Obama wins Nobel Prize... but can he live up to it?
by Don Williams
President Obama’s selection for the Nobel Prize, announced this morning, caught many by surprise, but can he live up to it?
continued...
Think back. Of all the presidential candidates ever to rise on the world stage, few appeared more attuned to our highest spiritual values than Barack Hussein Obama, at least on the surface.
So many acts his first ten months in office appear to bolster that sensibility. Appointing proven peace envoys to trouble spots. Ending misguided efforts to place missiles in Central Europe, publicly deploring, if not quite closing Guantanimo, meeting and amiably greeting potential foes in public forums, renewing dialogues with Iran and North Korea, bolstering the Freedom of Information Act, allowing healthcare clinics to re-open around the world, declaring that human rights of Palestinians must be honored, that a nuke-free Korean peninsula is optimum, that findings of science must be respected, that the world must begin eliminating nukes, acknowledging the reality of global warming and taking sane, if modest, steps to do something about it. He pushed bills to bail out Main Street and your street.
Still, critics point out, aerial drone attacks continue in Pakistan, and the principle if not the act of sending terror suspects to black box prisons through the practice of "special renditions" remains in place. Guantanimo isn’t going to be shut down soon.
So… is this peace prize premature? Perhaps. But in a world whose existence has been put at risk by the darkness inside our own hearts, Obama had better be prepared to live up to it.
False prophets led us to the abyss we find ourselves trying to crawl out of, mostly by pointing fingers at alleged shortcomings of others as the source of all our troubles. The result was ill-advised invasions, torture, deregulation, military budgets that grew insanely, politics of personal destruction, waste, corruption, assaults on personal liberties, the Constitution, economic disarray, undermined treaties and a net increase in greenhouse gasses.
To acknowledge we’d lost our way under Cheney-Bush, marching off in every direction with drums pounding, violins skirling and banners flying, is to acknowledge the need we had and still have for salvation. Civilization hangs by a thread. One false move and we risk unimaginable destruction. Business as usual, politics as usual, will not save us. Pandering, blaming others, drawing down dwindling resources, building fierce new weapons and marching off against imagined enemies are luxuries we can no longer afford.
Of all the presidential candidates I'd ever witnessed, candidate Obama’s message was the most hopeful so far.
It was about healing. Reaching out. Uniting tribes.
Accused of hatemongering by association with the Rev. Wright, he elevated the conversation. Accused of radicalism by association with William Ayers, he turned the other cheek, refusing to make much of McCain's own radical associations.
Such signs long back prompted many, myself included, to gush: "Please, embrace this sane, rational and decent man."
Looking back across the landscape of his sojourn, Obama's made a history of pouring oil on troubled waters.
As teachers from Jesus to Machiavelli noted, there's wisdom in hugging opponents close by.
A dinner for his biggest opponent, John McCain, on the eve of the inauguration? Unprecdented.
A place in the administration for chief rivals Hillary, Biden and others? Outside the political norm.
Gathering both a fundamentalist minister and a gay bishop into inauguration festivities? Unheard of.
It’s undeniable that Obama’s made progress in his first nine months in office. Unnecessary new wars, the deliberate cruelty of torture, unbridled greed, destruction of communities, prejudice against gays and immigrants, the urge so prevalent within the human heart to scapegoat and demonize.
All these have been lessened.
And he's opposed nuclear proliferation and other forces that endanger the whole earth.
I’m aligned with those who hope and believe that because Obama’s of the Whole Earth generation that he's attuned to this existential moment. Obama grew up with the Earth as ubiquitous icon. He grew up electronically connected and therefore exposed to the promise of a more inter-connected world. He spent time at elite universities but also on the streets driving broken down cars. He took a magical mystery tour as he sought to understand his own mythic family, his own identity. Along the way, he forged a new politics.
His message of peace, hope and community springs from this journey, this seeking, this essence that is Barack Hussein Obama. At last he can proclaim his full name. It's part of a message that recognizes the dignity of others and a world community we must work to save, lest it fall into the abyss that yawns inside each human heart.
