President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize: Too Premature?

Even though the Nobel Committee has since stood by their decision to award President Obama the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, does it seem too premature or is the Nobel Committee trying to raise a political statement?


By: Ringo Bones


Whether you are an unabashed fan or a very staunch opponent, it seems that almost everyone around the world who is not a Nobel peace Prize Committee insider seems to have reached a consensus. Especially in questioning whether US President Barack Obama being awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize seem a tad premature. But noting that a number of recent Nobel Peace Prize laureates of the 21st Century are either former US presidents or vice presidents and are distinguished democrats, the Nobel committee and the world is probably trying to send an urgent message to post-Bush America.

After the very rabid high-profile and somewhat Aryan Nation-leaning opposition to President Obama’s policies and plea for bi-partisanship by Über-Aryans Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the American chapter of the Waffen-SS who called themselves as the “Tea Party”. President Obama probably deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for just keeping his cool. I wonder if a sensible-minded opposition during the Bush Administration as loud as today’s Tea Party protesters would ever get away expressing their views without being sent to some clandestine CIA prison run by then Vice President Cheney.

According to the Nobel Peace Prize committee, President Obama just barely made it for this year’s nomination in February 1, 2009. Considering the new president is officially in office for just 11 days, gripes on whether he truly deserves it are thus inevitable. But does president Obama really deserve being this year’s Nobel Prize laureate? After all, giving Nobel Peace Prizes posthumously - if you believe in the crazy conspiracy du jour about an upcoming assassination - can be a very politically contentious issue. Mahatma Gandhi really missed out on the Nobel Peace Prize that he really deserved.

Back in May 2009, I checked out a Website called politifact.com after they did an evaluation on the feasibility of President Obama’s promise of phasing out nuclear weapons around the world. The site’s panel of experts stated that President Obama has yet to initiate the important steps to make his promise of a nuke-free world a reality. And considering the February 1 nomination, a renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace process was still a few months away. Further reinforcing the rumors of a prematurely awarded Peace Prize.

But if you ask me, I think President Obama really deserves this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. And probably the same reasons why the Norwegian-run Nobel Peace Prize Committee awarded it to him in the first place. Ever since the US Strategic Air Command disestablishment of 1992, no US president has ever initiated diplomatically for further nuclear weapons reductions around the world. Preventing an accidental all-out nuclear war is still a valid excuse by the way. And don’t forget that former President Clinton was probably the last one to initiate a significant and meaningful Israeli-Palestinian peace process. President Obama’s promise of doing both during the very early days of his administration is probably all the luck and the rationale that he needs in being the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Glenn Beck’s obsession with NAZI-related numerology – i.e. the 9-12 and the 88 mm shell – was probably too much for the Jewish members of the Nobel Peace Prize committee.