Obama Nobelwaardig?

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Het aantal commentaren op de Nobel Peace prijs voor Obama is ongelooflijk.

Op
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/09/obama-wins-nobel-peace-pr_n_314907.html
staat een bericht, waarop ruim 30.000 commentaren gekomen zijn.
Wie kan dat nog lezen?
En dan zoveel emotie in de berichten, ongelooflijk.

De onderstaande commentaren uit (soms extreem) rechtse hoek wil ik wel
vermelden, ze zijn nogal 'uitgesproken' en zo gaat de Republikeinse Partij
en haar volgelingen de laatste tijd ALTIJD tekeer. Vraag me af hoe de
verkiezingen volgend jaar er gaan uitzien. Hoeveel 'gekke' Amerikanen er
zijn.

Groet / Cees

PS. Na de 10 commentaren de motivatie van de Nobel Committee, die het
besluit  pas afgelopen maandag hebben genomen.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/09/obama-nobel-prize-reactio_n_315690.html

Limbaugh just comes out and sides with the enemy: "Something has happened
here that we all agree with the Taliban and Iran about and that is he
doesn't deserve the award."

Bill Kristol suggests that Obama will be kicked out in 2012, based on the
fact that the Soviet Union collapsed a year after Mikhail Gorbachev won a
Nobel Peace Prize.

Glenn Beck says Obama doesn't deserve the prize, but the Tea Party
protesters do. He credited an "extraordinarily powerful" global
progressive network for bagging Obama the win.

RedState's Erick Erickson went for the race card, suggesting President
Obama must have been picked to meet some Nobel Peace Prize "affirmative
action quota."

Mustachioed neocon John Bolton, who could not get confirmed as ambassador
to the U.N., said Obama should decline the prize.

National Review's Andy McCarthy says the prize is already damaged goods,
because Yasser Arafat once won it.


Limbaugh (again) told Newsweek that "the Nobel gang just suicide-bombed
themselves."

Brian Kilmeade wonders whether Obama delayed his decision on sending more
troops to Afghanistan to win the Nobel.


De NewYorkTimes geeft de motivatie voor de toekenning aan Barack Obama:

October 10, 2009
Picking the Most Visible of 205 Names
By WALTER GIBBS

OSLO — The Norwegian Nobel Committee spent seven months winnowing the
résumés of dissident monks, human rights advocates, field surgeons and
other nominees — 205 names in all, most of them obscure — before deciding
to give the Nobel Peace Prize to the most famous man on the planet, Barack
Obama.

“The question we have to ask,” Thorbjorn Jagland, the committee’s new
chairman, said after the prize was announced on Friday, “is, ‘Who has done
the most in the previous year to enhance peace in the world?’ And who has
done more than Barack Obama?”

While in recent decades the selection process has produced many winners
better known for their suffering or their environmental zeal than for
peacemaking, Mr. Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister, said he
intended to incorporate a more practical approach.

“It’s important for the committee to recognize people who are struggling
and idealistic,” Mr. Jagland said in an interview, “but we cannot do that
every year. We must from time to time go into the realm of realpolitik. It
is always a mix of idealism and realpolitik that can change the world.”

Mr. Jagland, 58, leaned back in his chair in the committee room,
surrounded by photographs of Peace Prize winners dating to 1901. Three
previous American presidents look out from the wall: Theodore Roosevelt,
Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter. But the 2009 award to Mr. Obama, in his
freshman year as president and still directing two wars, could be the
biggest of them all.

While some leaders and commentators around the world lauded the selection,
others said Mr. Obama had not yet earned it. Should his presidency descend
into a military quagmire, as Lyndon B. Johnson’s did during the Vietnam
War, the 2009 award could prove an embarrassment.

Several prominent Nobel observers in Oslo said the Nobel committee had put
the integrity of the award at stake. But Mr. Jagland seemed to savor the
risk. He said no one could deny that “the international climate” had
suddenly improved, and that Mr. Obama was the main reason.

Of the president’s future, he said: “There is great potential. But it
depends on how the other political leaders respond. If they respond
negatively, one might have to say he failed. But at least we want to
embrace the message that he stands for.”

He likened this year’s award to the one in 1971, which recognized Willy
Brandt, then the chancellor of West Germany, and his “Ostpolitik” policy
of reconciliation with Communist Eastern Europe.

“Brandt hadn’t achieved much when he got the prize, but a process had
started that ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall,” Mr. Jagland said.
“The same thing is true of the prize to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, for
launching perestroika. One can say that Barack Obama is trying to change
the world, just as those two personalities changed Europe.”

Mr. Jagland, who was elected Sept. 29 to be secretary general of the
Council of Europe, represents the Labor Party, but the five-member Nobel
committee is more than the collection of Scandinavian socialists that its
critics in the United States sometimes imagine. Its members are chosen by
the Norwegian Parliament to roughly reflect the party makeup of that body.
The current committee includes two members from the Labor Party, one from
the Socialist Left Party, one from the Conservatives and one from the
far-right Progress Party. Mr. Jagland said all five members backed this
year’s choice.

Geir Lundestad, who as executive director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute
has handled the committee’s administrative affairs since 1990, said the
committee met six or seven times this year, starting several weeks after
the nomination deadline of Feb. 1. It did not pick a winner until Monday.
He said Oslo faced a major challenge to get ready for what will likely be
among the largest civic events in Norwegian history: the award ceremony
Dec. 10 at which Mr. Obama will be expected to deliver a speech.

Responding to the analysts who expressed concern for the authority of the
prize, given Obama’s lack of accomplishment so far, Dr. Lundestad said,
“We are very optimistic that this will turn out to be a success and a
highlight in our history.”

Mr. Jagland was asked if the committee feared being labeled naïve for
accepting a young politician’s promises at face value. He shrugged and
said, “Well, so?”

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