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An Ignoble Laureate
Staff Editorial
Although this page has generally opposed President Barack Obama, we aren’t disheartened he won the Nobel Peace Prize for “strengthen[ing] international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” He seems to perfectly meet the standards by which one receives the award: He is dynamic, fashionable, articulate and popular among the elite circles in which he walks. Lucky him, insight and accomplishment haven’t made it onto the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s checklist in recent memory.
Who comes to mind as exemplary recent recipients? In 1992, Marxist biographical fabulist Rigoberta Menchu won the prize for agitating for “social justice” in Guatemala. In 1994, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (fighting valiantly for the Palestinian cause) shared the prize with Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres (fighting valiantly for, um, the Palestinian cause) for their efforts to expedite the “peace process.”
With this kind of a record, the committee doesn’t evidence any virtue except, maybe, consistency. The strangeness of their picks for the Peace Prize hasn’t abated. In 2001, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan shared the award with the organization he headed, a body of the world’s finest democracies… and its most brutal dictatorships. The foundation bestowed the prize to Mr. Annan and the U.N. “for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world.” Three years later, the world would discover the secretary-general’s role in making the Oil-For-Food Program – through which Saddam Hussein’s Iraq could exchange oil for humanitarian imports – a major patronage hub. It did help the world become “better organized” in the criminal sense.
The next year, former president Jimmy Carter got his recognition from the Nobel Foundation – a unique audience that would actually give him anything close to majority support post-1976. Mr. Carter’s getting the prize provoked left-wing journalist Peter Beinart to observe that the ex-president “has repeatedly praised dictators in the name of international rapprochement.”
Hey, at least it was done “in the name of international rapprochement,” the prize’s supposed point. In 2007, former Vice President Al Gore received it along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for their work to (mis)inform the global public about climate change. As The Bulletin goes to press, we haven’t yet managed to determine a plausible connection between such dawdling and world peace. If ever we can, we’ll get back to you.
Every once in a while, there’s the odd exception. Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, who did more to bring about the end of communist Eastern Europe than all but a few other towering international figures, won the prize in 1983. The foundation made a prescient choice. Mr. Walesa is a feather in their cap, though they are scarcely a feather in his. He didn’t win their prize by the committee’s usual rules: Ditch the substance, inflate the rhetoric and go heavy on the pageantry.
So we congratulate Mr. Obama for his new honor. He earned it by doing what he does best.
Who comes to mind as exemplary recent recipients? In 1992, Marxist biographical fabulist Rigoberta Menchu won the prize for agitating for “social justice” in Guatemala. In 1994, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (fighting valiantly for the Palestinian cause) shared the prize with Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres (fighting valiantly for, um, the Palestinian cause) for their efforts to expedite the “peace process.”
With this kind of a record, the committee doesn’t evidence any virtue except, maybe, consistency. The strangeness of their picks for the Peace Prize hasn’t abated. In 2001, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan shared the award with the organization he headed, a body of the world’s finest democracies… and its most brutal dictatorships. The foundation bestowed the prize to Mr. Annan and the U.N. “for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world.” Three years later, the world would discover the secretary-general’s role in making the Oil-For-Food Program – through which Saddam Hussein’s Iraq could exchange oil for humanitarian imports – a major patronage hub. It did help the world become “better organized” in the criminal sense.
The next year, former president Jimmy Carter got his recognition from the Nobel Foundation – a unique audience that would actually give him anything close to majority support post-1976. Mr. Carter’s getting the prize provoked left-wing journalist Peter Beinart to observe that the ex-president “has repeatedly praised dictators in the name of international rapprochement.”
Hey, at least it was done “in the name of international rapprochement,” the prize’s supposed point. In 2007, former Vice President Al Gore received it along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for their work to (mis)inform the global public about climate change. As The Bulletin goes to press, we haven’t yet managed to determine a plausible connection between such dawdling and world peace. If ever we can, we’ll get back to you.
Every once in a while, there’s the odd exception. Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, who did more to bring about the end of communist Eastern Europe than all but a few other towering international figures, won the prize in 1983. The foundation made a prescient choice. Mr. Walesa is a feather in their cap, though they are scarcely a feather in his. He didn’t win their prize by the committee’s usual rules: Ditch the substance, inflate the rhetoric and go heavy on the pageantry.
So we congratulate Mr. Obama for his new honor. He earned it by doing what he does best.
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| Obama All Wrong All The Time | What Has Obama Done To Deserve Prize? |
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