Obama, Afghanistan, and the Nobel Peace Prize

American Thinker ^ | October 9, 2009 | C. Edmund Wright

[Kaslin]

Barack Obama did not so much get a win with the Nobel Peace Prize today as the U.S. Military and General Stanley McChrystal sustained a loss.  The Prize itself will also be a loser along with all previous winners.

The award is a not so veiled attempt to make it psychologically impossible for Obama to now send 40 thousand more American troops to Afghanistan. To do so would be to spit in the face of his most adoring audience in his favorite venue, the vague and undefined world stage.

How else can you explain the prize being given to someone who has accomplished -- in the words of the great international think tank Saturday Night Live: "nothing."  In fact, the studied consultants at SNL arrived at the conclusion that with regard to Afghanistan, things have "gotten worse."  It was the worst of the long litany of Obama failures to date according to SNL.

This Nobel award to Obama is as breathtakingly shallow as Miss America contestants' obligatory "wish for world peace" or Joe Biden's assessment that the stimulus is "working beyond our wildest dreams" statement.  There is no there there.

One wonders if Obama himself, who has after all already written (well, he turned them in anyway) two memoirs on his life, would have had the audacity to give himself this award.  Talk about the audacity of hope!

And all of this would be funny except that American lives and American security are what is at stake.   Michael Binyon with London's Time Online shared this view:

There is a further irony in offering a peace prize to a president whose principal preoccupation at the moment is when and how to expand the war in Afghanistan.

The spectacle of Mr Obama mounting the podium in Oslo to accept a prize that once went to Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi and Mother Theresa would be all the more absurd if it follows a White House decision to send up to 40,000 more US troops to Afghanistan.

That is exactly the point of giving this award now to someone so clearly undeserving.  The Nobel Committee is aware of the dynamic going on in this country vis-a-vis Obama and his lead General in the Afghan theatre, and as Binyon points out such preemptive awards are not new to Nobel:

Some have appeared to reward hope rather than achievement: the 1976 prize for the two peace campaigners in Northern Ireland, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, was clearly intended to send a signal to the two battling communities in Ulster. (emphasis added).

It does not take an expert in world history - or even a Saturday Night Live writer - to see that this prize was a signal to Obama about Afghanistan.  The Nobel committee is making a childish gesture by putting their hopes in Obama's ability to talk any faction anywhere down off any ledge of reality without anyone getting hurt.  They admit as much according to Binyon:

The committee said today that he had "captured the world's attention". It is certainly true that his energy and aspirations have dazzled many of his supporters. Sadly, it seems they have so bedazzled the Norwegians that they can no longer separate hopes from achievement. The achievements of all previous winners have been diminished.

Not being able to separate hopes from achievement, or shall we say hopes from reality, is the dangerous illusion liberals live under.  To Nobel's committee and many others, peace is simply the absence of war.  Reality and world history teach us that peace exists only when freedom reigns.  This is usually the result of the good guys fighting and winning a war against the bad guys. 

There were no American troops in Afghanistan on September 11^th, 2001.  By the liberal definition, there was peace flowing through Afghanistan on September 11, 2001. And yet, what was going on there and what that part of the world was spreading elsewhere would hardly be considered "peace." The problem is, freedom did not reign.  And it does not yet reign there.  Until it does, we are in danger.

And if General McChrystal does not get what he has requested, the lives of the very folks putting it on the line for freedom's sake are in even greater danger. The Nobel Committee's pathetic gesture today has literally endangered American lives in the near and distant future if they are successful in shaming Obama into not supporting the General's plan.

And for that, the award should be forever discredited.

[Always Right]

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[SES1066]

I am duplicating this post in several serious threads so that we can know that this was the vote of just FIVE Norwegian Politicians!!!

Just for everybody's info, these are the 5 Nobel Peace Prize Electors as appointed by Norway's Parliament (Storting):

1) Thorbjørn Jagland (chair, born 1950), member of Parliament, President of the Storting and former cabinet minister for the Labour Party. Member and chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee since 2009.
2) Kaci Kullmann Five (deputy chair, born 1951), former member of Parliament and cabinet minister for the Conservative Party. Member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee since 2003, deputy chair since 2009.
3) Sissel Rønbeck (born 1950), deputy director, Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage (Riksantikvaren), former member of parliament and cabinet minister for the Labour Party. Member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee since 1994.
4) Inger-Marie Ytterhorn (born 1941), former member of Parliament for the Progress Party. Member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee since 2000.
5) Ågot Valle (born 1945), member of parliament for the Socialist Left Party. Member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee since 2009.

By political affiliations it would appear to be one puntative conservative and 4 on the left ranging to wild left.

Numbers 3 & 4 were on this committee when James Earl Carter won in 2002 and #2 joined in time to vote on Albert Arnold Gore Junior in 2007. Note that being on the committee does not mean that any given member voted for any given candidate [smile]!

[the anti-mahdi]

Obama is in fact enabled to do the exact opposite. Look for the International Man of Peace to go to war—heartbreaking as it is, he alone can say, unlike warmonger Bush, “everyone knows I am a man of peace, so if I go to war you can depend on it being critical to preserving the peace Of The World.” Watch, wait, listen, and see...

And the world will agree—”who is like Obama? Who can make war with him?”

[Beowulf9]

No problem; the fawning media just won’t print the American soldier’s deaths in Afghanistan.

[sr4402]

What did he do before February 1st 2009 to deserve it??

[sr4402]

What did he do before February 1st 2009 to deserve it??

[dfwgator]

What did he do before February 1st 2009 to deserve it??

Three words....He's Not Bush.

[Daus]

Very good article, but the one dynamic they are missing is that it is very likely Obama knew he was up for this award and has been stalling McChrystal in order to protect his chance of winning it.

[Western Phil]

Inger-Marie Ytterhorn (born 1941),

The only one with possible memories of WWII.

[ronnie raygun]

As far as Im concerned the NOBLE PEACE will now be known as the NOBEL APPEASEMENT PRIZE!

[Dilbert San Diego]

Well the Nobel Prize seemed like a joke when Al Gore won for advancing world peace through his global warming agenda. And in spite of people’s hopes and dreams and all that, Obama has not achieved anything, yet, in this area. What a joke of an award.

[Mike Darancette]

I thought that the winner was determined back in February? That said if Obama is perceived as refusing to send troops because of this personal reason his presidency is finished. This was a pyrrhic victory at best.

[Verginius Rufus]

Menachem Begin shared the 1978 prize, and still sent Israeli forces into Lebanon in 1982. Of course he was a much more decisive person than Obama.