Whatever legitimacy and credibility the Nobel Peace Prize may have once enjoyed, it officially jumped the shark when Oslo awarded the thing to Yasser Arafat — a terrorist who was moderate in comparison to other terrorists only in that he didn’t talk about destroying Israel and murdering her citizens within range of Western videographers. Nowadays the award is little more than an attaboy for those individuals who make the necessary genuflections to Oslo’s preferred global politics of transnational multiculturalism; witness, for example, recent awards to Jimmy Carter in 2002 and Al Gore in 2005, neither of which were occasioned by the recipient actually accomplishing anything praiseworthy or even noteworthy in the service of peace.
But Oslo appears to have finally outdone itself, awarding this year’s prize to President Obama despite nominations having closed a mere eleven days after his inauguration. The committee’s rationale?
“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,” Thorbjoern Jagland, chairman of the Nobel Committee said.
It appears that even the Norwegians are susceptible to the blandishments of Hopenchange. Take it away, Times of London:
Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and partisan intent. It was clearly seen by the Norwegian Nobel committee as a way of expressing European gratitude for an end to the Bush Administration, approval for the election of America’s first black president and hope that Washington will honour its promise to re-engage with the world.
Instead, the prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace…
Mr Obama becomes the third sitting US President to receive the prize. The committee said today that he had “captured the world’s attention”. It is certainly true that his energy and aspirations have dazzled many of his supporters. Sadly, it seems they have so bedazzled the Norwegians that they can no longer separate hopes from achievement.
Rarely do I find myself in agreement with David Frum, who is perhaps the second-biggest tool in the right-wing firmament after Conor Freidersdorf. But I think he had an interesting take on this:
That Nobel was not a gesture of Obama-worship by left-leaning Norwegians. It was the very opposite: It was a pre-emptive strike against Obama, an attempt to neutralize him. How can a Peace Nobelist strike Iranian nuclear plants? Or wage a protracted war in Afghanistan? Or tell the Palestinians, “Sorry, that’s the best offer, take it or leave it”? The hope of course is that he cannot.
We’ve heard a lot over the past few years about radicals trying to achieve their aims through “lawfare.” Here’s a new concept in asymmetric conflict: “prizefare.” The Nobel Committee was not rewarding Obama. It was attempting to geld him.
I’m uncertain the Norwegians are that sophisticated given their childlike faith in transnationalism, but assuming they are, attempting to advance one’s goals by stroking this president’s prodigious ego is undoubtedly playing the odds.
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