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Barack Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

thoughtone

thoughtone

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The right wing nuts are going:

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source: msnbc

Committee says president gives world’s people ‘hope for a better future’

OSLO, Norway - President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, citing his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation.

The stunning choice made Obama the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and shocked Nobel observers because Obama took office less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline. Obama's name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the committee said. "His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

The committee said it attached special importance to Obama's vision of, and work for, a world without nuclear weapons.

"Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play," the committee said.

Record number of nominations
Theodore Roosevelt won the award in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson won in 1919. Former President Jimmy Carter won the award in 2002, while former Vice President Al Gore shared the 2007 prize with the U.N. panel on climate change.

The Nobel committee received a record 205 nominations for this year's prize.

In his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses."

Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which are awarded by Swedish institutions, he said the peace prize should be given out by a five-member committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament. Sweden and Norway were united under the same crown at the time of Nobel's death.

The committee has taken a wide interpretation of Nobel's guidelines, expanding the prize beyond peace mediation to include efforts to combat poverty, disease and climate change.
 
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Reaction - John McCain:
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I can't divine all their intentions, but I think part of their decision-making was expectations," McCain told CNN's John King. "And I'm sure the president understands that he now has even more to live up to."

"I think all of us were surprised at the decision," he said. "But I think Americans are always pleased when their president is recognized by something on this order."​

<script src="http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/js/2.0/video/evp/module.js?loc=dom&vid=/video/politics/2009/10/09/sot.mccain.obama.nobel.cnn" type="text/javascript"></script><noscript>Embedded video from <a href="http://www.cnn.com/video">CNN Video</a></noscript>

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Reaction - Red State dot com:
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Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize:
He’s Becoming Jimmy Carter Faster Than Jimmy Carter Did

I did not realize the Nobel Peace Prize had an affirmative action quota for it, but that is the only thing I can think of for this news. There is no way Barack Obama earned it in the nominations period.

Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The deadline for nominations was two weeks after he was sworn in as President.

So in less than two weeks of entering office, Obama did something to qualify. What was it? Not closing Gitmo? Continuing the Bush administration’s policies in the War on Terror but no longer using the name? Or pronouncing a policy of abject American capitulation to our enemies?

The Peace Prize reaffirms it s a joke. But now a sad joke.

Somewhere Bill Clinton’s head just exploded
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http://www.redstate.com/erick/2009/10/09/barack-obama-wins-nobel-peace-prize/
 
Might sound paranoid but is this divide and conquer by the Nobel committee. Are they using America's tactics against us. Are they trying to exploit partisianship and Pres Obama's low rating among some whites. Does the world smell blood and a weak president. Obama has to know something other than his peace efforts are being recognized with this award.
 
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No yelling this time, but GOP foes
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McClatchy Newspapers
By James Rosen
October 9, 2009


WASHINGTON -- One month to the day after fellow South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson yelled "You lie!" at President Barack Obama, Rep. Gresham Barrett on Friday mocked the president for winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

"Congratulations to President Obama on his prize," said Barrett, who's running for governor. "I'm not sure what the international community loved best: his waffling on Afghanistan, pulling defense missiles out of Eastern Europe, turning his back on freedom fighters in Honduras, coddling Castro, siding with Palestinians against Israel or almost getting tough on Iran."

Sen. Lindsey Graham, also a South Carolina Republican, said the significance of the Nobel Peace Prize might be diluted by awarding it to a president in his first year in office.

"I think probably this is just going to marginalize the award," Graham said, joking that, "It was probably an award for not being George W. Bush."

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat, begged to differ, saying that Obama's new engagement with other nations began long before his election in November.

"If you look at the campaign he ran and his inaugural address, you see there the foundation that really reached out to the world like nothing this country has seen in a long, long time," Clyburn said.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee cited Obama's "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

Some political analysts viewed the awarding of the prize to Obama as a rebuke of Bush, but White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said it wasn't a partisan honor.

Graham commended Obama for saying he was surprised by the honor. Obama said he doesn't "deserve to be in the company" of other Nobel Peace Prize recipients.

"I like President Obama, I do," Graham said. "But probably like everybody else, I'm a little stunned. I know it's an honor, but I'm a bit amused really."

Republicans have chafed in recent years as the Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded the peace price to three prominent Democrats -- former President Jimmy Carter in 2002, former Vice President Al Gore in 2007, and now Obama.

"The world may love it, but following in the footsteps of Jimmy Carter is not where America needs to go," Barrett said.

Clyburn, the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, compared Obama with the late Martin Luther King Jr., who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

King earned the honor "for withstanding the tremendous resistance this country had to becoming a 20th century nation," Clyburn said.

"Barack Obama has gotten this award for . . . trying to bring this country into the 21st century," he said.



http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/76915.html
 
Panameno718 said:
Will they take the Nobel Peace Prize back from him now since he is expanding the war!!!:lol:
Click to expand...

