Like everyone else in America, I heard the news that the man who has been on the apology for America tour has just won the Nobel Peace Prize.
On November 27, 1895, Alfred Nobel signed his last will and testament, giving the largest share of his fortune to a series of prizes, the Nobel Prizes. As described in Nobel's will, one part was dedicated to "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses".
Okay. And Barack has contributed to this how?
But this might finally explain something that has been niggling at me. Why didn't Obama want to confront Iran about its hidden nuclear facility when he had all those heads of state right in front of him and the attention of the world press? Why was it more important for him not to distract from his fictional message of mutual harmony and disarmament than to confront Iran right then and there? This, despite the urging of France and Great Britain. Why throw away such a grand opportunity and wait to announce the big reveal until he was in, of all places, Pittsburgh? It made no sense at the time.
But as we have learned with this president, if you pay too much attention to what one hand is doing, you completely miss what the other hand is doing.
Don't tell me he didn't have a heads-up this honor was coming. His speech was pivotal and directly related to the prize and he wasn't about to let Iran mess it up for him.
Now let's talk about the last date for nominations in a given year, which I find interesting:
The Nobel Committee makes its selection on the basis of nominations received or postmarked no later than February 1 of the year in question. Nominations which do not meet the deadline are normally included in the following year's assessment. Members of the Nobel Committee are entitled to submit their own nominations as late as at the first meeting of the Committee after the expiration of the deadline.
That means Barack Obama had been president for approximately twelve days when the nominating process was closed, and until that time had basically been running for one office or another and writing books about his, er, accomplishments. Hmmmm.
Okay. I'm not terribly impressed so far. But maybe I'm missing something.
Well, who makes those nominations?
Each year between 150 and 200 different nominations are received of candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize. The number has risen steadily as the Prize has become increasingly globalized. There may occasionally be several thousand nominators behind one and the same nominee. Information in the Nobel Committee's nominations data base is not made public until after fifty years.
In other words, most of us will never know who nominated this ten day president and chronic candidate for this increasingly tarnished honor.
According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, a nomination is considered valid if it is submitted by a person who falls within one of the following categories: Members of national assemblies and governments, and members of the Inter-Parliamentary Union; Members of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague and of the International Court of Justice at the Hague; Members of Institut de Droit International; University professors of history, political science, philosophy, law and theology, and university presidents and directors of peace research institutes and institutes of international affairs;Former Nobel Peace Prize Laureates and board members of institutions that have previously been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Just because I find it interesting, the following is a list of nominated candidates for the Nobel who didn't get it:
Joseph Stalin, the Secretary General of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union (1922-1953), was nominated for the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1945 and 1948 for his efforts to end World War II.
Mahatma Gandhi,
one of the strongest symbols of non-violence in the 20th century, was
nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, shortly before he was
assassinated in January 1948. Although Gandhi was not awarded the Prize
(a posthumous award is not allowed by the statutes), the Norwegian
Nobel Committee decided to make no award that year on the grounds that
"there was no suitable living candidate".
Adolf Hitler,
was nominated once in 1939 by E.G.C. Brandt, member of the Swedish
parliament.
Other statesmen and national leaders who were nominated but not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize:
Czechoslovakia: Thomas G. Masaryk, Edvard Benes,
Great Britain: Neville Chamberlain, Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee,
Ramsay MacDonald, Winston Churchill
USA: the presidents William Howard Taft, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman
Dwight D. Eisenhover; the foreign ministers Charles Hughes, John Foster Dulles
France: Pierre Mendès-France
Western Germany: Konrad Adenauer
Argentina: Juan and Eva Peron
India: Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru
Finland: Juho Kusti Paasikivi
Italy: Benito Mussolini
I view Obama as the Neville Chamberlain of our time. You remember him. He was a Conservative British Prime Minister from 1937 to 1940. Chamberlain is best known for appeasement foreign policy, (sound familiar?) in particular regarding his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany, and for his "containment" policy of Germany in 1939 that ended in declaring war on Germany on September 3, 1939.
His primary work experience was as a Director of National Service before becoming Prime Minister and declaring Hitler, after a face-to-face meeting, a fine fellow who was no real threat to Britain. As honest as the day is long. What a surprise when, after that warm handshake with a smiling Hitler, he invaded the Netherlands, Belgium and France.
Imagine someone that nice, and who even liked dogs, not keeping his word!
I suspect if there had been a United Nations at that time, Hitler would have been severely reprimanded and then would have continued to have been reprimanded as he nearly obliterated London with bombs and murdered millions of people. But I digress.
The thing is, our president has that special something. That, oh, I don't know, j'ne sais quois. Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro love him like a brother. The Arab world has embraced him. We're demolishing our CIA and agreeing to disarm ourselves while our erratic enemies build ever bigger and deadlier bombs and boldly threaten to anhilate entire nations. We lay all of our cards on the table so everyone knows everything we have. And the terrorists - or whatever politically correct term they're called these days - are smiling from ear to ear.
He's spending money on new social programs so fast he's turning us into the Weimar Republic.
Yep. He's dismantling the last superpower as fast as he can. I guess to some that makes him the perfect candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.
And I will lay you odds that in fifty years when we can see who was behind his nomination, we will discover that the committee was inundated with nominations for this man from every corner of the globe and academia and that the fingerprints of George Soros are all over that lovely medal.
Real peace is arrived at through strength, either actual or perceived.
Barack Obama hasn't a single genuine qualification that I can see.
Except friends in high places who have no love for the United States.
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