Friday, October 9, 2009

Obama, Man of Peace...Or So We Hope

When I first saw the New York Times news alert in my inbox announcing that President Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize I thought--for just a flash--that it was a conservative joke, but then just as quickly recognized the source. This is serious. They gave him the peace prize.

This is actually consistent with his life so far. This is a man who had written two (2!) autobiographies before becoming President, and with no significant accomplishments to his credit. This is a man for whom people renamed schools and roads simply for his having been elected. The Hempstead, NY, school district here on Long Island renamed Ludlum Elementary School after him immediately after his election and before he was sworn in. And now he has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize before he has actually brought any peace anywhere in the world. The Nobel Committee's reasons for choosing the 44th American President are all anticipations of what they expect him to do. He has "created a new climate" in international relations. He has a "vision" of a nuclear weapons free world. His government is "playing a more constructive role" in efforts to fight climate change. "Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened," but nothing to report so far. It's all hope; no actual change.

While it is shocking that the Nobel Committee has given this award to Barack Obama at this stage in his presidency, it is just as shocking that he would accept it. No. On second thought, I'm quite sure he believes he deserves it. This is the man who has been lauded by his most devoted admirers as the Messiah, and he has received the near-worship without objection. His arrogance is as without bounds as it is without foundation.

In accepting the award, Obama spoke humbly and turned attention to the work of others.(Watch the full six minute video here.)



Words are easy to craft. A statesman must ultimately be judged by his deeds, however. Not only has Obama done nothing to justify this award, his record has even been one of emboldening dictators and betraying the allies of liberty. Daniel Henninger makes this case in "Obama, Dictators and Democrats" (Wall Street Journal; Oct. 1, 2009).

The Monday after last Friday's bombshell that Iran has a hidden nuclear site, the State Department announced the start of a "direct dialogue" with Burma's hopeless junta. The administration has dispatched a special envoy to Sudan and its genocidal leader, Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad got his own Obama envoy, plus a visit from John Kerry. At the Summit of the Americas, Mr. Obama himself did meet and greets for "dialogue" with Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and Bolivia's Evo Morales, and reached out to Cuba's Raul Castro. Mr. Obama then dropped in on Russia's leaders for a "reset."
 But this is precisely the sort of thing that has earned him the prize. The committee said in its press release:

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. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts.
In the past, The Nobel Committee has honored dissidents, like Aung San Suu Kyi and Andrei Sakharov, who had been struggling courageously and with great suffering against oppressive regimes. Barack Obama, by accepting the award, not only displaces many nominees of this character, he has also turned his back on such people in his overtures to their oppressors. Henninger notes this also.

If the Obama team wanted to make a really significant break from past Bush policy, it would say it was not going to just talk with the world's worst strongmen but would give equal, public status to their democratic opposition groups. Instead, the baddest actors in the world get face time with Barack Obama, but their struggling opposition gets invisibility. Iran's extraordinary and brave popular opposition, which broke out again this week at two universities, seems to have earned these pro-democracy Iranians nothing in the calculations of U.S. policy.
Henninger traces this cold-blooded foreign policy to the influence of Obama's trade union support.

For the American left, now fused to financial support from domestic labor unions, the world's dispossessed represent a threat—less costly labor selling goods into the high-cost world. Active help for democratic oppositions in Venezuela, Syria, Egypt, Iran or even Guinea hardly serves this interest. Today, social justice stops at the water's edge. Even as Mr. Obama extends his hand to a Chávez, Morales or Castro, he makes no effort to finish free-trade agreements with certifiably democratic Colombia and Panama.
The Nobel Committee has made some strange choices in the past, but nothing this bizarre. Even many on the left are scratching their heads. You can look down this list of past recipients and make your own comparisons.

Here is the full text of the committee's announcement of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.


The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to 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. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

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. 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.

For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that "Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges."

Oslo, October 9, 2009

Posted by David C. Innes

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