When the Nobel Prize Committee conferred the 2009 Nobel Prize for Peace on President Obama last week, those of us who are well aware of the ideological aura surrounding the prestigious award were not nearly as surprised as the president's closest political allies were. Although precedence was clearly broken by awarding the prize to someone who had actually not accomplished anything substantive towards world peace (especially since he had been in the Office for only eleven days when he was nominated), the result was in keeping with the sometime shameful track-record associated with the institution. The committee later claimed that the awarding of the prize was in accordance with the guidelines set forth by Nobel himself. "To those who say a Nobel is too much too soon in Obama's young presidency, we simply disagree ... He got the prize for what he has done," committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland told The Associated Press. There are, however, significant problems with this assertion. Alfred Nobel wrote that the prize should "go to the person who has contributed most to the development of peace in the previous year". The statement of Mr. Jagland is contradictory to reality as well as the Committee's own acknowledgement that Obama merited the award based on providing hope to the progressive liberals of the world. Hope is not a substantive contribution other than in the utopian progressive mind set, and the president was only a junior Senator with no significant foreign affairs experience during the previous year. Based on these two points alone, the lack of integrity on the part of the committee is not only astonishing but saddening in the memory of Alfred Nobel who was a realist as well as a humanitarian.
The true reason for awarding the Peace Prize to President Obama is self evident when examining Obama's words and actions over the length of his public career in light of Nobel Committee's general philosophy.
The president has on numerous occasions indicated his visions of a 'more just' America that plays by everyone else's rules in the international arena. He said the award was "an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations." This statement naively assumes that the the interests of nations and peoples are shared. Nothing could be further from the truth since geo-politics and human nature have resulted in human conflict as long as humans have inhabited the earth. To think otherwise is to ignore almost 10 millenia of written history in the tradition of Wilsonian idealism (which also earned him the Peace Prize, which proves that the Nobel Committee has been dominated by left wing idealists practically from the beginning). One needs to look no further than Mr. Obama's address to the U.N. last month to put it all in perspective. No American president, not even Jimmy Carter, has ever expressed such implicit hostility toward his own nation's pre-eminence in world affairs while relishing in its failings, nor have any elevated himself and his own virtues over those of his country.
Mr. Jagland said "Only 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." Dissecting this statement requires no intellectual effort in the light of the President's unmistakable globalist aspirations and the Nobel committee's (and the left's) life long desire to cut America down to size and undo her perceived wrong doings by redistributing its wealth among less fortunate nations. During his first 9 months, Mr. Obama has been on what seems like one continuous apology tour around the world where the consistent theme has been the rejection of American exceptionalism. We have turned our back not only on our traditional allies in Israel, but also the Czechs, Poles, dissidents from Burma to Venezuela, Hondurans, and Colombians to mention just a few. The message being sent is a strong signal that we will not stand up for dissidents in oppressed societies anymore. We now proudly cuddle the dictatorial regimes in Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and the like with the false hope that our good will is enough for them to transform in to humanitarian regimes. The progressive notion that America is somehow unjust is the official stance and the unmistakable message to the world is that America is no longer willing to carry on with its role as the leader of the world - a message that even the failed foreign policies of President Carter could not deliver, try as he did!
Undoubtedly, one of the biggest attractions Obama had for the Nobel committee was his vision of ridding the world of nuclear weapons as hair brained as the idea is. After all, Obama had already shown his willingness to disarm unilaterally and abandon our new allies in the Czech Republic and Poland earlier in the year. This is hope for future in the words of the Nobel committee? This is a down right dangerous world view, the kind that led to rise of Hitler and World War II - especially in an era when Russia is not only proving unreliable as an ally but clearly going back to its oppressive roots, while there are multiple serious threats in the near-east as well as central America. It, however, is also in keeping with the Nobel committee's and the left's track record as a whole. Nobel is the same institution that recognized likes of the U.N. and Secretary Annan - shortly preceded by the massacres in Rwanda and Bosnia, Yasser Arafat, and Rigoberta Menchu among a long list of despotic, deceptive, and down right shameful characters while ignoring likes of Gandhi and Ronald Reagan, who arguably freed hundreds of millions of oppressed people worldwide. The true track record of President Obama so far is utter failure as a strong world leader that even the french have seen through. It is a shame that policies that are calculated to make the U.S. popular come at the expense of all the oppressed people around the world who look up to us, yearning for liberties that are basic to all humans. What is just as shameful is a highly politicized Nobel committee whose actions would surely make Alfred Nobel roll over in his grave.
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