President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, citing his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation.Source: Wall Street Journal
The stunning choice made President Obama the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and shocked Nobel observers because Obama took office less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline. President Obama's name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.
"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," the committee said. "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."
The committee said it attached special importance to President Obama's vision of, and work for, a world without nuclear weapons.
"Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play," the committee said.
Theodore Roosevelt won the award in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson won in 1919. Former President Jimmy Carter won the award in 2002, while former Vice President Al Gore shared the 2007 prize with the U.N. panel on climate change.
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I note that all the previous Presidential (or Presidential wannabees) who won can be described as "Progressive". That should be the end of the story right there. Right-thinking peoples should recognize that the Nobel Prize for Peace, or anything else, is driven by politics, and not by science. I am utterly disgusted by this decision.
Obama, like Jimmy Carter, got this prize for sticking it to Israel.
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4 comments :
A whole two weeks in office before nomination. I guess he is God after all. We are all so false if we accept such insanity. Life is spiraling out of control. We will need God soon, but where will he be? I fear we have alienated all reason. It reels the mind. I smile, I shake hands, I win an election, I get the Peace Prize, I am God. We live a farce.
Think of it this way guys, Your REPUBLICAN President had such a NEGATIVE affect on our WORLD, that the nobel peace prize commitee is willing to acknowledge the courage of a man who's willing to put forth the dedication and resilience towards cleaning up YOUR President's screw ups, WITHOUT those actions even being accomplished yet!!!! Far fetched?...Maybe. But I guess the excitement of having a President who actually has our well being at heart, still hasn't grown old!!!!!!
Think of how WORTHLESS it would have been if BUSH would have won it!!!
In the words of Mr. Orwell, "War is Peace", "Freedom is Slavery" and "Ignorance is Strength".
Perhaps it's time to add "Totalitarianism is Change You Can Believe In"
There are a lot of comments around the web on this subject that end up just attacking people (see the above comments) and don't focus on what the Nobel Peace Prize committee was thinking and actually analyzing their decision.
Don't get me wrong, Obama doesn't deserve this award based on his actions obviously (none). And I don't think he deserves it at all. So if the Peace Prize committee decided to give him the award before he had a chance to do anything, it must have been because of the rhetoric in his campaign about promises to bring some sort of peace and nuclear disarmament to the world.
I think the committee realized he had a good message based on peace and gave him this award as motivation to use his powerful position to bring some sort of impact in terms of peace to the world. They hope he will now try to live up to the bar that the committee has raised. But, if this is their motivation, then they are using the award as more of a bribe than an award.
Giving the award to Al Gore based on his global warming documentary in which he spends half the movie flying around in private jets and riding in limos was a much worse pick, and to me the award lost all meaning after that.
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