{"id":415,"date":"2009-10-10T17:49:29","date_gmt":"2009-10-10T21:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/?p=415"},"modified":"2009-10-12T13:25:51","modified_gmt":"2009-10-12T17:25:51","slug":"obama-the-nobel-peace-prize-related-controversies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/?p=415","title":{"rendered":"Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize & Related Controversies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let me start by saying that I voted for Barack Obama but I feel the Nobel Peace prize award to President Obama was premature. He has not done enough during his nine months in office to justify the award. Sure, he has proclaimed some noble goals and has made a concerted attempt to integrate the US into the world community after the eight years under Bush when the attitude was “my way or the highway” – to use an American expression.<\/p>\n

But what is unseemly to the point of being totally bizarre is the spectacle of right-wing wackos in the US condemning the award to an AMERICAN president! This comes on top of the scenes of cheering by right-wingers when the International Olympic Committee announced that Chicago had been eliminated as a potential venue in 2016 in the first round. Imagine Americans cheering the decision that the Olympics were not going to take place in the US!<\/p>\n

Much of this vitriol is directed against Obama who made a pitch for the games to be held in Chicago – his hometown. A loss for Obama is now viewed as more desirable than a victory for the US by the right-wing nuts. Equally offensive is the notion that the award of the Peace prize to Obama is considered so repugnant to this fringe group within the Republican party, that condemnation of the award takes precedence over any sense of pride that an American won the award! <\/p>\n

Previous recipients of the Peace prize have occasionally been controversial and it has not always been based on true accomplishments. Consider the award made to Arafat, Peres and Rabin – it was an award based on hope more than real accomplishments. Henry Kissinger and Lee Duc Tho were awarded the prize based on a peace agreement between the US, South Vietnam and North Vietnam -even though it turned out to be a very tentative peace since the North over-ran the South subsequently – not to mention the involvement of Kissinger in other highly controversial policies with regard to Cambodia and Argentina. Menachem Begin, the prime minister of Israel, shared the award with Anwar Sadat, although Begin was the head of Irgun – a Zionist terrorist group – that was responsible for the bombing of King David hotel in which many civilians were killed. <\/p>\n

This site<\/a> has a list of some of the more controversial prior winnners.<\/p>\n

One of the most glaring omissions in the award of the prize was as it pertained to Mahatma Gandhi.
\n
\nThe failure to award the Peace prize to Gandhi given his role in the non-violent movement was a travesty. Gandhi was more responsible than anyone else for accomplishing a transfer of power in India from the British with relatively minimal violence. Since his death he has been an inspiration to leaders ranging from Martin Luther King Jr to Nelson Mandela in their struggles for freedom and justice. Obama even had a picture of Gandhi with his spinning wheel in his Senate office. Yet, Gandhi never received an award during his lifetime even though he was nominated four times – and he never received one posthumously even though Dag Hammarskjold, a former Secretary General of the UN, was awarded it posthumously after he died in a plane crash during a peace mission.<\/p>\n

IMO, the award to Obama was an indirect slap at George W Bush. After eight years under Bush’s leadership when it was made clear to the world that the US would act unilaterally disregarding the opinion of other countries there has been a great sense of relief that we now have a president who seeks to build international coalitions and does not espouse the “go it alone” approach that Bush advocated and practised. Realistically, can you imagine Obama winning the Peace prize if Obama had followed Bill Clinton as president instead of George Bush? For that matter is it likely that Obama would have been awarded the prize had George W Bush shown any of the wisdom and far-sightedness of his father in the field of international relations?<\/p>\n

Controversy is not unknown when the winner of the Peace prize has been announced – controversy both with regard to the winners and those who did not win. What is unseemly is the lunatic fringe of the Republican party being at the forefront in criticizing the award being given to an American president! Even more outrageous is the Republican National Committee using the award to Obama as fund rasing tool. The chairman of the RNC in a fund-raising letter says: <\/p>\n

“President Obama’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize puts the cart before the horse. Help us remind the Democrats that trendy slogans and international esteem don’t
\ncreate new jobs for Americans, reduce the national debt, or keep our
\ncountry safer in a dangerous world by making a secure online contribution
\nof $25, $50, $100, $500 or $1,000 to the RNC today.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let me start by saying that I voted for Barack Obama but I feel the Nobel Peace prize award to President Obama was premature. He has not done enough during his nine months in office to justify the award. Sure, he has proclaimed some noble goals and has made a concerted attempt to integrate the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=415"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":428,"href":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415\/revisions\/428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josephclan.com\/tjblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}