I know. The title of this post doesn’t make sense. But it does makes as much sense as Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
Giving the nine month-old president of the United States one of the supposedly most highly acclaimed awards in the WORLD has surprised many, even many liberals who are supporters of Obama. For me to hear and read members of the cult criticize their leader in any way has been interesting. Awarding this to such a blatantly unqualified and undeserving person makes a mockery of both the award and the person receiving it. Many of us had for years been mystified and even disgusted by Yasir Arafat, Jimmy Carter, and Al Gore winning such a prestigious honor. Now, with the committee choosing Obama over so many other highly deserving people who have actually accomplished great things, they have forever tainted this award. For the committee has set a new standard for the winner of this prize-of-prizes: deeds and actions no longer matter, only future plans and hopes.
And even then, only if those future plans and hopes are shared by the committee.
Peter Wehner, writing at CommentaryMagazine.com, discusses the prize committee’s ceasing to be a “serious entity” beginning with their awarding the PEACE prize to Yasir Arafat, whose hands were “dripping with the blood of innocent Jews.”
“The Nobel Committee’s decision to award Barack Obama its Peace Prize is risible and worth mocking – as Richard Cohen does here. It’s also being said that the decision is meant as a slap at President Bush. I’m sure it was – just as the award to Jimmy Carter was — and I have some thoughts about that.
“The first is that the Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize to Yasir Arafat – the father of modern-day terrorism, the man who waged war against Israel for most of his life, the man whose hands were dripping with the blood of innocent Jews. George W. Bush can live a fulfilled life without being honored by such an organization.”
He concludes his post with this: “The Nobel Committee long ago ceased to be a serious entity; this choice merely confirms that judgment. It is a tendentious organization. And the easiest way — not the only way, but the easiest way — for Westerners to win praise and honors from it is to be critical of America and Israel. George W. Bush would never do that; he loves and has defended both nations. Sometimes virtue is its own reward.”
The committee has officially made NOT winning the distinguished Peace prize award more indicative of greatness, than receiving it.
In a follow-up post, Peter Wehner writes of Charles Krauthammer’s words in a speech given at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. (The full content of the speech by Krauthammer can be found here at the Weekly Standard.) In Mr. Wehner’s opinion, Mr. Krauthammer gives a perfect summation of why Obama won the award, even though he wasn’t speaking of that at the time, as it hadn’t happened yet.
Here is Peter Wehner’s short post in its entirety.
“Earlier this week, Charles Krauthammer delivered the 2009 Wriston Lecture for the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Titled “Decline Is a Choice,” the Weekly Standard has adopted that lecture and published it in the forthcoming issue. (A video of the full lecture can be found here.) It is a brilliant and important address, providing as it does a kind of unified field theory when it comes to Obama.
“In his address, Krauthammer says,
‘as he made his hajj from Strasbourg to Prague to Ankara to Istanbul to Cairo and finally to the U.N. General Assembly, Obama drew the picture of an America quite exceptional — exceptional in moral culpability and heavy-handedness, exceptional in guilt for its treatment of other nations and peoples. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own country for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness (toward Europe), for maltreatment of natives, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantánamo, for unilateralism, and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.’
“That, in two sentences, explains why Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today. Now the Nobel Committee couldn’t quite come out and say that directly; it decided to couch the award in this language, taken from the citation:
‘[Obama’s] diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.’ [emphasis mine]
“There you have it: Barack Obama has given voice to what many of the world think about America — and it’s not flattering. That much of the world — composed as it is of autocrats and dictators and weak and wobbly defenders of human rights and human dignity — isn’t happy with the United States is not news. What is news is that an American president would validate many of those charges. I find that deeply disquieting. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, not surprisingly, considers it worthy of its highest honor.”
And that post is a perfect summation of why Obama won the award, and why it is important to us to understand this about our president.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees it this way.
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He makes Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter look like winners. Just another sign our great country in in deep trouble.
I agree E., I agree. Not lost, but certainly in trouble. It’s up to us.
Hope y’all are well.
It’s all political, PUp. The Nobel prize is NOT for the deserving…it’s now used to send a message, or to influence future decisions. Isn’t that what they said…it was for what he was going to do? It’s probably something we don’t even need to pay any attention to anymore since it has no meaning. The credibility gap just grows wider every day….expect it to continue. We now live in that time period where right is wrong, and wrong is right.
By the way…..another brilliant post with an extremely CLEVER title!
Krauthammer’s column precisely sums up what this administration is seeking to do to this country…he’s right…this is only validation from those who seek to do us harm. And therefore is not a true compliment, no matter what the talking heads on the news say!!! They keep saying that America is being honored by this…that is spin…how can America be honored by those who hate what it stands for…it’s not possible…that’s a conundrum.
Excellent post.
The conservative movement in the US is in shambles, and facing some bitter choices. Either bite the bullet and admit that the Bush administration took a ill contemplated rogue path to the future, or continue to lament president Obamas successful policy of returning the US to a valued positon on the international center stage, with increasing irrelevancy for the conservative movement as a result.
