It would be nice if a so called "prestigious" award, presented in the name of one of man's highest ideals, was conferred after serious deliberations with rigorous standards. But the selection of President Obama, eight months into office, with his biggest peace accomplishment being gaining a fragile truce between a professor and a police officer over a beer, exposes the Nobel peace award process for what it is...a popularity contest. This is not unlike a high school Homecoming King and Queen vote, the attractive, popular kids get elected. I suppose we Americans could be happy that at least it says that they like our president...if it weren't for the fact that they like him for apologizing for the rest of us.
The Old Man
The Old Man is way too cynical. Some Homecoming Kings and Queens are actually quite accomplished. Besides, as everyone should already know, the Nobel Prize for Peace is not a serious award. The Nobel Committee does not give the Peace Prize for saving the world from evil by defeating it. You only get it for talking in grandiose terms or by agreeing to something that sounds peaceful. That’s why alarmists like Al Gore and terrorists like Yasser Arafat are honored while Churchill, FDR, Eisenhower and Truman are not.
ReplyDeleteThe Committee probably reasoned that the two wars Obama is fighting are actually Bush’s wars. But by next year they will be Obama’s. So even though Obama didn’t do anything yet (or maybe because he didn't do anything yet) it was a case of now or never.