Wasn't there already an increase of troops on the ground and the discussion of additional troops already in the air -- BEFORE -- the Nobel Committee made its decision ? ? ?

Is the far left any less contemptible than the far right ???

QueEx
 
Conservative praise for Obama's Nobel speech

Conservative praise for Nobel speech
Eamon Javers Eamon Javers
Thu Dec 10, 12:56 pm ET

President Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize speech Thursday is drawing praise from some unlikely quarters – conservative Republicans – who likened Obama’s defense of “just wars” to the worldview of his predecessor, Republican George W. Bush.

It’s already being called the “Obama Doctrine” – a notion that foreign policy is a struggle of good and evil, that American exceptionalism has blunted the force of tyranny in the world, and that U.S. military can be a force for good and even harnessed to humanitarian ends.

“There will be times,” Obama said, “when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”

The remarks drew immediate praise from a host of conservatives, including former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

“I liked what he said," Palin told USA Today. "Of course, war is the last thing I believe any American wants to engage in, but it's necessary. We have to stop these terrorists."

Gingrich told The Takeaway, a national morning drive show from WNYC and Public Radio International, “He clearly understood that he had been given the prize prematurely, but he used it as an occasion to remind people, first of all, as he said: that there is evil in the world."

“I think having a liberal president who goes to Oslo on behalf of a peace prize and reminds the committee that they would not be free, they wouldn't be able to have a peace prize, without having [the ability to use] force,” Gingrich said. “I thought in some ways it's a very historic speech.”

The context was striking. The president is enormously popular in Norway – a crowd of several thousand waited at his hotel chanting “Obama. Obama. Obama.” And “yes we can. Yes we can. yes we can.” Still, he spoke to the Nobel committee in a room packed with European dignitaries – including the Norwegian royal family — on a continent where skepticism of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is strong. And despite the sentiments in the room, Obama defended the American war effort there and told the Europeans that their reflexive pacifism may be self defeating.

“Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms,” Obama said. “The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans.”

And Obama’s comments came just nine days after the president stood before cadets at West Point and told them that American values are “the moral source of America's authority,” as he ordered an additional 30,000 troops into Afghanistan. His decision to push for a surge also garnered Obama comparisons to Bush, who had done much the same thing in Iraq three years earlier. The Oslo speech, too, reminded some of Obama’s predecessor – with a twist.

“The irony is that George W. Bush could have delivered the very same speech. It was a truly an American president's message to the world,” said Bradley A. Blakeman, a Republican strategist and CEO of Kent Strategies LLC who worked in the Bush White House.

Added Walter Russell Mead, Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations: “If Bush had said these things the world would be filled with violent denunciations,” he said. “When Obama says them, people purr. That is fine by me.”

Obama’s remarks were a historical counterpoint to the speech made by Martin Luther King Jr., on another tenth of December, 45 years ago. On that day, King told the Nobel committee in Oslo that their award to him was “a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time - the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.” King rejected violence for all time: “Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts.”

But Obama broke with King on the issue of non-violence, drawing an implicit distinction between King as the leader of a movement, and himself as the leader of a nation. “As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life’s work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence,” the president said. “I know there is nothing weak –nothing passive – nothing naïve – in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King. But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone.”

As a candidate, Obama was somewhat more wary of framing America's political battles in terms of good and evil -- though he said then as he did today that evil exists.

At a civil forum with John McCain at the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., in the summer of 2008, Obama said, “Now, the one thing that I think is very important is for us to have some humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil because, you know, a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil.”

As he accepted the Nobel in Oslo, the doubts about confronting evil weren’t evident. “For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world,” Obama said. “A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”

“Wow. what a shift of emphasis,” said Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a former policy advisor to McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. Kagan said. “I don't know what to say about an ‘Obama doctrine,’ because based on this speech, I think we are witnessing a substantial shift, back in the direction of a more muscular moralism, ala, Truman, Reagan.”

Liberals, too, offered quick praise for the speech.

“This was no tie-dye peace prize,” said Christine Pelosi, an attorney, author and Democratic activist, writing in POLITICO’s Arena. “The President laid out the ‘right makes might’ Obama Doctrine: securing a just peace takes both the nonviolent teachings and military traditions of quiet heroes who fight for human rights as civilians and service members.”

Democratic strategist Lanny Davis said, “Simply: all Americans should be proud.” But Davis also took a shot at Bush, the man on the minds of so many conservatives Thursday morning. “We and our president are once again viewed positively by most peoples of the world,” he said. “A sea change from recent years.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30448.html
 
Re: Conservative praise for Obama's Nobel speech

So it's of no consequence that Obama blatantly contradicts himself over and over on the subject of American Exceptionalism?
 
Re: Conservative praise for Obama's Nobel speech


. . . . four years later . . . .







 

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