I'm surprised to say the least. What's everyone else think?
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
Well, 10 months after Bush took office, we were at war with Iraq, so I think Obama's track record is a bit better in that regard.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Well that's going to make things difficult for him. I wonder who's idea this was.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
I did a bit of a double-take, myself. But as I see it, he's done a pretty amazing job rehabilitating the image of the US in the world's eyes and re-involving the country in international relations.
Think about that speech he gave in Cairo a few months ago... an American politician who could speak to the world in a respectful, non-patronizing manner, while demonstrating a clear knowledge and respect for customs, is an unfortunate rarity these days.
Posted by Kosh (Member # 167) on :
As one who voted for him, I said "WTF."
This should have been later, when we see how it all works out.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
I'm going to laugh my tuckus off if he starts WWIII now
Posted by Sean (Member # 2010) on :
When my local news covered it, they mentioned that the deadline for Nobel peace prize nominations is February 1st...which means that whoever submitted him did so based off of his first week and a half in office.
I think he's doing a good job in office and all...but wtf? This is a bit too soon.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
I have a feeling this was more of jab at Bush and his policies than any sort recognition of Obama.
Posted by Pensive's Wetness (Member # 1203) on :
*grins* what IF it was a Bush croonie who put the request in?
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dukhat: Well, 10 months after Bush took office, we were at war with Iraq, so I think Obama's track record is a bit better in that regard.
But are we not still at war in both Iraq and Afghanistan? Has Obama really made any substantial changes to Bush's policies on those fronts? What peace, exactly, are we talking about?
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Daniel Butler: I'm going to laugh my tuckus off if he starts WWIII now
Hell yeah! This is like a coupon for "One free war" or possibly a "Get out of Mideast Conflict free" card.
Sure pushes the bad taste of the Olympics out of the news cycle though.
Republicans: FAUX OUTRAGE. Really, they're irate that our country's president got one of the world's highest honors- WTF?!? Yep, this will keep the conspiracy nuts going for a good long while...
It's a pretty odd thing though- Obama himself said he was suprised and that he did not deserve this, but I now see the rationale behind it- a former Peace Prize winner was saying that the award is as much for fostering peace and goodwill as anything else- Jimmy carter sure never made peace in the middle east but got the award for trying (and for bringing it to the forefront of world attention, I suppose).
quote:Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim:
quote:Originally posted by Dukhat: Well, 10 months after Bush took office, we were at war with Iraq, so I think Obama's track record is a bit better in that regard.
But are we not still at war in both Iraq and Afghanistan? Has Obama really made any substantial changes to Bush's policies on those fronts? What peace, exactly, are we talking about?
Well, he is pulling soldiers out of Iraq as quickly as the timetable allows, he's closing Gitmo (it's already 75% empty of illeagaly held detainees)aaaaand....er....he got that dog....and...um...
Hey, he's at least as good a choice as some of the former reciepants- but everyone thinks this is too soon.
Watch for Obama to accept the award on behalf of some worthy cause like the Iranian freedom demonstrators or something cool like that.
And it's not like he can turn down the award- that would be a biiig political nightmare.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"Well, 10 months after Bush took office, we were at war with Iraq..."
Afghanistan. We didn't invade Iraq until March 2003.
Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :
It's either to praise him or shame him. Take your pick.
Everyone I talked to, whether they liked him or not had to do a double take to see if the universe was still standing or something.
Posted by WizArtist II (Member # 1425) on :
I'm waiting for the Obama Shrine doll to be released so everyone can bow before it and do obeisance in their own home.
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
quote:But are we not still at war in both Iraq and Afghanistan? Has Obama really made any substantial changes to Bush's policies on those fronts? What peace, exactly, are we talking about?
quote:Afghanistan. We didn't invade Iraq until March 2003.
My point was that Obama didn't start any of those wars. He just inherited them. And I also never said that he deserved the peace prize, just that his track record was better than Bush's.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:Originally posted by Pensive's Wetness: *grins* what IF it was a Bush croonie who put the request in?
That I can believe. On the other hand it could just as easily be someone being a little over enthusiastic. Either way it shouldn't be used as a means to criticise the bloke, it's not like he applied for it and I don't think any of his people would be dumb enough to do so either. Best to just take it as an international recognition of hope that things are changing.
Of course the 'Nobel Prize' isn't exclusively given to those who (arguably) deserve it and there have been one or two rather conspicuous omissions over the years too.
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
Prize or no prize, the Obama-is-better-than-Bush line of thinking brings to mind the phrase "damning with faint praise."
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
Well, you think whatever you want, and I'll think whatever I want. There's no point in arguing with you because you've clearly already made up your mind on that matter.
Posted by The Ginger Beacon (Member # 1585) on :
I'd like to think that the committie and whoever it was that nominated Obama is not so petty that they simply did so to spite Bush. What would be gained from that except the cheapening of the award to all who have or will recieve it and to highlight their ignorance.
And also, yes there have been some glaring omissions and also some frankly rediculous awards. I don't care about those. So Ghandi was never awarded the prize. So what? Does a man need a medal some cash and a certificate to show he's a great man? I think not.
