President Obama was just awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The question burning in everyone’s mind is, “What has he done to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?” The AP is reporting that the application deadline was only 12 days into his Presidency. What had he accomplished after only being President for a few days and a Senator for a few years to make him think he could actually win?
Well, what has he accomplished? Before he was President, he really hadn’t done anything. He didn’t even show up for many of his Senate votes. When he did show up, he frequently voted ’present’. In the first few days of his Presidency, he mainly focused on getting the Stimulus bill passed, not on promoting world peace.
Maybe his accomplishments after being elected President are what caused him to win the prize? Some of those accomplishments include quadrupling the deficit and watching the unemployment rate soar past the 8% mark that he promised wouldn’t happen. He has seized control of banks and the largest car company in the world. He has pushed for a health care reform bill that will result in an eventual government takeover of our health care choices. He gave a speech to the Arab/Muslim world promoting peace, but since then violence has increased in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. His speech did nothing to quell the hatred towards the United States and our allies. This is evident by the recent planned terror attack that was stopped by the FBI and the NYPD.
So, what has he done? Former Nobel Peace Prize winners include Mother Teresa, Henry Kissinger, Martin Luther King Jr., The Red Cross, and the Dalai Lama. We can find obvious reasons for these recipients winning the prize. But then again, some other Peace Prize winners include Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and Yasser Arafat. Now we can add President Obama to the list of Peace Prize winners who didn’t deserve it. Has the Nobel Peace Prize become meaningless and pointless?
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What has he actually done to deserve the Nobel Prize for peace? That’s easy. He was awarded the prize because he rescinded the George W. Bush policy of American unilateralism in foreign affairs. While our country and any country has a legitimate right to defend itself against military aggression, most of the rest of the world had become concerned that the United States would use its military muscle (especially its nuclear arsenal) to impose a PAX AMERICANA and worldwide tyrannical dictatorship over the whole world. Standing in the shoes of the rest of the world for a minute, something we rarely do, they were actually afraid that we were going to impose upon them the functional equivalent of the fabled “one world government” that stupid-minded conservative Christians have been ranting about for so many years. Other people and other countries have fears like this too, you know. They viewed George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the conservative far right wing of the Republican Party as a Stalinist dictatorship.
Now, I will be the first to admit that what I just said doesn’t really make sense to most of us Americans, and it sounds a bit looney. However, making sense or not, this is how many countries overseas were feeling about us from 2001 to 2008. Everyone overseas was holding their breath in fear of the Americans, and Obama won the Nobel Prize for peace because he said, “Okay folks. It’s all right to exhale. It’s gonna be all right.”
Simple—but true.
Next year’s Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded to Osama Bin Laden, in absentia, for promoting peace.
Charles,
If what you say is correct and Obama won the Peace Prize soley because he isn’t George Bush, that proves my point of the Nobel Peace Prize being meaningless.
I have to agree with Liberty. I would only add that now, every tyrant in the world has a reason to rejoice.
Liberty. I didn’t say that he won it because he was not George Bush. He won it because he took the action necessary to REVERSE Bush/Cheney foreign policy. The rest of the world viewed it in the same light that you and I would have viewed Churchill’s reversal of Chamberlain foreign policy in the late 1930s. Now. please don’t twist my words again. I am not saying that Barack Obama IS Winston Churchill. We are not dealing with actualities here. We are dealing with PERCEPTIONS in foreign countries. They view Obama in the same light as the Polish people viewed Winston Churchill in 1939 when he reversed Chamberlain policy and declared war on Germany.
However fair or unfair it might be, you kind folks here need to understand that the rest of the world does not see us Americans in the same way that we see ourselves. We see ourselves as a good, freedom-loving decent, peaceful, and church-going country who would not hurt a horseffly—unless he bit us first. For whatever reasons (and some of the reasons are probably unreasonable and unfair), many of them see us differently and in a more threatening light.
