This quote summs it up nicely...

Gideon Rachman, a foreign affairs columnist for The Financial Times, wrote an online blog under the headline "What did Obama do to win the Nobel Peace Prize?"

"I am a genuine admirer of Obama. And I am very pleased that George W. Bush is no longer president. But I doubt that I am alone in wondering whether this award is slightly premature. It is hard to point to a single place where Obama's efforts have actually brought about peace - Gaza, Iran, Sri Lanka?

"While it is OK to give school children prizes for 'effort' -- my kids get them all the time -- I think international statesmen should probably be held to a higher standard," he wrote.

The Nobel Prize is just a private prize funded by some explosives entrepreneur. It doesn't matter as much as people seem to think it does.

yeah yeah alfred nobel, inventor of dynamite, we know.
I'm just in disbelief

I'm trying really hard to come up with a theory of everything. Do I get the prize for physics?

"yeah yeah alfred nobel, inventor of dynamite, we know."
XD

Not sure why he got it. I would agree that you would expect to see some results some where before a prize of that magnitude is handed out. It almost seems to me to be a slap down of Bush, and prize based on future potential. But who knows where that potential will go....if anywhere.

Is this the first time that the Peace Prize has gone to a person who has promised to ESCALATE a war?

This is ridiculous. There just have to be more deserving people who have actually been effective at bringing peace in the world, rather than just giving it to a man who's pledged to intensify a war and has been stymied on an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan like everyone before him. He might have the right ideas, but they're just ideas now. The prize deserves to go to someone who's achieved results.

LOL. And here I thought the Nobel Prize meant something...

@ invictus

very insightful. I completely agree.

The Peace Prize has always been political, just look at the past, and there've been worse choices (Al Gore, Yasser Arafat, Gorbatchov, Kissinger, to name a few). Though, arguably, these all had a longer CV, if shadier than Obama.

The rest of the awards (which are awarded by the Swedes and not Norway) have always been much more respectable. This one is closer to a beauty pageant nowadays.

I think they wanted to send a message of encouragement, but it was really too premature. Especially as the list of nominees was compiled back in February... he was less than two weeks in office back then.

"Is this the first time that the Peace Prize has gone to a person who has promised to ESCALATE a war?"

Do you have a better alternative? He surely did not start it, and surely declaring instant withdrawal would not have been the best approach, or you think it's ok to just drop it and go home? :)

I agree that he has not done enough, but saying he's done enough to rule him out is just as absurd as saying he has done enough to justify this award. You cannot be claiming that he has not done enough and that he has done more than enough at the same time? :)

... I'm starting to like that this award is really pissing off Bush supporters and the like.

I am all with Ivo's opinion:
- peace: beauty pageant (Kissinger??)
- sciences: very respected award
- it's a great European backing of Bush's politics' end
I'm European and pro Obama, but it looks premature to me too

I've never given the Nobel Peace Prize any standing since I learnt about Kissinger's award. Even so, this shocks me.

At least Kissinger got the prize for working out a deal in which he would STOP killing people (in part of the world). Obama gets the prize because he's mostly promised to kill people only in those parts of the world in which he is currently killing people.

Yeah, OK, it's an improvement over the last U.S. President, but it's not like they have to give the prize to a U.S. President. There are any number of actual PEACE organisations to which they might give the PEACE prize, y'know?

Regardless of how much or how little he deserves it, what I'm concerned about is the possible effect this may have on his future foreign policy. It's hard to imagine the incongruity of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate suddenly becoming a hardened hawk against Iran, etc. Then again, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson did both receive the prize while in office but were recognized for their actions toward resolving wars, not starting them.

Seriously though, the Nobel Peace Prize is surely the most questionable of the Nobel awards given past laureates like Yasser Arafat. It's only in the mainstream, un-scientific public at large that this award carries that much weight. I'm glad they hold that ceremony in Oslo as opposed to Stockholm for the real laureates who have furthered humanity's progress with their contributions to our collective knowledge of the world and ourselves.

Finally, regarding his worthiness, I feel like the committee jumped the gun on this one way too early. If Obama somehow miraculously manages the quagmires in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea by the end of his first term, what possible award would he win then? Surely any one of those achievements would warrant the prize far more. It really sort of cheapens what he has accomplished and what he may yet accomplish.

as far as i'm aware.

He got it or calling on other nations to reduce their nuclear stockpiles, with an aim of removing them. This is something which has been called for before, but never by the leader of a nuclear power.

