Nothing Noble about the Nobel Peace Prize Anymore by Ira Schwartz

Here is an article written by Ira about the Nobel Peace Prize as I promised yesterday. Hopefully, this will be the last we hear of this debacle. I hope you enjoy. Tomorrow, I will have another article by a guest writer, Michael Cochrane dealing with Global Warming. I'm still trying to have an article written myself by Friday. Sorry for the delay. Been really busy.

Nothing Nobel about the Nobel Peace Prize Anymore

Well the decision by the Nobel Foundation to award President Barack Obama the 2009 prize for Peace certainly shocked everyone in the world except the Nobel Foundation. The stunned look on the Presidents face when told he had won the prestigious award pretty much summed up how the rest of us felt.

In its statement, the Committee said President Obama "created a new climate in international politics. ... Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future." It continued, "His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

So they are basically saying that they have given our president the award because he has created a gentler, kinder United States. I can buy that one, for better or worse he has.

He has been in office barely a year and has already made inroads with several of his international overtures, though none have yet born fruit. Israel and the Palestinians are still struggling to find common ground but are trying; North Korea is still launching missiles and has yet to agree to the “six party” talks proposed by the United States and China; Iran has agreed to let inspectors in to their nuclear facilities, though the “when” part is still unclear and have also agreed to talks with the United States, when they will start is also unclear. The President has proposed total global nuclear disarmament which no one has taken seriously and we have finally joined with the rest of the world to find a way we can all live with global warming. We’re still fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the US installed government in Iraq is so corrupt it makes Chicago politicians look like saints. I thought the Nobel Prize was given for positive results in the area of peace not for just trying to get those results. If just trying was the criteria to be nominated then the Nobel Foundation’s list must be longer than Mr. Clauses on Christmas Eve.

The rumor of the day floating around the international community is the Nobel Foundation is really giving the award to the American people for their progressive thinking for not only electing a black man to the Whitehouse but a Muslim too. Well if that is the case then give the award to the American People. We could use that 1.2 million dollars to extend the “cash for clunkers” program for another five minutes.

Whatever their reasons in the end we have to ask ourselves this question, at this time in history do we feel President Barack Obama deserves to be in the illustrious ranks of such notable people as Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Albert Schweitzer, Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt? If not then the reasons given by the Nobel commission must be suspect and any future awards must appear a little less noble.

For those of you wondering who some of the other nominees were this year a partial list follows:

1. Chinese Human Rights Activist Hu Jia - imprisoned for campaigning for human rights in the PRC;

2. Wei Jingsheng, who spent 17 years in Chinese prisons for urging reforms of China's communist system;

3. Greg Mortenson, founder of the Central Asia Institute has built nearly 80 schools, especially for girls, in remote areas of northern Pakistan and Afghanistan over the past 15 years;

4. Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad, a philosophy professor in Jordan who risks his life by advocating interfaith dialogue between Jews and Muslims; and,

5. Afghan human rights activist Sima Samar. She currently leads the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and serves as the U.N. special envoy to Darfur.

I guess those listed above just didn’t try hard enough.