For one, the decision of the Swedish Nobel Committee to award the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama is based entirely on hope — that is, on an idea of Obama the harbinger of change, who cannot fail. For another, the decision that has already drawn a lot of derision, is actually an indecision. And for still another, it is a huge joke on the world, especially the battered part of it paying for the sins of American policies; talk to an ordinary Iraqi or Afghan, and you will have a feel of it. Thus speaks Issam al-Khazraji, a day labourer in the war-torn Baghdad: ‘‘Why should he get a peace prize while the US has the largest nuclear arsenal on earth and his soldiers shed innocent blood in Iraq and Afghanistan?’’ But perhaps in the eyes of the Swedish Nobel Committee — many will now rightly question its independence and even the legitimacy of other awards — the likes of al-Khazraji are a non-entity whose outbursts stem from ignorance. After all, they do not know what ‘‘nuclear weapons elimination’’ and ‘‘international diplomacy’’ mean and how Obama has already shaped things for a radically new world!
Look at the statement of the Nobel Committee: ‘‘Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics... Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position... Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms-control negotiation. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the US is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting.’’ A critique of this flamboyance must begin with what many have pointed out to challenge and ridicule the Obama choice: that the Nobel Committee’s deadline for nominations was February 1, just 11 days after Obama’s inauguration as US President. This in fact ends the debate, for Obama is then such a huge Nobel accident. Even were one to assume otherwise and that the world is based on hope and faith and that it takes a lot of courage to weave threads of hope in a very turbulent world, the question would remain: What for are any awards given? To recognize and honour achievements or to accentuate hope whose child is the future we imagine of at our choicest best? Is it merely to encourage a man who has only spoken of a new world which anyone with great oratorical skills and education can do? And to think of a Nobel for Peace? The crux of the matter is that Obama, just nine-month old in the White House, is an absolutely untested man when it comes to something as complex as peace imperilled every year and in every way by none but the various forms of US subterfuge. Has the Nobel Peace Committee gone blind due to an expedient choice as not to locate so many other highly deserving peacemakers across the world whose contributions to making this world a better place to live in are immense, or is it all a larger American design whose manifestations have just started to happen? But we should not be surprised. Henry Kissinger, the suave Germany-born American political scientist who served as Secretary of State in the Nixon administration and under whose advice the US government supported Pakistan in the India-Pakistan War of 1971 in order to stymie the Soviet spread, went on to win the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize — though for his ‘‘contribution’’ to the Vietnam ceasefire after a complete destruction of that country by the US! THE SENTINEL
Look at the statement of the Nobel Committee: ‘‘Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics... Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position... Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms-control negotiation. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the US is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting.’’ A critique of this flamboyance must begin with what many have pointed out to challenge and ridicule the Obama choice: that the Nobel Committee’s deadline for nominations was February 1, just 11 days after Obama’s inauguration as US President. This in fact ends the debate, for Obama is then such a huge Nobel accident. Even were one to assume otherwise and that the world is based on hope and faith and that it takes a lot of courage to weave threads of hope in a very turbulent world, the question would remain: What for are any awards given? To recognize and honour achievements or to accentuate hope whose child is the future we imagine of at our choicest best? Is it merely to encourage a man who has only spoken of a new world which anyone with great oratorical skills and education can do? And to think of a Nobel for Peace? The crux of the matter is that Obama, just nine-month old in the White House, is an absolutely untested man when it comes to something as complex as peace imperilled every year and in every way by none but the various forms of US subterfuge. Has the Nobel Peace Committee gone blind due to an expedient choice as not to locate so many other highly deserving peacemakers across the world whose contributions to making this world a better place to live in are immense, or is it all a larger American design whose manifestations have just started to happen? But we should not be surprised. Henry Kissinger, the suave Germany-born American political scientist who served as Secretary of State in the Nixon administration and under whose advice the US government supported Pakistan in the India-Pakistan War of 1971 in order to stymie the Soviet spread, went on to win the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize — though for his ‘‘contribution’’ to the Vietnam ceasefire after a complete destruction of that country by the US! THE SENTINEL
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