( actually to quote the bbc: "The committee said he won for efforts to boost diplomacy and co-operation. " ) Well i'm glad someone is doing something to boost dip.

I was stunned at this, if they like Obama so much they must know that this is only going to highlight how some people are getting carried away by speeches which don't have immediate policy implications

His response that this should be taken "as a call to action" shows that he realizes that this prize isn't based on a lot of action, I bet he grimaced when he heard the news. I think he's doing a good job, but it's crazy that it's so early

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8298689.stm

reading why they decided on obama may do much to understand their opinion.

<agree>"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."</agree>

kestas, your forum doesn't accept html markups!! ;) :P

Would it be difficult to give us things like <b> and <i>? I'd sure like them... and since HTML isn't hard at all, it's not like it's difficult for people to learn. Then the forums even become educational. :-)

...and hackable. The only safe way to do it is to not use actual HTML, but to use a reduced meta language which some of the forums use that include smileys along with colors, some font formatting (bold, italic, inderline, size, font face) and occasionally even some basic structured formatting (bullets and alignment and such).

Makes me wonder if it's some kind of set up. Paranoid I know, but ya.. this is too premature, and their written reasoning aside, it doesn't quite add up.

Every one knows he has to continue the fight over seas for a while longer yet, sad as that fact may be... so.. hmmm.. back to wondering...

@ rlumley & Gallando - i like that we don't have any of that stuff. it's a forum; it's a simple way to communicate. adding all that other junk would just take away from the forum, in my opinion. and i believe this has been discussed before, and decided against by kestas.

Question:

Who should have gotten it instead?

I also agree that he deserves it on this basis:

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.

And on the nuclear basis.

Basically they're giving it to him to say "This is a good man, and people with good intentions should support him."

Nothing wrong with that.

Awarding the prize on expectations makes the Peace Prize seems pretentious. Do you give the Nobel Prize in Literature to an author working on a good rough draft? So that the author's encouraged to write even better? It's absurd and makes the whole process look obscenely self-important.

Morgan Tsvangirai should have won. He's done stuff AND giving it to him would put pressure on Bobby Mugabe that he couldn't handle. Instead it was given to a newbie President with no real domestic or foreign accomplishments besides guaranteeing the bankruptcy of the federal government within a generation.

It's not politics, I thought Jimmy Carter deserved it, but the fact that Obama hasn't done anything like enough. It's absurd.

Seems to me that the award was more of a repudiation of prior administration and as a carrot to promote Obama to continue engaging the world--basically a political move by the Nobel committee to promote what they see as an important step towards peace, non-proliferation, and engagement. I don't think this is a good way to award the prize, but that's what it looks like to me.

Tsvangirai is a good pick, but it wouldn't have done all the good you would think.

Nothing will get rid of Mugabe until Mugabe is brain dead. Scratch that. I think he IS brain dead, and yet there he remains.

Tsvangirai hasn't DONE anything either, not in the sense you're saying. He is the PM of Zimbabwe. He is under a lot of scrutiny and pressure, sure, but so is Obama. The Peace Prize is not the same as the others because it is awarded on a different basis. It's not given for a specific accomplishment, it's given to someone who is doing the most for lasting peace. In the opinion of the committee or whoever, it's Obama, probably because he wants to get rid of nukes.

There is nothing wrong with that. You can bitch all day about how Obama doesn't deserve it but the fact is any person on Earth can be criticized just as much. The award isn't given by popular demand it's given to whoever the prize committe thinks deserves it. If they thought that was Obama, then by all means we shoud be happy for whoever got it.

I think one of the most important reasons why he DOES deserve it is because he is dispensing with hateful rhetoric that has set the tone for the world stage for the past decade. He is reaching out and trying to creat a global community, in a word, peace. Just because assholes like Ahmadinejad and Mugabe aren't returning the gesture doesn't mean he shouldn't be lauded for going there.

Does this make Obama as saintly as Desmond Tutu or some other prize winner like that? No. The man is a sitting president. He is sure to do something that almost no one will applaud, just like TR or Woodrow Wilson did. But TR and Woodrow Wilson are my two favorite presidents incidentally, and after 4/8 years, we'll see if I feel the same way about Obama.

Morgan Tsvangirai has managed to cause serious problems for Mugabe's regime, and that is the only good thing. Not only that, but he has done so in rather more difficult circumstances- Obama wasn't ever going to have to flee to an embassy for a speech on Nuclear Disarmament or have his wife killed in a suspicious car crash.