President Obama awarded Nobel Peace Prize

[sniffer 0]

Based on the reasoning regarding Bush, you might as well give every kraut a peace prize for not being Hitler.

[The Fish 9281]

You're too sweet.

 

The 180 degree turn in American foreign policy is undoubtedly a very good thing for the rest of us.

 

The excessive comma use is because I'm on the iPhone and lazy

[Happy Face 29]

When I saw this morning's top New York Times headline -- "Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize" -- I had the same immediate reaction which I'm certain many others had: this was some kind of bizarre Onion gag that got accidentally transposed onto the wrong website, that it was just some sort of strange joke someone was playing. Upon further reflection, that isn't all that far from the reaction I still have. And I say that despite my belief that -- as critical as I've been of the Obama presidency regarding civil liberties and Terrorism -- foreign affairs is actually one area where he's shown genuine potential for some constructive "change" and has, on occasion, merited real praise for taking steps in the general "peace" direction which this Prize is meant to honor.

 

Obama has changed the tone America uses to speak to the world generally and the Muslim world specifically. His speech in Cairo, his first-week interview on al-Arabiya, and the extraordinarily conciliatory holiday video he sent to Iran are all substantial illustrations of that. His willingness to sit down and negotiate with Iran -- rather than threaten and berate them -- has already produced tangible results. He has at least preliminarily broken from Bush's full-scale subservience to Israel and has applied steadfast pressure on the Israelis to cease settlement activities, even though it's subjected him to the sorts of domestic political risks and vicious smears that have made prior Presidents afraid to do so. His decision to use his first full day in office to issue Executive Orders to close Guantanamo, ban torture, and ban CIA black sites was an important symbol offered to the world (even though it's been followed by actions that make those commitments little more than empty symbols). He refused to reflexively support the right-wing, civil-liberty-crushing coup leaders in Honduras merely because they were "pro-American" and "anti-Chavez," thus siding with the vast bulk of Latin America's governments -- a move George Bush, or John McCain, never would have made. And as a result of all of that, the U.S. -- in a worldwide survey released just this week -- rose from seventh to first on the list of "most admired countries."

 

All that said, these changes are completely preliminary, which is to be expected given that he's only been in office nine months. For that reason, while Obama's popularity has surged in Western Europe, the changes in the Muslim world in terms of how the U.S. is perceived have been small to nonexistent. As Der Spiegel put it in the wake of a worldwide survey in July: "while Europe's ardor for Obama appears fervent, he has actually made little progress in the regions where the US faces its biggest foreign policy problems." People who live in regions that have long been devastated by American weaponry don't have the luxury of being dazzled by pretty words and speeches. They apparently -- and rationally -- won't believe that America will actually change from a war-making nation into a peace-making one until there are tangible signs that this is happening. It's because that has so plainly not yet occurred that the Nobel Committee has made a mockery out of their own award.

 

But far more important than the lack of actual accomplishments are some of the policies over which Obama has presided that are the very opposite of peace. Already this year, he not only escalated the American war in Afghanistan, but has ordered air raids that have produced things like this:

 

 

That was from a May airstrike in which over 100 Afghan civilians were killed by American jets -- one of many similar incidents this year, including one only a week ago that killed 9 Afghan civilians. How can someone responsible for that, and who has only escalated that war, possibly be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in the very same year that he did that? Does that picture above look like the work of a Nobel Peace laureate? Does this, from the May airstrike?

 

 

 

Beyond Afghanistan, Obama continues to preside over another war -- in Iraq: remember that? -- where no meaningful withdrawal has occurred. He uttered not a peep of opposition to the Israeli massacre of Gazan civilians at the beginning of this year (using American weapons), one which a U.N. investigator just found constituted war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity. The changed tone to Iran notwithstanding, his administration frequently emphasizes that it is preserving the option to bomb that country, too -- which could be a third war against a Muslim country fought simultaneously under his watch. He's worked tirelessly to protect his country not only from accountability -- but also transparency -- for the last eight years of war crimes, almost certainly violating America's treaty obligations in the process. And he is currently presiding over an expansion of the legal black hole at Bagram while aggressively demanding the right to abduct people from around the world, ship them there, and then imprison them indefinitely with no rights of any kind.