Posts like the ones quoted here are symptomatic of the latter where otherwise intelligent people see themselves forced to cling to the paranoid and megalomaniacal world view of the Bush administration, which would eventually lead to World War III, if it were ever to win in a future election. And you want the Nobelprize committee to award that perspective?
Instead the Nobel Committee rewarded an individual who clearly has taken a brave personal moral stance in favor of international law, nuclear disarmament, has taken neccessary steps to defuse areas of dangerous international conflict and made it increasingly difficult for terrorist organizations to recruit.
The Nobel prize and Obama alike have been elevated by this years award. It’s time for conservatives rise above the bigotted, supremacist and (in relation to both moral and international law) revolutionary views of the Bush era, and applaud Obama for the favor he is doing the US, and the world.
I continue to be stunned at the Nobel Peace Prize for Obama. Especially when you consider that, at this moment, Obama has:
2 wars going on in Iraq (we are still there) and Afghanistan
More nuclear weapons than any other country
And since being elected he has failed to fulfill these promises/assurances:
Closing GITMO within one year
Abolishing all of GWBs foreign policies
Pretty much failed to do anything at all
I would agree that NOT receiving this prize in the future is a sign of greatness. Because if Obama is who or what they want to recognize for this supposedly illustrious prize – then all those who wish to retain their own integrity and principles should run away.
Palmrot,
I couldn’t disagree with you more. The Republican party may be in trouble, but not conservatism.
The basic difference between your beliefs and mine is that you sound as if you are happy about and looking forward to being a citizen of the world, living under ‘international law’, as Obama seems to lean toward, while I believe strongly in American sovereignty and exceptionalism. While I also would love a planet where there are no wars and no nuclear weapons–who wouldn’t want that–I am enough of a realist to know that until all men and women on the planet truly seek peace, there will be none. I believe there are madmen, dictators obsessed with power, and despots with no regard for human life who will never agree to live in peace with us and other nations of the world.
The Left would love for Americans to believe that “the conservative movement is in shambles.” The Left is desperate to squash this rising conservative–not GOP–roar against the statist policies of our current administration. Obama has, if nothing else, awakened countless Americans up from the stupor and complacency they were in.
Conservative Pup : I am concerned that the large portions of conservative movement in the US will build on the worst mistakes of the Bush administration which in it’s trajectory holds a world in ruins, but not not overly worried since democracy itself holds a powerful antidote against extemist positions like this.
The damage will be to the conservative movement itself by the unavoidable usavory bedfellows that gets invited to such a party, and so the downward spiral will continue, albeit at the price of possibly powerful polarization along religious and racial demarcations, i.e. the continuation of Bush’ worst mistakes.
The alternative is simply to accept that international law is the way forward, and yes – surrender part of ones sovereignty to that of international lawmaking bodies. It is laughable that conservative ‘intellectuals’ treat this project as leftist, considering the role that rule of law has played in conservative thinking throughout history. It doesn’t mean one has to accept all existing international laws without an argument, but the idea that the US, from a supposed (God-given?) exceptionalist position is able to ignore international laws at will, is a dead end.
Palmrot,
While George Bush was our previous president, and yes, he was a Republican, my own ‘conservativeness’ does not come from him or his policies. I had many disagreements with what went on during his administration, but I do recognize and am thankful for the fact that he kept us from being attacked again after 9/11.
My own views come from a deep and abiding belief in America’s founding documents, the Constitution and our Bill of Rights, which I do not want to relinquish and replace with ‘international law.’ My preferences for people who lead this country are that they also hold the Constitution dear and worthy of protecting and preserving; that they recognize the potential of any person to achieve their best is dependent not upon government ‘help’ but upon fewer obstacles placed in their way by government ‘help.’ The apparently out-of-fashion American can-do spirit still lives in many of us, and government’s attempts to tamp that down disturbs me.
You’ve mentioned twice now about conservatives ‘building on the worst mistakes of the Bush administration’ and I’m not sure what you mean by that. As I said, my conservative views don’t come from President Bush.
As for ‘unsavory bedfellows,’ the SEIU and self-proclaimed Marxists that the Democratic party shares a pillow with come to my mind as most unsavory. That will always happen on both sides.
The racial demarcation that you are concerned about is a falsehood created and perpetrated by the Left; it is the Left that accuses conservatives of racism, though I see very little actual racism practiced by conservatives, and less than I see practiced on the Left. It was George Bush who selected both Colin Powell and Condaleeza Rice for their critical thinking and talents and placed them in crucial roles; their being of a minority race bothered no one but the Left.
Thanks for the letting me in on your blog, I enjoyed talking to you. But when the discussion deteriorates to repeating previous statements i’s an indication that it’s time to leave. Hopefully I’ve contributed to some thinking by providing another perspective on this years Nobel Peace prize than the pervailing one on blogs like this.
Shalom!
Palmrot,
I appreciate your reading and commenting, and your civility. Your comments are welcome here anytime.
Shalom to you as well.
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