Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

alex

Do not read this.
Yea, so apparently he did. I wasnt even asked this year, jokers those Nobel people.
 

petergunn

plywood violin
for what?

firstly, let me say, i like obama, but he hasn't really done much...

this seems sorta racist, like all the liberal europeans on the commitee just were SOOO happy those backwards americans elected an articulate black man that he deserves an award... seems sort of patronizing, b/c i cannot think of an active leader given the award w/ less of a resume than obama...

if he actually brokers peace somewhere in a few years, do they give him a SUPER nobel peace prize?

i guess they gave him the award just for NOT being gw bush...
 

Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
Seems strange to give this award after only being in/pres for 15 days, it could do more harm than good. I like Obama but he's got a long way to go yet.
 

routes

we can delay.ay.ay...
so, as if peacemaking wasn't stupidly hard enough already he's now going to have to contend with belligerent regimes trying to bite off trophy chunks of the Nobel peacemaker's hubris in full sight of the world. nice. no really, good job Nobel people..
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
Where does this fit in the great peacegiver's record? Regrettable but necessary manoeuvring in a bigger game? Or cackhanded confession of American weakness while mired in two unwinnable wars and tending a knackered economy?
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
For the past five years, researchers in a modest office overlooking the New Haven green have carefully documented cases of assassination and torture of democracy activists in Iran. With more than $3 million in grants from the US State Department, they have pored over thousands of documents and Persian-language press reports and interviewed scores of witnesses and survivors to build dossiers on those they say are Iran’s most infamous human-rights abusers...Many see the sudden, unexplained cutoff of funding as a shift by the Obama administration away from high-profile democracy promotion in Iran, which had become a signature issue for President Bush...Obama officials have argued publicly for a less-confrontational approach than Bush, in the belief that the Bush administration’s vocal support for democracy activists made them targets in Iran and stirred up fears of regime change.

story

@ Cracker: your first question seems accurate, though yeah it's a bit of both. (obv it pains me to say that but hey.)
nice oppositional BTW ;)

tbf re the thread question, i'm not too bothered. we know from Kissinger in '73, or, say, Arafat in '94 that the prize does not always go to the most morally credible recipient, we know that Aung San Suu Kyi won it in '91 and the junta are still w us, that the campaign to ban landmines won it in '97, and ad infinitum etc.
i'm down w the whole statement of optimism thing, the tone changing and shifts that have occurred in relations btwn some pretty powerful countries since he took office (and way before he took office and momentum was w him on the campaign trail the rest of the world was hoping he would get in, as it was obvious from what he was saying that there would be certain cleavages w the then-incumbent POTUS), the visiting of Africa, the directly addressing the 'Muslim world', all that, and disagree w the 'backwards Americans pat on the back from liberal Europeans' although of course there's an element of "he ain't Dubya", but it's just a small part of the whole.

tbc, i would've loved it to go to Morgan Tsvangirai, for sure (i'm a long time Zim watcher and quite personally invested in the country and the MDC etc)
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
canny as ever Vim, you may be on to something there... ...still the money goes to charity, so all is well that ends well
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Seems to be the consensus from everyone (both here and that I've spoken to) that they like him and they want him to do well but this is way too early and it's more likely to be a burden than to help him in his (for want of a better word) quest.

"Regrettable but necessary manoeuvring in a bigger game?"
Unfortunately this is what's always going to happen, even with St Obama. I naively have the impression that he's going to do this less than the average politician but I guess that's probably just wishful thinking. We all know that virtually every politician starts for (what they think are) the right reasons and is ruined by compromise, it's just a question of to what extent this happens.

"I'm reading this award as an attack on Obama...."
Surely not deliberately so but it's going to make his job harder. Seems kind of out of character for recent Nobel committees to go after someone with his politics doesn't it?
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
Unfortunately this is what's always going to happen, even with St Obama. I naively have the impression that he's going to do this less than the average politician but I guess that's probably just wishful thinking. We all know that virtually every politician starts for (what they think are) the right reasons and is ruined by compromise, it's just a question of to what extent this happens.

Of course, but it's about how you play your hand. Obama's been left a weak one by Bush, but Russia seem to be getting an awful lot in return for to-be-specified toughening of sanctions against Iran. At the very least, it would be good to see some sort of statement of solidarity with Ukraine.
 

vimothy

yurp
you gonna explain?

