Nobel Peace Prize
“Deeds speak louder than words”, says an old proverb. One would assume that folks around the world should know this well, but apparently some Norwegians do not. Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama is as shocking as it is laughable. And whatever the Norwegians meant that award to be, they have achieved quite the opposite, making President Obama a target of unprecedented criticism, jokes and mockery. It was perhaps the last thing Obama needed at this crucial moment in his Presidency when the White House is reassessing the Afghan war strategy and the U.S. approach to the Iranian nuclear program.
A fact that Obama has not achieved a thing, which would make him worthwhile of that award is more than obvious. As Benedict Brogan from the Daily Telegraph put it “President Obama remains the barley man of politics, barely a senator now barely a president” and yet he is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his political beliefs.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee explained that Obama’s extraordinary efforts to start the disarmament negotiations are enough to award him the Prize. But let’s be realistic – it always takes two to tango. If Obama is awarded the Noble Peace Prize, then so should be Dmitri Medvedev, who is sitting at the other side of the negotiations table and is making the same kind of political efforts in that respect. Unless, the Norwegians believe that Obama’s America will disarm unilaterally?
And has Obama truly brought hope to the world, which the Committee is so inspired by? Not really.
When Obama campaigned in the last elections he said that he had a recipe to bring the global economic crisis to an end. However, soon after he was elected it became clear that he has no real knowledge about the economics and even Joe Biden publicly said that the Administration misread the economy. So if a politician promises to fix something and inspires expectations in people – the expectations that never come true – can he still be credited for bringing “hope”?
The ironic thing is that the African Americans who needed the most to be done for them, but who voted for Obama not because of his policies but of his racial background, are now suffering the most. The current unemployment rate among African Americans has reached 15.4% and is continuously growing every week. That rate is already much higher than, for example, the unemployment rate in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The reality of the Obama’s “hope” is that, almost a year after his spectacular victory, people in America cannot find jobs, have no money to support their families or are about to lose their employment in the following weeks.
And if one measures Obama’s delivery of “hope” from an international perspective the actual record looks even gloomier.
During his campaign, Obama many times promised that he would bring an end to the genocide in Darfur and that he would assume leadership which would liberate people in Darfur from their misery. As a matter of fact, it was one of the reasons why I personally decided to blog for Obama in the 2009 primaries. His inclusion of Harvard’s academic, Samantha Power, as his close adviser assured many individuals that Obama would truly deliver what he had promised. However, not only he has not brought the Darfur crisis to an end, but after being elected he virtually dropped the issue and showed no leadership in that respect. At the same time, Samantha Power was sidetracked with a less important job at the National Security Council. The genocide victims in Darfur were dying before Obama was elected and they are dying right now, when he is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Objectively, it is the greatest anti-hope that could have been delivered by a politician: to promise dying people that they would be saved from death but then leave them to their own fate after the November 4th votes are cast.
It is not to say that Obama cannot deliver in the future what he has promised in the past. It is, however, clear that as of now he has not fulfilled his promises.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has established a very bad precedent, showing that it is enough for an aspiring politician to talk and give speeches but stop short of any meaningful action.
It is equally sad that Obama so quickly accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. It was against the principle of “fair-play” espoused by the idea of the Olympic Games, which he has so vigorously promoted last week in favor of the Chicago candidacy. The “fair-play” rule says that it is not “ok” to accept a prize if you know that it was given to you mistakenly and that others deserve it better.