 

It's certainly true that Obama inherited, not started, these conflicts. And it's possible that he could bring about their end, along with an overall change in how America interacts with the world in terms of actions, not just words. If he does that, he would deserve immense credit -- perhaps even a Nobel Peace Prize. But he hasn't done any of that. And it's at least just as possible that he'll do the opposite: that he'll continue to escalate the 8-year occupation of Afghanistan, preside over more conflict in Iraq, end up in a dangerous confrontation with Iran, and continue to preserve many of the core Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies that created such a stain on America's image and character around the world.

 

Through no fault of his own, Obama presides over a massive war-making state that spends on its military close to the amount of the rest of the world combined. The U.S. accounts for almost 70% of worldwide arms sales. We're currently occupying and waging wars in two separate Muslim countries and at making clear we reserve the "right" to attack a third. Someone who made meaningful changes to those realities would truly be a man of peace. It's unreasonable to expect that Obama would magically transform all of this in nine months, and he certainly hasn't. Instead, he presides over it and is continuing much of it. One can reasonably debate how much blame he merits for all of that, but there are simply no meaningful "peace" accomplishment in his record -- at least not yet -- and there's plenty of the opposite. That's what makes this Prize so painfully and self-evidently ludicrous.

 

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/200...bama/index.html

[Guest alex]

Based on the reasoning regarding Bush, you might as well give every kraut a peace prize for not being Hitler.

Whoosh?

[ChezGiven 0]

So HF, who has had more of an impact on world peace this year?

[Happy Face 29]

Based on the reasoning regarding Bush, you might as well give every kraut a peace prize for not being Hitler.

Whoosh?

 

When the past nominations were released it was discovered that Adolf Hitler was nominated in 1939 by Erik Brandt, a member of the Swedish Parliament. Brandt retracted the nomination after a few days.[8] Other infamous nominees included Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini.

 

Says Wiki

[Happy Face 29]

So HF, who has had more of an impact on world peace this year?

 

Any number of people. They might as well have given it to Bush for not invading Iran while he was in office.

 

Maybe Mordechai Vanunu.

[Happy Face 29]

ALI AKABR JAVANFEKR, AIDE TO IRANIAN PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD said

 

"We hope that this gives him the incentive to walk in the path of bringing justice to the world order."

 

"We are not upset and we hope that by receiving this prize he will start taking practical steps to remove injustice in the world. "

 

Dangerous loons.

[Happy Face 29]

This will send the New World Order paranoid crew even more insane!

 

Fox's bitter report makes for a humourous read....It's just another unjust Bush slap....

 

OSLO -- Despite less than one year in office and leading two wars, President Obama snatched the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, stunning the world one week after failing to win an Olympic bid for his adopted hometown.

 

The Nobel committee said its decision was motivated by Obama's initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism.

 

Yet the choice was stunning given the nomination deadline of Feb.1, less than two weeks after the Obama presidency began.

 

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama woke up to the news a little before 6 a.m. EDT.

 

"The president was humbled to be selected by the committee," Gibbs said.

 

The president plans to talk about his award at 10:30 a.m. Friday in the Rose Garden.

 

The Norwegian Nobel Committee lauded the change in global mood wrought by Obama's calls for peace and cooperation but recognized initiatives that have yet to bear fruit: reducing the world stock of nuclear arms, easing American conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthening the U.S. role in combating climate change.

 

"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," said Thorbjoern Jagland, chairman of the Nobel Committee.

 

Former President Jimmy Carter says the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Obama is a "bold statement of international support for his vision and commitment."

 

Carter won the peace prize himself in 2002, two decades after leaving office. In a statement, he described the Nobel committee's decision Friday as support for Obama's work toward peace and harmony in international relations.

 

Carter says the award shows the Obama administration represents hope not only for Americans, but for people around the world.

 

Still, the U.S. remains at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. Congress has yet to pass a law reducing carbon emissions and there has been little significant reduction in global nuclear stockpiles since Obama took office.

