The Nobel Peace Prize? [Updates]
By Bronwyn's Harbor on October 9, 2009 at 8:45 AM in Current Affairs
For what? [See the NBC video below -- even the Today Show noted that reporters "gasped" when they heard the news.]
I just awakened (West Coast) and turned on the TV. I’m nearly speechless, and barely awake but I had to post so I could get your reaction. I thought it was a joke at first! This as the President is under intense pressure to expand the war in Afghanistan and more U.S. soldiers have died. As Obama has ordered innumerable drone strikes and whacked god knows how many civilians? As he’s endorsed the Bush treatment of detainees, denied detainees due process (rightly or wrongly), and failed to close Guantanamo? Huh. Writes the blogger at Riehl World View (he’ll be on BBC at noon ET), “Are you frickin’ kidding me? What a stupid joke. What a worthless award.” Allahpundit at Hot Air adds, “[T]hey gave him a Nobel for … being Hopenchange-y.”
What on earth has Barack Obama done except to please liberal Europeans by not looking like George Bush? Is there any other conceivable reason he could have won this “prize”?
From the UK Times article, “Comment: absurd decision on Obama makes a mockery of the Nobel peace prize:
The award of this year’s Nobel peace prize to President Obama will be met with widespread incredulity, consternation in many capitals and probably deep embarrassment by the President himself.
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 second thing my mind leaped to was the self-aggrandizing speech that Jon Favreau will be writing as well as the incessant coverage on TV when he goes to Oslo to receive the award.
The reactions on the blogs are endless and most are in a state of shock.
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