(no subject)

[winterbadger]

I was talking to redactrice last night, and one of the topics that came up was the Nobel award to the president. I've discussed this with a couple of people so far, and I saw at least one of my friends here comenting on it. So, to avoid spamming up someone else's journal with my voluminous remarks, here are my thoughts.

I love our president, and I do not doubt that he *may* someday accomplish things worthy of this prize, but to my eyes, so far, he hasn't.

To me, this smacks of "We like you better than Bush", which is a judgment I would personally agree with, but has nothing to do with making the world more peaceful.

In objective terms, Obama has confirmed, rather than halted, most of the US government's questionable policies in regard to seizure and imprisonment of persons it considers threats. I think the ban on torture is excellent, but it's also a *baseline* of what I would expect from an American president. We're still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan; again, decisions I agree with, but hardly conducive to being a peacemaker. He announced he won't deploy one ABM system in Europe, but we're still going to deploy a different system, so to the extent that setting up *defensive* weapons leads to tensions, there's not much difference there. He's been involved in no major international negotiations that I know of that have brought peace anywhere. He's embarked on a number of domestic initiatives that will hopefully lead to the US being a better place to live, but few if any of them have yet been carried through to completion yet, and the public debate over them has scarcely lowered tensions.

I think Barack Obama is a very smart man, a force for good, and a visionary leader. I admire him tremendously. But I don't think his actions so far merit a Nobel Peace Prize.

Comments

[peaceful-fox.livejournal.com]

Thank you for writing the exact post I would have written if I were a better writer!

What really bothers me is that the Nobel Committee really put Obama in a quandary: accept the prize and he's screwed and it looks like he agrees with the decision; turn down the prize and he looks like an ungrateful oaf. Not a position I would like to be in. I could *feel* that he didn't think he deserved it. It was pretty evident.

[winterbadger]

I've heard a number of good alternatives suggested that he might have adopted. I wish he had gone with one of them.

[winterbadger]

And thank you very much for the compliment. :-)

[cmlc.livejournal.com]

Mmmm. But then, he does deserve it rather more than Henry Kissinger did.

[winterbadger]

I'm not sure I agree. It's not a popularity prize, or an award for being an all-around great human being. It's an award for making the world a more peaceful place. Kissinger, if I recall correctly, got the prize in 1973, jointly with Le Duc Tho, for negotiating the end to a long and bitter war. I haven't seen Obama do anything like that yet.

[cmlc.livejournal.com]

It seems he didn't do any such thing, judging by this page at least.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger
I won't argue about it though, I'm not any kind of expert.

[winterbadger]

Well, the Paris Peace Accords ended US involvement and were supposed to spell an end to war between North and South. That the North chose to renew hostilities is hardly Kissinger's fault, whatever his other (many) sins may be.