 

"So soon? Too early. He has no contribution so far. He is still at an early stage. He is only beginning to act," said former Polish President Lech Walesa, a 1983 Nobel Peace laureate.

 

"This is probably an encouragement for him to act. Let's see if he perseveres. Let's give him time to act," Walesa said.

 

The chairman of the Republican Party is contends that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize as result of his "star power" rather than meaningful accomplishments.

 

Michael Steele issued a statement Friday saying, "The real question Americans are asking is, What has President Obama actually accomplished?"

 

Steele, who took over the reigns of the party earlier this year, said he thought it was "unfortunate that the president's star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights."

 

He said he doesn't think Obama will be "receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action."

 

The award appeared to be a slap at President George W. Bush from a committee that harshly criticized Obama's predecessor for his largely unilateral military action in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The Nobel committee praised Obama's creation of "a new climate in international politics" and said he had returned multilateral diplomacy and institutions like the U.N. to the center of the world stage.

 

Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who won the prize in 1984, said Obama's award shows great things are expected from him in coming years.

 

"It's an award coming near the beginning of the first term of office of a relatively young president that anticipates an even greater contribution towards making our world a safer place for all," Tutu said. "It is an award that speaks to the promise of President Obama's message of hope."

 

Until seconds before the award, speculation had focused on a wide variety of candidates besides Obama: Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a Colombian senator, a Chinese dissident and an Afghan woman's rights activist, among others. The Nobel committee received a record 205 nominations for this year's prize, though it was not immediately apparent who nominated Obama.

 

"The exciting and important thing about this prize is that it's given to someone ... who has the power to contribute to peace," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said.

 

Obama is the third sitting U.S. president to win the award: President Theodore Roosevelt won in 1906 and President Woodrow Wilson was awarded the prize in 1919.

 

The Nobel committee chairman said after awarding the 2002 prize to former Democratic President Jimmy Carter, for his mediation in international conflicts, that it should be seen as a "kick in the leg" to the Bush administration's hard line in the buildup to the Iraq war.

 

Five years later, the committee honored Bush's adversary in the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore, for his campaign to raise awareness about global warming.

 

Obama was to meet with his top advisers on the Afghan war on Friday to consider a request by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, to send as many as 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan as the U.S war there enters its ninth year.

 

Obama ordered 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan earlier this year and has continued the use of unmanned drones for attacks on militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a strategy devised by the Bush administration. The attacks often kill or injure civilians living in the area.

 

In July talks in Moscow, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed that their negotiators would work out a new limit on delivery vehicles for nuclear warheads of between 500 and 1,100. They also agreed that warhead limits would be reduced from the current range of 1,700-2,200 to as low as 1,500. The United States now as about 2,200 such warheads, compared to about 2,800 for the Russians.

 

But there has been no word on whether either side has started to act on the reductions.

 

Former Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, said Obama has already provided outstanding leadership in the effort to prevent nuclear proliferation.

 

"In less than a year in office, he has transformed the way we look at ourselves and the world we live in and rekindled hope for a world at peace with itself," ElBaradei said. "He has shown an unshakeable commitment to diplomacy, mutual respect and dialogue as the best means of resolving conflicts."

 

Obama also has attempted to restart stalled talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, but just a day after Obama hosted the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in New York, Israeli officials boasted that they had fended off U.S. pressure to halt settlement construction. Moderate Palestinians said they felt undermined by Obama's failure to back up his demand for a freeze.

 

Nominators for the prize include former laureates; current and former members of the committee and their staff; members of national governments and legislatures; university professors of law, theology, social sciences, history and philosophy; leaders of peace research and foreign affairs institutes; and members of international courts of law.

 

The Nelson Mandela Foundation welcomed the award on behalf of its founder Nelson Mandela, who shared the 1993 Peace Prize with then-South African President F.W. DeKlerk for their efforts at ending years of apartheid and laying the groundwork for a democratic country.

 

"We trust that this award will strengthen his commitment, as the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, to continue promoting peace and the eradication of poverty," the foundation said.

 

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.

