A sitting President of the United States, presiding over ongoing war operations in Afghanistan with military and civilian casualties on both sides of the conflict each and every day, winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Hmmm...
A prize for which he was unanimously selected - and for which the deadline for nominations was 11 days after he took office. Hmmm...
A prize that had, as one of its finalists, a true hero working in the midst of war, after having suffered through the brutally oppressive anti-female education policies of the Taliban in the country of - you guessed it - Afghanistan.
Slide shows about global warming, Yasser Arafat doing his utmost in Palestine, a Presidential victory and inauguration based on hope; these are the things that have earned recent Nobel Prizes for Peace. Not decades of scientific work or literary toil, as are the cases for Nobel prizes in science and literature. No, just a quick PowerPoint, some campaign posters, and launching rockets at Jews.
Actually, there is one thing that these winners have in common, and that is their shared aptitude for delivering a darn good speech about what OTHER people ought to do. Their abilities to talk about action, rather than actually acting themselves. Which is exactly what the world needs more of, if you think about it. Isn't it?
Hmmm....
hey, the NPP has been more political statement than substantive award for a while. i guess it makes sense in a strange way that the most political president in years wins the NPP. still, there was something distinctly unsettling about him winning the award. sigh.
Posted by: Sam | October 09, 2009 at 07:19 PM