Obama’s Ignoble Prize
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As Jeff Jacoby wrote back in 2002 when Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, “A smug little group of Norwegian politicians continues to show disturbingly bad judgment in choosing the Nobel Peace Prize recipients.” In awarding Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Preze, they’ve shown that their judgment hasn’t gotten any better since then and that their tendency to use the prize to make political statements hasn’t changed.
At the time Jacoby wrote his piece, Carter had just joined the ranks of unrepentant terrorist Yasser Arafat, who the Nobel Committee awarded the prize for their mistaken and misguided belief that Arafat had renounced acts of terror and had become a sincere participant in a true peace process, which was of course a fiction since even in 1993 and 1994, with the ink fresh on the peace agreement papers, there was a high rate of terrorism against Israel that still persists today. Israeli officials urged the Palestinian Authority to take tougher measures against terrorists and the PA claimed to be doing so even while the terrorism went on and on.
In Carter’s case, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2002 to Jimmy Carter “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” In other words, as Nobel Committee Chairman Gunnar Berge emphasized at the time - the award was meant as a denunciation of American policy toward Iraq - a purely political statement:
“It should be interpreted as a criticism of the line that the current administration has taken,” Berge said. “It’s a kick in the leg to all that follow the same line as the United States.”
In short, Carter’s Nobel Prize was for undermining his country, and specifically, the then current administration.
In the case of Barack Obama the tradition has continued, once again making a political statement, this time repeating its slap at the Bush administration. The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Obama for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” saying that “Very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.”
However, as TimesOnline notes, “Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and partisan intent”:
[...] It was clearly seen by the Norwegian Nobel committee as a way of expressing European gratitude for an end to the Bush Administration, approval for the election of America’s first black president and hope that Washington will honour its promise to re-engage with the world.Instead, the prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace.
The pretext for the prize was Mr Obama’s decision to “strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples”. Many people will point out that, while the President has indeed promised to “reset” relations with Russia and offer a fresh start to relations with the Muslim world, there is little so far to show for his fine words.
If Barack Obama was a patriot and a man of honor, he would have the integrity to refuse the Nobel Peace Prize. This would win him more respect and admiration from Americans than anything he has done since he he came to the White House.
As for the chances that our “Narcissist-in-Chief” would do do the honorable thing and reject the prize, I place the odds of that at being zero since, given his narcissism and likely narcissistic personality disorder, he actually believes that he deserves it and is indeed, the savior of the world.