[Happy Face 29]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8298600.stm

 

Love the shocked gasp as the announcement is made....and the old timer stood behind having a good old chuckle to himself.

[tooner 243]

nominations had to be in by Feb 1.......what had he done by that point?

Edited October 9, 2009 by tooner

[tooner 243]

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/10/09/f-rfa-champ.html

 

 

not a bad article

[Jimbo 133]

So HF, who has had more of an impact on world peace this year?

 

Bono or Obama, I think they made the right choice

[Billy Castell 0]

It's way too early for Obama to get this. He is making more of an effort to tackle international issues, but who knows whether he will succeed? Look at the whole Israel/Palestine thing, he has tried, but they're not stopping the settlements from being built etc. There is no concrete progress on climate change either.

 

He got it because the guys who had voted hated Bush and his incompetence.

[Park Life 71]

The prize might also have been to encourage him to do more around the world for peace.

[Gejon 2]

This will send the New World Order paranoid crew even more insane!

 

I watched a Louis Theroux documentary on them last night

[Billy Castell 0]

This will send the New World Order paranoid crew even more insane!

 

I watched a Louis Theroux documentary on them last night

 

I bet they're ringing up Fox News saying he's going to turn the world into some sort of Nazi, Communist, anti-American, Jewish, Muslim superstate as I type. And I bet Fox are adding to that sentiment too.

[The Fish 9281]

Actually looking forward to see John Stewart's response to FOX's response

[Happy Face 29]

It’s hard to believe, but there have been sillier moments in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize than this recent fiasco involving Barack Obama — it’s just so hard to remember them when you’re rolling around on the ground and spitting up greenish foam in a state of shock, as most of us were this past weekend as the news of Obama’s amazing award rolled over the airwaves.

 

The Nobel Peace Prize long ago ceased to be an award given to people who really spend their whole careers agitating for peace. Like most awards the Prize has evolved into a kind of maraschino cherry for hardcore careerists to place atop their resumes, a reward not for dissidence but on the contrary for gamely upholding the values of Western society as it perceives itself, for putting a good face on things (in Obama’s place, literally so).

 

Even when the award is given to a genuine dissident, it tends to be a dissident hailing from a country we consider outside the fold of Western civilization, a rogue state, “not one of us” — South Africa from the apartheid days, for instance, or the regime occupying East Timor.

 

You never, ever get a true dissident from a prominent Western country winning the award, despite the obvious appropriateness such a choice would represent. Our Western society quite openly embraces war as a means of solving problems and for quite some time now has fashioned its entire social and economic structure around the preparation for war.

 

Most of our important scientific innovations come, either directly or indirectly, through research into the creation of new weapons. Our media relentlessly praises and cartoonizes war and violence, blithely indoctrinates millions of children a day into the possibilities of military combat with video games and toy guns. We house an utterly insane percentage of nonviolent criminals in jails. And when a fringe presidential candidate named Dennis Kucinich announced plans to create a “Department of Peace,” he was almost literally laughed off the campaign trail.

 

We’re a society that believes powerfully in the divine right of force, but that doesn’t mean we don’t like to think of ourselves as being peaceful. And indeed, there are times when we actually do turn to peace and diplomacy to solve our problems. Usually this is because all other avenues of action have been exhausted first, or because it just happens to be the right logistical move at that particular moment.

 

Like for instance, we invade Iraq for whatever asinine reason was actually behind that decision, we stay there for, oh, seven years or whatever, and eventually it starts to occur to us that this is an extraordinarily expensive activity, pisses off everyone involved, destabilizes a whole region, and to boot puts the lives of countless innocent Iraqis and young Americans at risk, though of course this is the last consideration. Moreover the plan to gain permanent access to Iraqi oil reserves through the establishment of a friendly “democratic” regime with (let’s say) a “flexible” attitude toward foreign investment is turning out to be problematic at best.

 

So eventually someone will make the decision that this whole Iraq war thing is stupid, benefits no one, not even politically in the short term, and moves will be made to wrap up this idiotic business and bring everyone home. At which point someone making this dreary logistical decision will get nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and that someone will probably win it, allowing us all to bask in the glow of our “peace-loving” values which prevailed in the end over hate and violence.

