TIMES ONLINE: The Nobel committee’s award to President Obama demeans the peace prize, appears politically partisan and should embarrass the White House
When Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, the satirist Tom Lehrer remarked that he saw no further need to perform as the award had made satire obsolete. By offering the world’s most prestigious political accolade to Barack Obama, a man who has held office for barely nine months, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is in danger of putting the entire comedy industry out of business.
The committee has put hope above results, promise above achievement. The prize undermines the selfless triumphs of earlier winners. Indeed, the award’s obvious political intent looks partisan, a signal of European relief at the end of the Bush presidency.
The pretext for the prize was Mr Obama’s action in “strengthening international co-operation between peoples”. That is a worthy aim and America’s re-engagement in multilateral diplomacy has been warmly welcomed by its allies. But it is hard to point to any substantive results yet. Much was promised to the Muslim world in the President’s speech in Cairo; on the ground, the failure still to achieve any tangible progress towards a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians has left all sides disillusioned. In Moscow, the talk of pressing the reset button in relations was welcome, as was Mr Obama’s abandonment of the US missile shield in Europe. But so far none of this has led to the scrapping of any more nuclear warheads.
The nomination of Mr Obama, among more than 200 other contenders, had to be made within weeks of his inauguration. Was this a message of support for the election of America’s first black president? Or was it a self-defeating way of trying to align the peace committee with the excitement that marked his first few weeks in office? Mr Obama yesterday responded with characteristic eloquence and modesty in announcing his acceptance. He would, however, have done better to have let it be known to those sounding out the White House beforehand that he saw the prize as premature, ill judged and embarrassing at a time when he is preoccupied with fighting a war in Afghanistan. >>> | Saturday, October 10, 2009
TIMES ONLINE: At 5.45am yesterday Robert Gibbs was woken by a network television producer calling him at home. “This’d better be good,” the White House press secretary grumbled. It was, the producer assured him. President Obama had just won the Nobel Peace Prize. “Oh, that is good,” Mr Gibbs replied.
At the end of an extraordinary whirlwind day that began for Mr Obama with a call to the Lincoln Bedroom moments later, he may justly be questioning his aide’s initial judgment. At home, admirers met the news with astonishment, bafflement and, in some cases, laughter. Across the globe, reaction ranged from polite congratulation and wild effusion to outrage and scepticism.
Conservative critics greeted the news with glee, an affirmation of their belief that Mr Obama is beloved in Europe just for being a celebrity, adored for what he says, not what he does — or, as his Texan predecessor would say, all hat and no cattle.
Without question, the choice is political. The Nobel Peace Prize is a notoriously difficult award to predict but one thread of consistency since 2000 has been the award committee’s implacable hatred of the Bush Administration.
Three of the past six peace awards have gone to Bush adversaries. In 2002 the prize went to Jimmy Carter as an explicit rejection of the Bush presidency in the build-up to the Iraq war. In 2005 Mohamed ElBaradei, the UN atomic agency chief who had clashed with Washington over the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, was honoured. In 2007 Al Gore received the prize for his warnings on climate change, denounced by President Bush as a liberal myth.
Mr Obama’s is a fourth and perfect example of what Nobel scholars call the growing aspirational trend of Nobel committees over the past three decades, by which awards are given not for what has been achieved but in support of the cause being fought for. Obama ‘celebrity reward’ Nobel Prize is greeted with glee by critics >>> Catherine Philp, Diplomatic Correspondent, and Tim Reid in Washington | Saturday, October 10, 2009
