John J. Miller who writes for the National Review and the Wall Street Journal, and is a contributing editor of Philanthropy magazine, calls Obama’s award as ‘The Empty Nobel.’ He says, “Obama isn’t the first American president to win the Nobel Peace Prize, but he’s the first to win it without having accomplished anything.’ He adds that ‘the Nobel committee is guilty of “wishful thinking.”’
Traditionally, Nobel Peace Prize winners first accomplish something in the area of peacekeeping before being give the award, as reward after effort. Obama seems to have won his for sheer aspirations of peace. After all, some say that all he has done are ‘make peace with Hillary Clinton,’ ‘give up the missile shield,’ ‘cheer up the Iranians,’ and mull over sending more troops and weapons to Afghanistan.
Wall Street Journal editor Iain Martin thinks that it’s a ‘post-modern’ award: “He doesn’t actually have to do it; he just has to have aspirations.”
Even Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times, ‘a genuine admirer of Obama,’ thinks ‘the award is premature. Not only that, it’s “very odd timing”—in a few weeks he’ll probably be sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan, which could still end up as “Obama’s Vietnam.”’
The question some are asking now is: Barack Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize for what? The question is even more nagging considering that ‘Barack Obama was in office for just two weeks when the deadline for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize passed, yet the first-term president has already got himself the world’s most famous award.’
Via National Review Online/The Wall Street Journal
