Seinfeld was a program about nothing, and Obama’s recent Nobel award was a prize for doing nothing. Yet another case of Dementia-Obama, and further proof that Obama should have run for president of Europe last year.
Our rookie president has done exactly nothing to promote peace, world or otherwise. In fact, our Apologizer-in-Chief has done a good deal to imperil such peace as still exists on the planet by making his lust for American weakness clear to the world. This makes him a perfect choice for the Marxist debating club known as the Norwegian Nobel Institute, which awards the Nobel Peace Prize, referred to in more alert circles as the “Nobel Left-Wing Nut-bag and Anti-American Prize,” or, abbreviated in recent times to, “The Anti-Bush Prize.”
Obama’s selection should surprise no one. After all, Al Gore and the United Nations’ Let’s Scare the Living Hell Out of Everybody About Global Warming Committee took the prize (if such it is) in 2007. You can even be a terrorist and win the prize, as Yasser Arafat did in 1994, in this case a peace prize for one of the world’s then leading disturbers of the peace.
OK, there’ve been some sensible selections in the mid-to-long-range past: Mother Teresa in 1979, MLK, Jr. in 1964, Albert Schweitzer in 1952, and Teddy Roosevelt in 1906. But the entire process has lately been overwhelmed by left-wing politics.
What is surprising is that anyone takes seriously a prize, the winner of which is selected each year by the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee of present or former members of the parliament of Norway (the Storting), a socialist country with a slightly smaller population than Alabama (though with more cases of frostbite and lots more cream of mushroom soup and pickled herring).
The current committee is made up of one guy, the chairman, former prime minister Thorbjoern Jagland, and four women: Kaci Kullmann Five, Sissel Marie Ronbeck, Inger-Marie Ytterhorn, and Agot Valle. The short bios of these folks at Nobel websites describe them all as politicians and/or academics. Nothing in the material suggests these five supernumeraries have any expertise in international relations, let alone any achievement in this area.
If honoring people who’ve actually done something to promote peace in the world were the real purpose of the prize, we could do better by turning the choice over to a committee chosen randomly from the Lake Wales, Florida telephone directory (or that of Yazoo City, Mississippi, or Pagosa Springs, Colorado, or…) Of course it’s not peace but left-wing politics the prize promotes.
Jimmy Carter was awarded the prize in 2002 as a means of sticking a thumb in George W. Bush’s eye during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The committee nails W again on the way out by awarding the prize to Obama, who had been in office only two weeks before the nominations ceased. Pretty quick work of cleaning things up and promoting peace after eight years on the dark side.
The Nobel Committee’s statement on why it chose Obama is, by turns, empty and fatuous, as Obama’s speeches are. Stuff such as, “The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people.” It didn’t elaborate on what any of these efforts might have been. Affixing a “just be nice” bumper strip to Air Force One is not a foreign policy.
Here’s another knee-slapper: “Obama as president created a new climate in international politics.” If there’s any new climate since Obama took office it’s one that encourages the belief that America has, with thanks to Margaret Thatcher for the expression, gone wobbly, and that America’s security interests are now a free-fire zone. Adios, Pax Americana. (When Obama leaves office in January of 2013 with America’s standing in the world much reduced and our security interests in shambles, he can summon up his best Bogie impersonation and say to Michelle, “We’ll always have Oslo.”)
In a particularly surreal moment during the prize announcement, Jagland said, “The question we have to answer is who has done the most in the previous year to enhance peace in the world.” We know the answer Jagland wanted. But clearly any lance corporal in the United States Marine Corps has done more to advance peace in the world than Obama has.
Finally, consider, “Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts.” Translation: third-world, UN hustlers, living it up in New York on the American taxpayers’ dime, can now spend even more time banging Uncle Sam’s head on a locker.
So, you see, Jagland et al. are hoping Obama can negotiate a civilized world, much in the manner that the enlightened Norwegians negotiated Hitler and the Nazis out of their country in the 1940s (the clincher then was getting old Adolf into a good 12-step program).
In response to all this drollery, Obama was modest. (He has much to be modest about, though he doesn’t seem to know this.) He said he was surprised and humbled by the award and would consider it a “call to action.” What this faux prince of peace would consider action is anybody’s guess.
Obama will go to Norway in December to accept the prize, which comes with about a million bucks in prize money, a car-load of cream of mushroom soup, and a big wet tongue kiss from some obscure Norwegian shut-ins.
The Nobel Peace Prize doesn’t belong on the front page of America’s newspapers. It belongs in a Saturday Night Live skit. It has become a parody of itself. Which is probably the best reason why Obama deserves this crackpot distinction.
