President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

Obama's a safer bet than those two, I think, and if he does make the US a world leader in terms of moral tone, or if he just gets the world arsenal of nukes to diminish, he will have done something more impressive than Arafat/Rabin, or many other winners.

Had it not been for Nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union and the United States would have had as least one war in the 60's and 70's.

Prizes are given for achievement, not for expectations. It is as simple as that. Consider the other Nobel Prizes. All were given for achievement, not for promise.

We've no idea the degree to which either of these powers would have acted without nuclear weapons. They are a fact of history - not alternative history written for the benefit of a journalist's opinion. One might just as confidently assert that the Soviet ambit would never have reached it's largest or most gratuitous extent without nukes.

Peace maintained at the cost of being aware that the death and poisoning of billions will soon result if the peace is not maintained isn't really peace, as I see it. It might be better than outright war fought 'conventionally' - but reaching a lasting concord without recourse to an "or else" option is preferable.

And reducing its own stockpile makes the US much better positioned to argue that states it considers rogue not acquire their own.

Actual moral leadership.

As opposed to "do as we say not as we do" - which always breeds resentment and legitimises the efforts of states who fear intervention from the US to make their own stockpiles of WMD.

Well, we have the lessons of history. Of World War 1, and of World War 2.

I hate war, it's such a dirty word and only necessary when one is defending oneself, I'd much rather live in peace and not pieces. The lessons learnt from war Kennathmy is that it's bloody, devastating and unnecessary because people are capable of living in peace together through out the whole world. We don't know what is out there in this big vast universe but I doubt very much that any extraterrestrials, (likely that they do exist and have the technology to land, you just don't know do you), but for arguments sake lets just say they do exist, would they want to visit us at the moment? I doubt it very much.

---------- Post added 10-12-2009 at 09:48 AM ----------

I think it depends what you do with nuclear, you can use it to help you live, (as a resource) to help us survive or the wrong way and kill ourselves and the planet which in my eyes the latter, is pretty stupid.

Yeah, you can look at wars and go "look, there have been wars in history" and you can look at long periods of peace and say "look, there have been long periods of peace in history". Just because something happened, or happened twice, it doesn't mean it need occur again.

Though I think it's a sad fact of human nature that long periods of peace tend not to be examined. For example, before the English Civil War there hadn't been an organised conflict in the country for 60 years (as far as I recall) - is this period of peace the subject of historical examination in the same way that the following war is? No - people are fascinated by death, not peace.

The main lesson learned at the end of WW2 was not to demand payment from defeated enemies for the losses suffered by the victors. That's what led the situation after WW1 to proliferate into WW2 - humiliating Germany and demanding it pay for the damage. The fact that the western victors helped the losers rebuild their nations after the conflict - at their own expense - has a lot to do with the subsequent lack of bitterness in Europe (and I think Japan too, though I'm quite not so certain).

So just because there had been wars doesn't mean there need have been more. I think Europeans, as a gestalt, were pretty sick of war. I think the extremes of horror that were revealed to have occured in bombed cities and death camps demonstrated that there wasn't much glory to be had in the act of modern warfare, and that European powers, by and large, were no longer interested in conquest and ambit-spreading. Even Spain, despite the fact it remained fascist for some time afterwards, didn't go in for border-expansion.

The same cannot be said for the USSR of the time. Nukes didn't stop it going to war - it just stopped it going to war against westerners.

Besides - we are discussing a peace prize. The inevitability of war might be a sad fact of life, but it shouldn't make the potential acheivement of peace in our time, and those who reach for it, something to sneer at.

I like to chime in.
And I think nobody said it better than a guy I heard on a radio talk show.
The liberals giving the Nobel peace prize to Obama is just lovely.

The woman that smuggled thousands of babies out of the holocaust didn't win.
Well, being a Democrat US president is pretty much the only qualification needed to get one.
Since pretty much every recent Democrat president got one.
It's a stupid award, and nobody should take it seriously.

Alfred Nobel wanted his prize awarded six times every four years. Because he thought that keeping on giving it would be counterproductive to what it's supposed to achieve.

As the columnist, George Will said, giving it to Obama lowered the reputation of the Nobel Committee-if it had any reputation.

Well, being a Democrat US president is pretty much the only qualification needed to get one.
Since pretty much every recent Democrat president got one.

Wow! This is exciting. I think only US Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson, Carter and Obama have won the Peace Prize.

Maybe Obama is the best President since Teddy Roosevelt.

I think Franklen D. Roosevelt was the greatest American president of the twentieth century.

Well the above presidents were in office when the USA was not involved in a war, so it is easier for them to get the prize.

America was at war in the Phillipines during the entire period of Teddy Roosevelt's administration and he still got the Nobel Peace Prize. As many as 1.5 million people were killed in the entire Phillipine Insurrection and Teddy still got the Nobel Peace Prize. I think Obama is unlikely to be president during a similar mass slaughter and probably the Nobel committee thinks the same thing.

Philippine?American War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So, he deserves the prize because he is unlikely to kill as many people as Teddy? Hmmm.

Teddy Roosevelt got the Nobel Peace Prize and he (Teddy) presided over exactly as much killing as Teddy Roosevelt did.

Roosevelt helped end a horrifying war between Russia and Japan.
Woodrow Wilson was central in creating the League of Nations, the forerunner of the UN.
Jimmy Carter was near-obsessed with bringing peace to the middle east.
So being black and not a Republican and not Bush and being for global warming is as good as that?

Apparently the Nobel Peace Prize committee hopes it will turn out even better than that.