His challenges are legion, and the jury is out as his first year in office winds down. The Noble committee just raised the stakes.
Obama as peacemaker? He'd better be. Else we are lost.
Don Williams is a prize-winning columnist, short story writer and the founding editor and publisher of New Millennium Writings, an annual anthology of literary stories, essays and poems. His awards include a National Endowment for the Humanities Michigan Journalism Fellowship, a Golden Presscard Award and the Malcolm Law Journalism Prize. He is finishing a novel, "Orchid of the Orchid Lounge," set in his native Tennessee and Iraq. His book of selected journalism, "Heroes, Sheroes and Zeroes, the Best Writings About People" by Don Williams, is due a second printing. For more information, email him at donwilliams7@charter.net. Or visit the NMW website at www.NewMillenniumWritings.com.
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How can anyone win a Nobel
How can anyone win a Nobel Prize for two weeks of work?
This is more about the Nobel committee trying to influence a sitting President. It is using the Nobel Prize as a political pawn.
really
"How can anyone win a Nobel Prize for two weeks of work?"
Do you ever have an original thought?
I've already read that exact same response 30 times this morning.
You need better sources of information.
If this award is only the repudiation of wingnut policy we've seen the past years, then it still stands as a good decision.
Try reading the press release from the committee for why he was awarded the prize instead of the nuthouse response to the award, huh?
"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?"
Is it new math?
Explain the math. Two weeks equals nine months?
The committee praised Obama for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" during his nine months in office and singled out for special recognition Obama's call for a world free of nuclear weapons, which he first made in an April speech in Prague.
From across the pond:
(link...)
Sadly, it seems they have so bedazzled the Norwegians that they can no longer separate hopes from achievement. The achievements of all previous winners have been diminished.
Some people believe in no fail grading. That is how confusion begins. Hopes are not the same as achievements.
Did you read Don's column
Did you read Don's column before commenting?
Or did you read any news reports re. the committee's rationale?
Washington Post:
I have been reading about
I have been reading about this for two hours. Isn't this a Nobel futures contract? It is based on future expectations.
When in the history of the Nobel Prize has this been done?
(link...)
future expectations??
The Rev. Bishop Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his leadership on efforts to abolish apartheid in South Africa. However, Apartheid wasn't fully abolished in South Africa until 1994.
You're being LAME "9"
Take Care, Be Good and don't play in the street!
SteveMule
Obama just gave a press
Obama just gave a press conference. Said he is "surprised" and "deeply humbled." Said he is "not deserving" to be in the same company as past recipients who inspired him, but accepts the award on behalf of people around the world working "to confront the challenges of the 21st century."
Too early?
"The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama, so early in his presidency, is bound to reignite criticism of the workings of the Nobel committee.
The deadline for nominations for the prize was Feb. 1 -- two weeks after Mr. Obama was inaugurated.
"So soon? Too early. He has no contribution so far," former Polish President Lech Walesa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, said Friday. "He is still at an early stage."
(link...)
n/t
SOLIDARNOŚĆ!!!
____________________________
Calling to the underworld. Come out of the cupboard, you boys and girls.
I see it more as a repudiation
of Bush "the decider" and Cheney "the torturer" than of anything Obama has done or is expected to do...
Meme Busting
So, here we have number niner repeating the same wing nut meme he's picked up from all the other idiots. I mentioned he was repeating an already tired assertion and asked for some original thought. Naturally, as expected, I got the same meme rephrased.
OK, since I have some time to waste (and it truly is a waste), I present the refutation of the idiotic wing nut meme.
(link...)
(link...)
I suppose Rush will never get his, even thought he proudly displays the nomination on his web site. Jealous?
Like science, the selection is a process,and takes time.
"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?"
It is great for America he has won this award
Check out my post on this:
A President Named Sue - Why President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize will help change America
(link...)
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“...out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we cant, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes We Can.”