Everyone agrees that Obama doesn't deserve this award--right? They agree because Obama hasn't really acheived anything in the foreign policy arena: all his big moves have been domestic (successful or not). The judges are forcing an appraisal of Obama's non-existant foreign policy acheivements. And that's the point, I think. I can't see another reason for it. It's a back-handed rebuke.
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
totally agree..

and imagine how an award like this could empower him in his own country..

yes little by little it gets better

PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said on Friday people could live in peace in Zimbabwe as the human rights record in the country has improved significantly.

He there were some "toxic issues" for the inclusive Government he formed with President Robert Mugabe this year.

PM Tsvangirai told Reuters in the northern Spanish city of Valladolid where he was due to receive a prize for 'lifetime achievement' that now people can live in peace in Zimbabwe.

"There has been substantive progress, it's just that you have got one or two incidents and then it spoils the thing."

here

(though, yes, tbc, the effects of this will be w us for a long time)

but i guess w Obama you can say it's the big picture, fingers crossed a more respectful to the world and re-invigorated US regime can perhaps achieve some incremental, small good in more than one area as opposed to what would've been a just acknowledgment of the leonine struggle of one country against the most horrendous brutality and darkness, ya get me.

plus the POTUS is damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. to take Iran as an e.g., if he were to continue w sabre-rattling much world opinion would say he was a Bush Clone, neo-con warmonger. if he acknowledges that is not the best thing for either country and pulls back from so much public chiding (as has been happening) certain other quarters may accuse him of selling out dissidents in Iran that struggle under the Khomeinist claw.

At the very least, it would be good to see some sort of statement of solidarity with Ukraine.

oh come now Cracker, we can't have Obama upsetting Seumas Milne and J. Steele can we now ;)

the Nobel was awarded - as i say up-thread - in '91 to a certain special lady, clearly the elections had just been annulled the year before and she had just been arrested, but it's fair to say the Nobel commt' gave this as an acknowledgment and crossed all crossables, they don't have a crystal ball.
well, here we are in 2009 and the situation there is very much the same, let's hope their crossables are more tightly crossed this time around, you know, that's why the 'he was only in office 15 days [or however long it was] when he was put forward' is a total red herring, to be fair.

I follow that reasoning but why would they do that?

perhaps they're Independent readers who unrealistically had a straw-man view of who Obama was just before he came to office off the entirely unfair temperature of a few of his most wild-eyed fans, and decided to shoehorn all this into one glorious package of a modern art prank... ...oh no, sorry, that was just Simon Tisdall in another of his puerile Guardian articles, my mistake
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
Everyone agrees that Obama doesn't deserve this award--right? They agree because Obama hasn't really acheived anything in the foreign policy arena: all his big moves have been domestic (successful or not). The judges are forcing an appraisal of Obama's non-existant foreign policy acheivements. And that's the point, I think. I can't see another reason for it. It's a back-handed rebuke.

I have to agree with Rich on this - I think you're being too clever by half. FP achievements are thin on the ground, but you can't expect anything else 9 months in. But the change in mood music is substantial - the Cairo speech, the harder stance re Israel, the scrappping of the shield (which could be listed as actual achivement) - it all adds up to the sense that the most powerful nation on earth once again gives a shit about what the rest of that earth thinks.

I also agree with Scott, I don't think this is liberal inverse racism, but I reckon this is the anti-Bush Peace Prize.
 

vimothy

yurp
I follow that reasoning but why would they do that?

Perhaps because they think Obama has been too conservative and domestic focused and want to push him in a more liberal-internationalist direction... Maybe they want a quicker solution to I-P... Whatever the reason, I doubt that anyone on the committee could have failed to foresee this.
 
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crackerjack

Well-known member
Perhaps because they think Obama has been too conservative and domestic focused and want to push him in a more liberal-internationalist direction... Maybe they want a quicker solution to I-P... Whatever the reason, I doubt that anyone on the committee could have failed to foresee this.

Too domestic? Has any US Pres spent as much of his first 9 months in office on foreign soil as this one?
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
Vim is too clever by half ;)

Perhaps because they think Obama has been too conservative and domestic focused and want to push him in a more liberal-internationalist direction... Maybe they want a quicker solution to I-P... Whatever the reason, I doubt that anyone on the committee could have failed to foresee this.

now there could be something here, to be fair. w all the caveats i agree w everything Cracker just said two posts ago. some years the Nobel peace goes to someone everyone can agree on (e.g. Grameen bank a few years ago), some times it doesn't, this is just one of those, that's a very bland, consensualising pov from myself, yes, but hey.
 
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