 

That’s how this thing works. We ebb toward war most of the time. But sometimes, out of necessity, or when we run out of bullets, we ebb the other way. And it’s then that we give ourselves awards for our peace-loving behavior.

 

Who knows, maybe Barack Obama’s award is already tied to that particular Iraq plotline. He was, after all, elected in part because his party, the Democratic Party, which had supported the idiotic invasion at the start, had lately decided to abandon the idea and present itself as being against this particular war.

 

More likely the Obama critics who believe that Obama won this award for not being George Bush are right as well. The problem the international community had with Bush wasn’t that he believed in war and the use of force, it was that he believed in the unilateral use of these things. Bush did not believe in the use of force as an expression of a whole society’s values, he believed in it as an expression of his own machismo.

 

He was like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove, flying through history with a bomb between his legs, shouting “Yee, haw!” It wasn’t so much that this behavior was wrong, it was just unseemly. He was like the drunk at a Victorian tea party who during the soup course makes jokes about the hostess’s secret pregnancy in France. We Westerners, we just don’t do things like that. Decorum, sir, decorum!

 

How do we do things? We keep the troops in those faraway places like Afghanistan and Iraq, sure, but while we do that we make sure to extol things like tolerance and dialogue and the spirit of diplomacy. We make sure that the same people who were not involved in the decision-making process during the previous bombing runs under Bush are in the loop again, now and hopefully forever. We smile a lot and say nice things about the Geneva convention and the impropriety of torture and secret detention, the importance of the rule of international law. We make everybody feel better about how things are going to go from now on.

 

This is what Barack Obama did to “earn” the Nobel Prize. He put the benevolent face back on things. He is a good-looking black law professor with an obvious bent for dialogue and discussion and inclusion. That he hasn’t actually reversed any of Bush’s more notorious policies — hasn’t closed Guantanamo Bay, hasn’t ended secret detentions, hasn’t amped down Iraq or Afghanistan — is another matter. What he has done is remove the stink of unilateralism from those policies.

 

They’re not crazy-ass, blatantly illegal, lunatic rampages anymore, but carefully-considered, collectively-run peacekeeping actions, prosecuted with meaningful input from our allies.

 

You see the difference? The Nobel committee sure did!

 

There’ve been some dumb Nobel Peace Prizes before. Giving one to Gorbachev in 1990, sandwiched right in between his invasions of Azerbaijan and Lithuania, comes immediately to mind. Giving one to Henry Kissinger, a man responsible for the bombings of millions of Indochinese (and who consistently favored the use of increased bombing runs to force the other side to the negotiating table) is another. The award to Arafat, Rabin and Peres likewise seems humorous to me. The Al Gore award, I don’t even want to go there. I went years thinking that the Al Gore prize was a joke someone was playing on me. I still can’t believe it really happened.

 

The unifying thread for all these prizewinners is that they were all important political figures who at one time or another embraced violence as a just and appropriate policy, and got the peace crown once the political weather changed and it was time to put the tanks back in the garage. Even Gore, during the Kosovo war, boned up on his war cred before he got a prize for losing an election, growing a beard, and making a freaking movie. And hey, maybe in the real world, you can’t punish politicians for embracing force — maybe there’s just no way around the use of violence, when you’re running a country the size of the U.S. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been President or Vice President of anything.

 

But it’s hard not to notice that those onetime war-favoring pols are the Westerners who win these awards, when there is still a significant minority of people living right here among us who believe that nonviolence can work as a permanent policy, and who have consistently rejected and opposed the obvious militaristic values of the society we actually happen to live in.

 

Those people win the Nobel Prize when they live in “other” countries, when they’re penniless priests in Timor or Soweto or activists in Guatemala. But when they’re Americans or Western Europeans or Japanese who think we should reduce military spending or defund catastrophic weapons programs, no dice, because those people don’t represent “us” — us being a society that doesn’t seriously think about disarming.

 

Instead they use the award to give political backrubs to the inexperienced commanders of deployed armies, people like Barack Obama. I have no idea what his award means, but I do know one thing; it doesn’t have a lot to do with peace.