Regardless of one’s politics, There are positives and negatives here. On the negative side, it can raise expectations of American foreign policy so high that no one could jump over the bar. It could also encourage Obama to be the “peace at any cost” President when what he really needed to do was give the Iranians a good butt kicking. On the positive side, as David Gergen pointed out last night, this kind of overseas popularity and prestige carries tremendous weight for the United States in dealing with foreign powers. It makes countries rush to side themselves with Caesar on just about any issue. When the Americans walk in the room, the loud chatter silences to where you could hear a pin drop, which is something we had at one time—maybe 50 years ago—but sort of lost somewhere along the way.
As with most things in this world, only time will tell.
By reversing the Bush/Cheney foreign policy, Obama has created a vacuum where other countries, namely Russia, will be able to act in a unilateral fashion to advance their interests, and where countries like Israel will have to act in a unilateral fashion to prevent their own annihilation.
I am not saying that I absolutely agree with the Bush/Cheney foreign policy, but to idealize Obama’s foreign policy as more peaceful than Bush’s seems to be pretty naive.
I imagine the popularity and prestige that David Gergen refers to explains why the Russians denied to pursue sanctions against the Iranians today.
Overseas popularity and prestige are great for selling tabloids. Leaders of foreign powers get intelligence briefings every day instructing them to act on the basis that Obama is weak and naive, so now is the time to press your advantage.
I imagine that it will be impossible for Obama to divorce his presidency from the myth that popularity and prestige matter, since his election rested entirely on his popularity rather than any record of accomplishment. However, it would be nice for America and the rest of the world if sometime during the next four years Obama would grow up and stop believing in the junior high mentality that to be popular is the most important thing in the world.
Well, all I know is this:
1) George W. Bush got us into a worthless and meaningless war in Iraq.
2) George W. Bush allowed the North Koreans to actually get nuclear weapons.
3) George W. Bush failed to stop the Iranian nuclear program.
4) George W. Bush made the whole world hate us, including our friends, and ultimately no one feared us.
5) George W. Bush and his Wall Street banker buddies bankrupted us before obama ever even arrived on the scene.
6) And the list goes on and on…
If you call that success and whatever Obama is doing a failure, I have some beach property in Arizona that I would like to sell you.
I did say in my comment that I don’t necessarily agree with a lot of what Bush did. Blind devotion to popular political leaders seems more reprehensible to me than blind hatred of unpopular ones.
1) Your view of the war in Iraq is pretty reductive.
2) Obama is doing little to stop the N. Koreans. I am curious what role you think Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright had in helping the N. Koreans jump start their nuclear program. Bush’s options are as limited as Obama’s with N. Korea.
3) We can agree here.
4) Another reductive statement that directly contradicts your previous comment: “Everyone overseas was holding their breath in fear of the Americans”
5) I will not exculpate Bush for his role in the financial crisis. Nor will I exculpate many of the other politicians on both sides who played a role in the debacle. Nor will I exculpate the millions of Americans who played a role. To even compare Obama’s fiscal recklessness with Bush’s is inherently fallacious.
6) Cry me a river.
I highly doubt that you own any property. However, your willingness to redistribute the property of others, even in rhetorical jest, speaks volumes about what motivates your supine devotion to your beloved leader.
Burro. Just in case you are wondering, I have a nice lot in a ritzy neighborhood, a colonial mansion-style house on that lot, lots of personal belongings, two cars, a large bank account, and a much larger retirement account, which people like you, George W, and your investment banker buddies succeeded in reducing substantially by reckless gambling with my life savings. Before the economy that your people’s policies created, we had a 6 figure income at this house. Sorry to say, my wife has not worked in a year, and I lost my job eight weeks ago. At the moment, we are living solely on a little bit of unemployment insurance and mostly our own savings, so DO NOT give me any crap about property ownership and personal responsibility.
I like taxes. Hear that again: “I like taxes.” Taxes are the means by which great nations do great things. Rome was built with taxes. The Athens city state was built with taxes. I consider it an honor and a privilige to pay my taxes. Do you know what else? I hope my taxes go up in the coming years, if they are needed to cover the cost of important things—like say health care reform.
