpopular policies (the new Star Wars in Poland, torture). You know, the stuff that Hannity and Limbaugh call him unpatriotic for.

This was the world officially telling the American people not to elect dickheads like Bush if we want any international respect, but obviously the message isn't clear enough for everybody.