Notable, Noble, Nobel
Nix, non, no, nope, no way! Why and how should a supposedly honorable award like a Nobel Peace prize be given to a president who has only been in office for 9 months, and to this date done very little; at least nothing of the magnitude for whom such an award should be given? Who nominated him? The news tells us that the nominator will not be revealed for 50 years! How clever of a guise for what seems to be sheer nonsense from the prestigious committee.
Let's go back a ways. Many folk are not even aware of the ramifications of the award, much less the history and meaning of the coveted prize. "When Alfred Nobel died on December 10, 1896, it was discovered that he had left a will, dated November 27, 1895, according to which most of his vast wealth was to be used for five prizes, including one for peace. The prize for peace was to be awarded to the person who "shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding of peace congresses." The prize was to be awarded "by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting." 1.
Now, the question is, what has Barack Obama done to be classified as a peacemaker? Many commentators have mentioned that it seems a prize should come after a feat or victory, rather than before. Did he receive the award for ending or winning the war in Iraq? No. Was the award for ending or winning the war in Afghanistan? No. What about following through on his campaign pledge to immediately close Gitmo? It appears that there is very little that the president has done, considering his grandiose promises to the American people, or for that matter, to the world! We are saddened by how he undercut the USA many times in his overseas speeches, trying to pacify many of our heretofore enemies of the free world. Why would he win the approval of Chavez from Venezuela ? Why did the Libyan President say openly that he hoped Obama would stay in the White House for life? Was that the kind of approval we were sitting around and waiting for? I don't suppose the world took note that on September 14, 2009, as many as one million people flooded into Washington for a massive rally organized by conservatives claiming that President Obama is driving America towards socialism? The size of the crowd - by far the biggest protest since the president took office in January - shocked the White House.
Now, a picture is starting to emerge. It appears that the Norwegian Nobel Peace prize committee has their own political agenda! "They also generally reflected Norwegian definitions of the broader, Western values of an idealist, the often slightly left-of-center kind, but rarely so far left that the choices were not acceptable to Western liberal-internationalist opinion in general. The Norwegian government did not determine the choices of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, but these choices reflected the same mixture of idealism and realism that characterized Norwegian, and Scandinavian, foreign policy in general. As we shall see, some of the most controversial choices occurred when the Norwegian Nobel Committee suddenly awarded prizes to rather hard-line realist politicians." 2
We must read the Nobel Peace prize as a sort of stamp of approval tinged with the Norwegian set of values! If they are left of center, and we are starting to all be more aware of what a leftist agenda entails, why would we be overawed by the prize? After all, the prize was also awarded to Yasser Arafat, in 1994. According to the Wikipedia, "Arafat spent much of his life fighting against Israel in the name of Palestinian self-determination. Originally opposed to Israel's existence, he modified his position in 1988 when he accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242. Arafat and his movement operated from several Arab countries. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Fatah faced off with Jordan in a brief civil war. Forced out of Jordan and into Lebanon, Arafat and Fatah were major targets of Israel's 1978 and 1982 invasions of that country. He was "revered by many Arabs," and the majority of the Palestinian people, regardless of political ideology or faction, viewed him as a freedom fighter who symbolized their national aspirations. However, he was "reviled by many Israelis" and described "in much of the West as the world's number one terrorist for the attacks his faction led against civilians. 3
It sounds to me like the committee goes off track at times; perhaps it has lost some of the sensibility for its cause.
1.2, <http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/articles/lundestad-review/index.html>
3 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat>
Jenny Teets
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