Friday, October 09, 2009

Obama's Nobel Peace Prize: For What?

President Obama today was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." Extraordinary efforts? He hasn't actually done anything yet...other than not be George W. Bush. And that, I believe, is the point. Sure, lukewarm seems hot when compared to freezing cold and reversing the Bush doctrine may be a giant step in the right direction because we had been accelerating so greatly in the wrong direction, but it diminishes the Nobel to give it to someone on a relative scale, especially when there are so many out there who toil in obscurity who are doing incredible work for the betterment of humanity and particular suffering humans, people whose work would be aided by the attention of the Nobel committee. This was not an award for Obama, but a slap against Bush and such a move is petty and beneath what the prize should be.