The things that you call “redistribution of wealth” and “socialism” are what I call basic Christian responsiblity for the well-being of my unfortunate neighbor, which was around long before those two terms were ever coined. And no, I do not buy any of that recently contrived crap about it being immoral for a government agency to help the poor because only individual charity is authorized in the Bible. I consider that to be the anthem of modern day “little people” who wish to rewrite the Biblical sins of greed and selfishness into a modern Christian virtue.
So, yes. I support most of the Obama policy agenda. I voted for him. He was the first political candidate to which I ever contributed money. I plan to vote for Democrats in 2010 and Obama again in 2012. Our country is headed in the right direction now.
Yes, Obama does plan to redistribute what you and I own to someone else who really needs it more. Would you really let a child in Appalachia go without underwear just so you can buy that new bass boat you have had your eye on for a while? Would you really deny granny admission to the hospital just because you want to put glitzy tires on your truck? And besides, your property is not even yours. As any Baptist preacher will tell you, the Bible says plainly that the Earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it. God is just allowing you and me to briefly use a few material things that are actually all his sole property. Neither you nor I own anything—not really.
I have to say that I am really pleased with the way this health care thing is going. Although it is far from over and the precise outcome is not clear, I think the Democrats are going to ram a bill through Congress that will be signed by New Years Day, and it will have some public option variant in it, not an overt one that is called a “public option”, but rather some acceptable “trickster” compromise that will have the eventual effect of causing the insurance companies to either put the brakes on their greed or face slow and certain death by strangualtion. As even one senate Republican (I think Collins from Maine) said, “There is more than one way to skin that cat,” meaning it can be achieved by something useful that is not openly called a “public option.”
And one last thing, on my T.V., I keep hearing assorted Republican talking heads and business-leader talking heads crying in anguish about the “awful deficit debt we are leaving for our children and grandchildren.” Because everyone is saying the same thing, it is obviously a two-bit GOP “party hack” talking point. The hilarious thing about it is the fact that the people who are saying it would glady slit their own granny’s throat if it would get them a new yacht, but we ordinary Americans are supposed to think that they somehow care about someone else’s children or grandchildren. That is so laughable. The sad truth is that they care only about themselves and what they stand to lose in this short and worthless life of theirs.
This ridiculous gloom and doom has been around for a long time. I was a young man in the big recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s (much longer and deeper than this one has been so far). The talking heads said over, and over, and ocer, and over again, that we would be the first generation of Americans who would be unable to own their own home. We would be the first American generation to be worse off than our parents were. The list went on, and on, and on, and on. It never happened. We invented the PC. We bought our homes, and put two BMWs in our garages when our parents only had one beat-up Chevy.
My Point: We’ll get through this. We will have sweeping change. We will pay off our deficits with higher taxes, as we should have been doing all along, and all will be well with this country as it always has been.
Charles,
I don’t want to get in the middle of the debate you and Burro have but I wanted to point out something that I believe is a huge hole in your logic.
You said,
“Would you really let a child in Appalachia go without underwear just so you can buy that new bass boat you have had your eye on for a while? Would you really deny granny admission to the hospital just because you want to put glitzy tires on your truck?”
First, how would buying a bass boat or new tires keep a kid from having underwear or granny going to the hospital? You must explain the correlation before your example will make sense.
Second, what if the child you mentioned had a parent that worked in a factory that produced fiberglass or aluminum that was used in bass boats? By not buying that bass boat you are hurting that child more because the parent may loose their job if business goes down. The same goes for the granny and truck tires.
Do you remember when liberals passed a luxury tax on yachts in order to help the poor by taxing the rich? It caused unemployment to spike because yacht building companies, and every other industry connected to them, had to lay off employees due to sagging sales. In the end it hurt the poor and middle class.
Like it or not, people who spend money on bass boats, big tires for their trucks, and anything else you see as excessive, keep the economy going and providing jobs for people.
I don’t have to engage in logic. I just call them as my “gut feeling” sees them just like your buddy George W. Bush always did. He was a great example to follow.
