Extraordinary! [update 7]

Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize was awarded, says the citation, for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

Well they certainly got one thing right.  Well, one word. The decision of the judging committee is sure as hell extraordinary.

A prize for the vague intention to “do something,” rather than for anything actually done.  That’s extraordinary.   A prize  for lots of jaw jaw, and nothing at all to end war war.  That’s extraordinary.  It recalled the moment during Obama’s presidential campaign when he declared his primary victory as “the moment the waters stopped rising, and the planet started to heal.”  That was extraordinary too.

So is this.

I was making the case yesterday that this decision seriously devalues the Nobel Peace Prize when a friend reminded me of three things.  Yasser Arafat. Al Gore.  Jimmy Carter. All previous recipients of the award

Clearly this is a prize that’s already being devalued as fast as the US dollar.  To quote Alfred Nobel, whose historic bequest still funds the prize,

And as John Cox, artist, reflects, “Congratulations, President Obama. You proved his point.”

UPDATE 1:  Not that the nomination for the prize was issued just two weeks into the ObaMessiah’s term, confirming it as a triumph of Hope over Credibility – or as Tim Selwyn suggests, it’s just “it's a snub to George W Bush and an encouragement to his successor not to be like George W Bush.”

Alas, poor Alfred.  A prize given in such genuine hope and expectation, to be degraded by politics so sordid.

UPDATE 2: So what other prizes can we nominate The ObaMessiah for, prizes for which he is equally deserving? Here’s one: The Heisman Trophy for US College football players: type his name in and click ‘Vote Here.’  Hasn’t he done just as much to win that prize as this one?

What other prize nominations can you suggest?

How about the Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year?

Any other suggestions?

UPDATE 3: Even the ostensible reason for the award is nonsense, says Time magazine, who not so long ago had the Messiah himself on their cover.  If the award for peace should go anywhere, says Time columnist David Von Drehle, it’s to nuclear weapons themselves:

    “President Barack Obama's Nobel peace surprise was given "primarily for his work on and commitment to nuclear disarmament," according to Agot Valle, a Norwegian politician who served on the award committee. ...
    “As long as a nukeless world remains wishful thinking and pastoral rhetoric, we'll be all right. But if the Nobel committee truly cares about peace, they will think a little harder about actually trying to make it a reality. Open a history book and you'll see what the modern world looks like without nuclear weapons. It is horrible beyond description. ...
    “The truth is that industrial killing was practiced by many nations in the old world without nuclear weapons. Soldiers were gassed and machine-gunned by the hundreds of thousands in the trenches of World War I, when Hitler was just another corporal in the Kaiser's army. By World War II, countries on both sides of the war used airplanes and artillery to rain death on battlefields as well as cities, until the number killed around the world was so huge the best estimates of the total number lost diverge by some 16 million souls. The dead numbered 62 million, or 78 million - somewhere in there.
    “So, when last we saw a world without nuclear weapons, human beings were killing each other with such feverish efficiency that they couldn't keep track of the victims to the nearest 15 million…”

Think about it.

UPDATE 4: The Nobel Peace Prize is not like the Nobel Prize for science.  The proof is not just Yasser Arafat, Al Gore,  Jimmy Carter.  It’s also all those other prize-winners – people like “rough rider” Theodore Roosevelt (the man who helped induce Spain into war in Cuba) and Cordell Hull (who forty years later helped shepherd Japan into war in the Pacific). Like Woodrow Wilson (who took America into WWI saying “America is in need of a serious moral adventure”), and German politician Gustav Stresemann who won in 1926 (Stressemann was a fanatical supporter of the Kaiser and of unrestricted U-boat warfare against civilians in WWI—and who campaigned for a return of Germany to glory against the Versailles Treaty in the 1920s). [Hat tip John Lewis]

Some great heroes for peace there, for sure.  But at least they’d done something.  Giving Obama the prize for peace just for talking about it in his election campaign would be like giving it to Neville Chamberlain, and to Hitler, for talking about it in Munich.

UPDATE 5: Enlightening, isn’t it, when the recipient himself feels the need to perform damage control over the award.

UPDATE 6: Liberty Scott notes that Zimbabwe’s Morgan Tsvangirai, “who had been mooted for the prize, has been imprisoned, tortured, beaten up repeatedly, lost his wife in an accident, and STILL decided for peace in Zimbabwe, to form a joint government with the murdering gangsters of Zanu-PF.

    “Apparently that wasn't good enough. Not good enough for an African man in Africa at the front line of essentially civil war and insurrection, in a truly bankrupt economy, to risk himself so much to bring peace and justice to Zimbabwe. He may have been able to do much for Zimbabwe with the US$1 million prize.
    “Instead, a group of Norwegians worshipped words not deeds.”

UPDATE 7: Robert Tracinski calls it The Nobel Prize for Moral Posturing:

    “. . .  This is an attempt by the Nobel committee to play on Obama's vanity in order to influence his decisions on Iran and Afghanistan. The message is: how could you possibly let Israel attack Iran's nuclear facilities, or how could you send an additional 40,000 troops to "escalate" the war in Afghanistan—after we've just given you the Nobel Peace Prize?
    “In appealing to Obama's moral vanity, they know their man well—and it will probably work.
    “In this respect, Obama is the perfect successor to the last American president to win the Nobel: Jimmy Carter. Consider the legacy of Carter's term in office.
    “Carter withdrew American support for the shah in Iran, then failed to mount any effectual response to the seizure of the US embassy and its staff—all of which allowed the Ayatollah Khomeini to establish a brutal Islamist regime which has been the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, a supporter of Palestinian terrorism, civil war in Lebanon, and insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a regime that has repeatedly murdered and tortured its own citizens.
    “By allowing a Communist takeover in Nicaragua, Carter encouraged a legacy of socialist strongmen that is still riling Latin America to this day.
    “Carter's weakness in Latin America and Iran also emboldened the Soviets to invade Afghanistan, inaugurating three decades of bloody civil war and providing the proving ground for the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
    “So Carter's legacy is three decades of chaos and killing—and the growth of three of today's biggest threats to world peace. Yet Carter is infamous for his haughty, priggish sense of moral superiority.
    “This is what the Nobel Peace Prize really stands for: irresponsible moral posturing in the service of the leftist delusion that appeasement will bring peace, when all it really brings is more war. “