I'm not saying that Obama is undeserving of such accolades. He has done more to encourage and inspire goodwill (even he has not "done" anything) than anyone else in his or a similar position in the worlds stage. Perhaps this is too soon. Perhaps it's a joke or butt kissing that went to far.
I reckon though that the fact the prise +was awarded to him shows that those administering it have faith in the man. I think the world has high expectaions of Obama, but I think that we may be judging him before his time. He has never said hes the best or the most brilliant, it's other people that have held him up in this (perhaps wrong) rose tinted light. But I think in he's in with a chance of prooving them right.
I'm still surprised they gave it to him now though.
Posted by Wes (Member # 212) on :
This prize is reserved for accomplishments, not aspirations. He's done almost nil in 10 months. He doesn't deserve it.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year [...] shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.
So we have:
Fraternity between nations
Abolition or Reduction of standing armies
The holding and promotion of peace congresses
I don't see anything about signing treaties or declaring cease fires, it looks like it's as much about fostering and encouraging peace as anything. Of course whether or not one thinks he's met the above criteria is a matter of debate.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Maybe the terrorists did it to start us all infighting.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Wes: This prize is reserved for accomplishments, not aspirations. He's done almost nil in 10 months. He doesn't deserve it.
Er....nope. Consider one of the award's WORST reciepants- Yasser Arafat- won for having fostered peace by signing the middle-east peace accord- which he promptly violated in the worst possible way.
Or look at Al Gore- he got the PEACE prize for promoting education on global warming. Er...how exactly si that a peace thing?
Hate to say it but the Nobel comittee has kinda used the Peace Prize to hype itself in recent years. The other awards (Science, Lit, etc.) can be peer reviewed and critiqued, but the Peace prize is just whatever they decide it should be.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Garrison Keillor sums it up nicely:
quote:Oct. 14, 2009 | Evidently some people were disappointed that Dick Cheney didn't receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and believe me, I sympathize -- I thought Philip Roth should've gotten the literature prize instead of that grumpy Romanian lady with the severe hair -- but it was Mr. Obama whom the Norwegians wanted to come visit Oslo in December and stand on the balcony of the Grand Hotel and wave to the crowd along Karl Johans Gate, and, face it, Mr. Obama is going to draw a bigger crowd than Mr. Cheney would have. When a man has shot somebody in the face with a shotgun, people are going to be reluctant to line up en masse in his presence lest he get excited again. As for Mr. Cheney's boss, he was an unlikely pick for the Peace Prize after it was revealed by a White House speechwriter in a recent memoir that Mr. Bush once said, "I whupped Gary Bauer's ass." Boasting about ass-whupping is not the mark of a Nobel Peace Prize winner. The correct word is "whipping."
Going to Oslo in December and sitting through a black-tie banquet with a bunch of wooden-faced Norwegians and eating herring and delivering a speech larded with bromides about international cooperation and no jokes is not what I'd consider a whee of a good time, frankly. Oslo is rather dark and murky in December. The sun rises during the first coffee break and sets right after lunch and this does not make for a festive mood. Bell-bottoms were not invented in Norway, nor was the mambo, or the convertible. This isn't Carnival in Rio.
Some conservative pundit suggested that the president should've declined the prize, but it is not gracious to reject a compliment, one should accept it with becoming modesty, as Mr. Obama did, that's what your mother brought you up to do. The prize isn't about you, it's about Peace, or Literature, or Homecoming, or Champion Hog, or Male Vocalist of the Year, so walk up there and smile for the cameras, say thank you and sit down.
The wailing and gnashing of teeth that you hear among Republicans is 68 percent envy and 32 percent sour grapes. Here is an idealistic, articulate young president who is enormously popular everywhere in the world except in the states of the Confederacy, and here sit the 28 percent of the American people who still thought Mr. Bush was doing a heckuva job at the end, gnashing their teeth, hoping and praying for something horrible to happen such as an infestation of locusts or the disappearance of the sun, something to make the president look bad, which is not a good place for a political party to be, hoping for the country to slide into chaos. When you bet against America, you are choosing long odds.
A person can run down the list of all that's wrong with this country, including the lobbyists who cross back and forth from public service to influence-peddling like alligators on the golf course, or the bankers who lost their minds in the great mortgage mania, but the country has a history of rising to challenges and turning away from demagogues and doing what needs to be done. Because we are a passionately patriotic people, infused with a love of our history and our land, and so we have limited patience for fools, such as the ones who now dominate the right.
Conservatism is a powerful strain in American life that ordinarily passes as common sense. Save for a rainy day. Don't foul the nest. Don't burn your bridges. Don't sacrifice the future for short-term profit. But when it contradicts itself and becomes weighted down with bigotry and cynicism, then it doesn't hold water anymore.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." And conservatives tried to keep functioning through the Bush administration but the contradictions wore them down, and last fall, when the federal government wrote a blank check to stave off collapse of the financial sector, conservative principles came crashing to the ground, and now all they have in common is that they don't like President Obama. OK, but resentment of an American president being honored by the Norwegians is not a good point from which to build a Republican revival. Petulant fury isn't a winning hand in politics. Get over it.
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