Barack Obama has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.
"for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples"
What are they talking about? This puts him right up there with Yassar Arafat, Jimmy Carter, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Al Gore, the United Nations, and Kofi Annan.
Nobel prize awards are based on political considerations above all. Anything that enhances the power or image of the "world government" crowd is reason for handing them out. U.S. leaders who happen to be strong on national defense don't win prizes. For example, with START Ronald Reagan achieved a breakthrough agreement to reduce, not just limit mind you, but to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in existence. You might think that would be worth a nod from the Norwegian Parliament, but if you did you'd be wrong.
Charles Krauthammer describes the prize winning posture, a pose maintained by Democrats for decades. Obama has it down to perfection and Nobel awarders were obviously impressed.
When the Iraq War (which a majority of Senate Democrats voted for) ran into trouble and casualties began to mount, Democrats followed the shifting winds of public opinion and turned decidedly anti-war. But needing political cover because of their post-Vietnam reputation for weakness on national defense, they adopted Afghanistan as their pet war.
"I was part of the 2004 Kerry campaign, which elevated the idea of Afghanistan as 'the right war' to conventional Democratic wisdom," wrote Democratic consultant Bob Shrum shortly after President Obama was elected. "This was accurate as criticism of the Bush administration, but it was also reflexive and perhaps by now even misleading as policy."
Which is a clever way to say that championing victory in Afghanistan was a contrived and disingenuous policy in which Democrats never seriously believed, a convenient two-by-four with which to bash George Bush over Iraq -- while still appearing warlike enough to fend off the soft-on-defense stereotype.
Obama was forced into his public agonizing by Bob Woodward when he published the secret report saying things were not going well in Afghanistan. Before that happened Obama had been content to procrastinate on Afghanistan and focus entirely on his domestic agenda. But with the cat out of the bag it became politically impossible for Obama to ignore Afghanistan any longer. But he doesn't seem to want to win it and General McChrystal can't very well disavow what's in the report, so we get the public agonizing. I think it will go this way: At the moment there is substantial public support for winning in Afghanistan. After careful consideration Obama will send more troops, but only enough to make it look like he's trying real hard, and not enough to bring security to the Afghans. That means we can expect to be back to this decision again some months down the road. By that time Obama will hope that enough time has passed for Americans to become fed up and demand a pullout. Naturally the defeat in Afghanistan will be all George Bush's fault. Obama's Nobel credentials will be intact.
Update: Obama said he was "humbled" to win it.
More: Power Line lists some qualifications of previous winners.
2007
AL GORE The award to Al Gore and the IPCC "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change" fits in with a subset of cosmopolitan frauds, fakers, murderers, thieves, and no-accounts going back about twenty years.2005
MOHAMED ELBARADEI (joint winner). He's done such a nice job with Iran.2004
WANGARI MAATHAI The Kenyan ecologist peacefully teaches that the AIDS virus is a biological agent deliberately created by the Man.2002
JIMMY CARTER JR., former President of the United States of America. A true cosmopolitan, he has undermined the foreign policy of his own country and vouched for the bona fides of tyrants and murderers all over the world. Commenting on the award, Nobel Committee Chairman Gunnar Berge emphasized that the award was meant as a denunciation of American policy toward Iraq. "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."2001
UNITED NATIONS, New York, NY, USA.
KOFI ANNAN, United Nations Secretary General. Among other things, they respectively served as the vehicle for, and presided over, one of the biggest scams in history.1994
YASSER ARAFAT (joint winner), Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO, President of the Palestinian National Authority. He was a cold-blooded murderer both before and after receiving the award.1992
RIGOBERTA MENCHU TUM, Guatemala. She is the notorious Guatemalan faker and author, sort of, of I, Rigoberta Menchu. Like President Obama, she is a memoirist of distinction.1988
THE UNITED NATIONS PEACE-KEEPING FORCES New York, NY, U.S.A. Notwithstanding rapes and sex abuse committed by the team in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and the Congo, still doing fine work all over the world.1976
BETTY WILLIAMS, United Kingdom, founder of the Northern Ireland Peace Movement (later renamed Community of Peace People), who in later years repeatedly called for the assassination of President George Bush. How peaceful can you get?1973
LE DUC THO (with Henry Kissinger) for the 1973 peace with honor bequeathed to the fortunate people of Vietnam.
With her repeated calls for the assassination of George Bush I'm stupified that 1976 winner Betty Williams won it only once.
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