 

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/10/13...peace/#more-948

[ChezGiven 0]

Presidents / Political leaders dont 'do' anything, they only have ever spoken to set the tone of the actions of those underneath them.

 

That article seems to suggest that world leaders have been kicking down walls, driving tanks and negotiating peace deals. Never happened. Decisions on policy are made and rhetoric is used to set the tone. Thats it, everyone goes off and does the things that need doing.

 

Removing unilateralism and changing the policy tone is a huge step forward towards resolving a conflict that had fuck all to with Obama. On a global scale, that change in discourse is hugely important and one that would not have occured if one of other the less eloquent democratic candidates had succeeded imo.

 

Isnt it also a bit stupid to denigrate previous winners whilst trying to say this nobel prize decision was wrong? Is it the noble prize thats being attacked? Oh, thats nice, criticise a bunch of scandanavian academics for handing out a political award that promotes peace, very well thought through all of this i'm sure.

[Happy Face 29]

Presidents / Political leaders dont 'do' anything, they only have ever spoken to set the tone of the actions of those underneath them.

 

That article seems to suggest that world leaders have been kicking down walls, driving tanks and negotiating peace deals. Never happened. Decisions on policy are made and rhetoric is used to set the tone. Thats it, everyone goes off and does the things that need doing.

 

Where does it do that? I know you don't mean literally, but i can't see anywhere that it states a president can or should run amock implementing his own ideas (like Bush did). I've only scanned it this time though.

 

Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader has stated however that congress will support the president in whatever he decides to do in Afghanistan

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/world/as...tml?_r=1&hp

 

So he clearly has some sway if he wants a peaceful resolution, rather than sending another 40,000 troops in to do some killin'.

 

Removing unilateralism and changing the policy tone is a huge step forward towards resolving a conflict that had fuck all to with Obama. On a global scale, that change in discourse is hugely important and one that would not have occured if one of other the less eloquent democratic candidates had succeeded imo.

 

Isnt it also a bit stupid to denigrate previous winners whilst trying to say this nobel prize decision was wrong? Is it the noble prize thats being attacked? Oh, thats nice, criticise a bunch of scandanavian academics for handing out a political award that promotes peace, very well thought through all of this i'm sure.

 

I think he's clearly attacking the prize for the selection of this and previous winners. How is that not well thought through? The award gives legitimacy to the wars, the torture, the indefinite detention and the double standards practised by Obama over the past year and allows him to continue down the same path. It convinces him the approach being taken is just.

Edited October 14, 2009 by Happy Face

[ChezGiven 0]

I think he's clearly attacking the prize for the selection of this and previous winners. How is that not well thought through? The award gives legitimacy to the wars, the torture, the indefinite detention and the double standards practised by Obama over the past year and allows him to continue down the same path. It convinces him the approach being taken is just.

 

 

No it doesnt, stop being so melodramatic. Where you see double standards, i see complex situations with multiple stakeholders, needs and objectives, without a single solution.

 

Obama also 'wants' to reform healthcare. Thats not exactly a sparkling success either. At least the ideas and what he says are right, hence influencing and cajoling a whole generation of americans with the right words.

 

The soundbite is mightier than the sword.

[Happy Face 29]

I think he's clearly attacking the prize for the selection of this and previous winners. How is that not well thought through? The award gives legitimacy to the wars, the torture, the indefinite detention and the double standards practised by Obama over the past year and allows him to continue down the same path. It convinces him the approach being taken is just.

 

 

No it doesnt, stop being so melodramatic. Where you see double standards, i see complex situations with multiple stakeholders, needs and objectives, without a single solution.

 

Obama also 'wants' to reform healthcare. Thats not exactly a sparkling success either. At least the ideas and what he says are right, hence influencing and cajoling a whole generation of americans with the right words.

 

The soundbite is mightier than the sword.

 

I'm glad you put 'wants' in quotes there.

[ChezGiven 0]

Because there is a difference between wanting to do something personally and being able to acheive it politically. Especially in the US.

[Park Life 71]

Obama is the best of some pretty bad options, let's not lose sight of that.