I’m trying to understand your comment. Are you saying that since you think Bush was illogical, you can be illogical as well? Why would you want to be like Bush? If you can not back up your arguments with facts and logic then it is just meaningless words on a computer screen. One of the problems with our country today is that citizens do not want to put in the effort to understand the issues. They just vote for the candidate who makes them feel the best or go with what their gut tells them. Are you saying that your gut feeling (not facts and logic) tells you that if I have enough money to buy a bass boat some kid in appalachia will go without underwear? Or are you resorting to sarcasm and insults to avoid having to provide facts to back up your position?
No liberty. Actually, I post to a number of blogs other than this one. As those who know me well will tell you, I have a longstanding personal policy of not arguing, logicalizing, or debating with members of the Religious Right and right wing radical extremists like the people who show up here.
Experience has shown that such exchanges are unproductive and go absolutely nowhere because it is like arguing with a fence post. I will never leave my pet positions, and I know (as do you) that there is nothing that I could ever say that would pull you even the slightest off one of your positions. It would be like buying a set of new tires and spinning them all on the pavement until the tread is worn off. What good would that do either you or me?
I have a number of friends and acquaintances who majored in political science in college. They think that this kind of “exchange” that you seek is fun. They view it as some sort of sport like paintball where we get all worked up and and trade barbs for an hour of good-natured political fun. Then after it’s over, we give a good handshake, maybe a pat on the back, and go off to happy hour together to discuss who will win the Super Bowl, how our kids are doing in class, and so forth.
I do not view it that way. I love my country and take everything that happens in it as seriously as you or I would take the death of a child. I see nothing traditional, fun, or sporty about trading political or religious barbs like it is some sort of ideological paintball tournament—and yo-ho may the best man or idea win. The way I look at it, the time for talk is just about over and April 12, 1861 is just around the corner. Because you guys have all of the guns, I pretty much expect that you will be the ones to fire the first shot.
Charles,
You won’t argue but you will hurl insults and put down other people’s ideas? What do you have to gain from it? Why waste my time and that of my readers if you see all of us as stupid extremists that are so far beneath you that there is no need to even explain yourself or your positions to us? You are free to share your political ideas on this site but please include a logical rational of why you have those beliefs.
How did you ever come to any of your political beliefs if you didn’t first look at the facts and go through them in a logical process? I will always be happy to share why I believe something. Why are you so afraid to do the same?
I think what is really going on here is that you are not able to provide any factual or logical basis for your political views and you are trying to cover that by insulting me and claiming that you are above arguing. If, sadly, that is the position you take, you are free to do so. I allow anyone to comment on my posts without a pre-approval process in the hopes of having a spirited debate on the issues. That is how we understand what we believe and why we believe it. I would love to know why you have the beliefs that you do, but you appear unwilling to share them. Why? I can think of only 2 possible answers:
1. You see me as a 2nd class citizen because I am a conservative — someone who you feel free to insult and call an extremist but are not obligated to share facts with.
2. You are unable to provide a logical and factual basis for the point you made about bass boats and kids underwear?
Which is it, number 1 or 2? Is there another choice that I’ve overlooked?
Number 3:
I don’t owe anyone anything—including VISA.
***Obama does plan to redistribute what you and I own to someone else who really needs it more.
***I don’t owe anyone anything – including VISA.
Charles, you can label Liberty and myself as extremists, even though I am not sure how my cautious defense of Bush and refusal to idealize Obama would categorize me as such.
The fact that you made the two statements that I included here is telling. What if the kind folks that work for VISA need your belongings more than you do. By what criteria of judgment does one determine “need.” At what point does your possessiveness of your belongings lead you to vigorously oppose that they be given against your will to a group you don’t think is entitled to them? e.g. those who work for VISA. By your own logic, you do indeed owe VISA everything, because who are you to judge that they don’t “need” it?
I’ve heard the moral argument against private property before, but I don’t understand the logic here. It is immoral and selfish and greedy to acquire private property, but it is apparently virtuous and noble to confiscate the property of others because you are fulfilling the moral project of meeting the “needs” of others through your selfish and covetous behavior.