West Hollywood, California (Thursday, October 15, 2009) - Last week President Barak Obama won the Nobel Peace prize. The Republicans are still spitefully howling with derision. Even the President’s friends seem abashed at the honor. 
Steve Martin is a West Hollywood attorney and former-city council member. WeHo News - West Hollywood’s ONLY Newspaper, ONLY ONLINE. |
The conventional wisdom is that the President has not yet “earned” the Nobel honor.
It seemed that the Nobel Committee in Oslo was trying to make up for the slight the President received in Copenhagen from the Olympic Committee. The fact of the matter is that this has not been a great year for peace.
For all that, 2008 was even a worse year. The Russians and Georgians going at it over South Ossetia. Hamas and Israel bludgeoning each other in Gaza. War was barely averted between Columbia and Ecuador. A nuclear armed North Korea was acting out.
In 2009 the bright side was that the U.S. was pulling back from Iraq. The Iranians partially fessed up about it’s nuclear program while North Korea was moving back toward talks. While these might be baby steps, in a world battered by violence and economic malaise, any good news is welcome.
After nine years of letting the crisis in the Middle East fester, President Obama renewed America’s efforts to bring the Israelis and the Palestinians to the peace table.
He cancelled the Bush era plan to establish an untested missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic that the Russians felt was aimed at them.
WeHo News. |
The President’s Cairo speech opened new opportunities for positive relations with the Muslim world. His embrace of diplomacy over the empty war whoops of the Bush Administration has restored American prestige internationally.
While Obama’s efforts to bring peace and stability is a work in progress, at least it’s digging the United States out of the dead end that the bellicose Bush/Cheney regime had created.
While maybe the Nobel Committee should have recognized a reporter in Russia or a Chinese dissident, people who risk imprisonment or death for their beliefs. You’ll always find indigenous people in the Amazon basin fighting to save the rain forest or individuals who have tried to bridge the chasm between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
But apparently the Nobel Committee felt that the United States move towards peace and international cooperation and our repudiation of the bullying of the Bush Administration deserved recognition. After all, our European friends were getting tired of being treated as client states rather than respected allies.
Obama definitely deserves credit for restoring America’s international prestige and credibility. There’s got to be some kind of prize for that.
President Barak Obama won the Nobel Peace prize. WeHo News. |
The Republicans can hardly stand it; they are busting with jealously. As if George W. ever wanted a peace prize.
They are frothing at the mouth while the President cleans up the messes they left from North Korea to Iraq. That war in South Ossetia would had never happened had Bush had not been baiting Russian by irresponsibly pushing for NATO membership for Georgia, while giving the Georgians a false sense that the U.S. would pull their chestnuts out of the fire.
Of course the Republicans all applauded when Henry Kissinger won Nobel laurels for the fig leave peace agreement he negotiated to get us out of Vietnam. Like Henry Kissinger deserved a peace prize. His support for carpet bombing of Hanoi, Laos and Cambodia was tactfully overlooked by the Nobel Committee at the time. You can’t really compare the President efforts to Kissinger’s alleged contributions to peace.
Now the Republicans are afraid that if we adopt meaningful health care for all Americans, we won’t have trillions of dollars to invade somebody in the future.
In the meantime the same Republicans who are dissing the President’s Nobel honor are hoping to push the Administration toward a deeper war in Afghanistan.
Arizona Republican Senator John McCain. WeHo News. |
These are the same guys who created the problem by backing an unnecessary war in Iraq, diverting resources needed to finish the job in Afghanistan.
The opportunity for victory in Afghanistan was fumbled by the Bush/Cheney team backed to the hilt by John McCain, the leading cheer leader for escalating our commitment in the land that flummoxed the British, the Russians and Alexander the Great.
Maybe the President does not deserve the Nobel Peace prize based upon the fact that he is not George W. Bush—but it’s a good start.
Rather than be embarrassed by the honor, the President’s supporters should revel in it. The long night of Bush/Cheney is over and it’s morning again in America.
The Nobel Peace Prize. WeHo News. |
I like to think that the Nobel Peace prize was really awarded to the American people; honoring the President was the only way to do it since the prize does not go to an entire nation.
We deserve the honor. We recognized that America had lost it’s way. We had spent trillions on foreign wars that could have gone toward education and health care. We so lost our moral compass that we were actually were debating whether is was appropriate to torture prisoners.
Last November we as a people decided it was time to put America back of track. We elected a President that would stand for all of the things that were right about America and the values that the world used to admire.
I think the Nobel Committee recognized the historic change in direction and felt that we as a people deserved some recognition.
While you may not have a Nobel Peace prize to put on your mantle, the President is holding our collective prize for the nation. We should be both grateful and proud for the honor.
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