Daily Archives: December 10, 2009

President Barack Obama accepted his Nobel Prize early this morning, our time, in Norway.

The President acknowledged that in comparison to pasts recipients of the Peace Prize, his accomplishments were far less impressive.    Critics  felt the President should have refused the award since he has escalated the conflict in Afghanistan, which indicate to some that his actions contradict what the Prize stands for.

Think Progress:

In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech this morning, President Obama called his own accomplishments “slight” in comparison to past winners and spoke at length about the irony of winning the award as a wartime president. He evoked the concept of “just war” to argue for the use of force that is “necessary” and “morally justified.”

There’s an interesting thread on David Sorota’s piece on the progressive blog Open Left. 

 Sarota expressed his opinion, which basically states that having escalated the war in Afghanistan, Obama should not have recieved the award:

By that I mean, you can be a genuine progressive interested in peace and think this award is a travesty on progressive grounds, and also not think that the Rush Limbaugh/GOP attacks about this award from the right are valid at all. Likewise, you can think this award is a travesty and simultaneously hope that one day President Obama truly ends up building a record deserving of such an award. You can even think this award is a travesty and think Obama is on the way to building up such a record, but is undeserving of the award because he’s only been president for 9 months and hasn’t yet proven himself a Nobel-level peacemaker.

A commenter on the blog responds to someone who said the Nobel Prize is worthless:

King gave a lifetime and a life for his work on equality. Mandela spent 27 years in Jail fighting Appartied. Obama spent 12 days in office before being nominated. This award is worthless!!!

You flaming hypocrite! As if you give a DAMN about the standards of the Nobel Committee! You just want an excuse to attack somebody you don’t like. Period.

That’s all the right-wing is. Hypocrites and liars. They’ve got nothing to bitch about except they hate Obama and can’t stand it that he won something. So, they invent reasons to complain!

It’s interesting to contrast these reactions with that in other countries:

The self-centered view most Americans, especially conservatives, have in relations to the rest of the world is the main culprit as to why most Americans feel Obama is undeserving of this great honor, when in fact, he definitely is worthy of it.The total lack of dignity and respect in the Bush Administration’s unilateral approach to “diplomacy” towards other nations severely undermined any efforts by the global community presenting a cooperative approach combating global warming, nuclear proliferation, territorial disputes, terrorism, human rights, etc.

With the election of Obama as President, his immediate implementation of a foreign policy centered on respecting and listening to other nations was a major achievement in itself.

Since then, Iran has agreed to talks with the US, Russia announced it will not deploy Iktar missles, US-Cuban relations have improved dramatically, the Iraq War will be over by 2010 and the United States has already begun troop withdrawals.

While their are others that deserved as much consideration for the Nobel Peace Prize, who else has done as much in a short amount of time? The Nobel Committee did not give this award as a token. Obama has ALREADY accomplished enough to deserve it.

The commenter succinctly expresses my own sentiment about the issue.

Huffington Post has a full text of the speech here.