Obama's Nobel Prize

An AP report notes the defense the Nobel Prize committee gave for its decision to give its peace award to President Obama. Members of the committee said the reasons were as follows. First, Obama has made "efforts to heal the divide between the West and the Muslim world". Second, Obama has scaled "down a Bush era proposal for an anti-missile shield in Europe". Third, Obama has caused a change in "global mood" by his "calls for peace and cooperation". Fourth, Obama has "pledged to reduce the world stock of nuclear arms". Fifth, Obama has "strengthened the US role in combating climate change". Members of the committee who were interviewed said that "most world leaders were positive about the award" while the critics are mostly the US media and "Obama's political rivals". Some of those critics-like Michael Steele of the GOP-said the award to Obama indicates "how meaningless a once honorable and respected award has become". Steele also said that democrats and "their international leftist allies want America made subservient to the agenda of global redistribution and control" (What does the rest of the world think of this degree of criticism? Are they wondering if race is a factor?)

(Source: "Nobel Jurists defend giving Award to Obama" by Ian McDougall and Karl Ritter of The AP. In The Virginian Pilot on 10/14/09).

Update on 11/11/09.

The Washington Spectator offers an explanation of the Peace Prize award to president Obama that hinges on the committee's long-standing belief that the "biggest issue...(is)...nuclear disarmament". Those who are opposed to Obama getting the award are "...diehard Cold Warriors..." in the US. These people have always felt that disarmament was "...for others, not for itself". In Prague in April Obama stated his goal of "a multilateral policy committed to nuclear disarmament". In September at the UN Obama became the "first US president ever to preside over the UN Security Council" and his agenda was "nuclear disarmament". At the UN, Obama pushed a resolution that would support the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, "which would ban the processing of the refined materials necessary for bomb production". The resolution was adopted unanimously. Obama also "seems to be moving forward" on the Non-Proliferation Treaty and disarmament by the nuclear power countries. He has "moved to renew and expand the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty" and he has "re-considered the provocative, expensive-and almost certainly useless-anti missile program in Eastern Europe"

(Source: "Obama and the Bomb" by Ian Williams of the Foreign Policy In Focus. The Washington Spectator. November 1, 2009).