President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize early Friday morning in a decision from Oslo that surprised many people, not least among them Obama himself. HuffPost bloggers have offered opinions that range from skeptical to angry to adulatory. Scroll down for the roundup.
Michael Moore: Get Off Obama's Back: Second Thoughts From Michael Moore
Obama is moving too slow for most of us -- but he needs to know we are with him and we stand beside him as he attempts to turn eight years of sheer madness around.
Jeffrey Feldman: The Outrage Pandemic
Less than a year ago, tens of millions of Americans descended on DC, just so they could say, "I was there." Now, a majority of Americans seem convinced that Obama has personally slighted them.
Joseph A. Palermo: Reaction to President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize is Another "Teaching Moment"
Are we incapable of recognizing the simple fact that it is much better for America to have a president who is admired and respected in the world than one who is despised and feared?
Robert Creamer: Obama's Nobel Prize Is Really a Tribute to American Voters
This award celebrates the fact that American voters chose a President committed to progressive values, instead of pre-emptive war and the Neo-Con theories of unilateral action.
Tom Watson: Obama and the Peace Prize: Too Much, Too Soon
It's not Barack Obama's fault that the Nobel Committee went goofy. Despite calls to contrary, he had to accept the Nobel -- anything less would have been far less than gracious.
Frances Beinecke: Nobel Prize Recognizes Link Between Peace and Climate Action
After eight costly years of inaction, the United States has begun to lead. Since taking office, Obama has moved quickly to put climate change near the top of his agenda.
Jesse Berney: He Should Have Turned It Down
Barack Obama's presidency is 17 days younger than my daughter, and she just figured out how to put Cheerios into her mouth. The Norwegian Nobel Committee made a grave mistake.
Michael Moore: Congratulations President Obama on the Nobel Peace Prize -- Now Please Earn it!
Freedom can not be delivered from the front seat of someone else's Humvee. You have to end our involvement in Afghanistan now. If you don't, you'll have no choice but to return the prize to Oslo.
John Aravosis: What Would a Nobel Laureate Tell the Gays?
President Obama will speak Saturday night at the Human Rights Campaign national dinner. The big question in gay-land is what will Obama say. I fear the answer is: Not much.
Sen. Bernie Sanders: War and Peace
Americans should be proud that we have a president who is restoring respect for our country around the globe. This well-deserved prize is an inspiration.
Barry D. Wood: Headscarves Pull Turkey East and West
The complexities of the headscarf debate eludes many Americans, for whom freedom, tolerance, and diversity are axioms of our democracy. We would ask, why is the headscarf such a big deal?
Robert Fuller: Obama's Nobel Honors His Dignitarian Politics
Obama got the prize not for doing, but for being. Not for making peace, but for exemplifying something new on the world stage -- the politics of dignity.
Andy Borowitz: Nobel Insiders: Beer Summit Sealed it for Obama
A spokesman for the Nobel committee said she hoped that Mr. Obama's victory would be seen not only as a victory for him, but "as a tribute to the healing power of beer."
Robert Naiman: Nobel Committee, Strategic As Ever, Taps Obama for Peace Prize
Like the Nobel Peace Prize given to Desmond Tutu in 1984 to encourage an end of apartheid in South Africa, the Nobel Committee is now encouraging the change in world relations that Obama has promised.
Jacob Heilbrunn: President Obama's Noble Nobel Prize
This award is based on the hope that Obama will achieve real progress in advancing diplomacy rather than confrontation around the globe. And to some degree, he already has.
It is enormously premature for Obama to be getting this great tribute, which to a certain extent cheapens the prior recipients and the work all of them performed over so many years.
The vitriol against Obama's peace prize and "those Norwegians" who gave it to him is much deeper than the president's lack of achievements thus far; it is based on a fundamental clash of worldviews.
Scott Atran: Barack's Nobel: A Symbolic Gesture of Hope to the World's Youth
The award of the Peace Prize to Obama is a symbolic gesture to youth all over the developing world who have a new hero. Perhaps the ability to simply inspire hope now indeed merits a Nobel.
Andy Ostroy: Why Obama's Nobel Peace Prize Is Deserved
After eight embarrassing years of reckless cowboy arrogance marred by war, war crimes and human rights abuses, Obama's Nobel Prize symbolizes the beginning of the U.S. return to respectability.
Jackson Williams: Alfred Nobel's Last Will And Testament: He'd Be Proud Of Barack Obama
Some critics have claimed the prize should be the "culmination of a career." Says who? Not Alfred Nobel, and he ought to know.
Jesse Larner: Obama and the Nobel: Just Bizarre
Now I know a lot of my friends are going to be very happy about this; a new day has dawned, etc. Personally I found it inexplicable. And disturbing. And vaguely annoying.
Leah McElrath Renna: Shocking Decision: American Electorate Wins Nobel Peace Prize!
The Nobel Committee's message to the American people is clear: thank you for showing us that our worst fears about your country were not true.
Sarah Lovinger: Obama's Nobel Peace Prize Supports Human Health
Today's announcement that President Obama won this year's Nobel Peace Prize not only strengthened the peace process, it also benefited human health worldwide.
Louis Klarevas: Obama Wins the 2009 Nobel Promise Prize
No matter how you look at it, President Obama did not receive this award because he brought peace to some place in the world (the way previous recipients like Jimmy Carter and Nelson Mandela did).
Pablo Triana: Obama's Nobel Is a Boomerang
The Nobel may not be a ruthless, unjustified political act after all. Who will now stop the Right 's campaign to belittle and ridicule the Peace Prize as nothing more than a Leftish cabal?
Carol Felsenthal: Bill Clinton Must Wonder -- Where's Mine?
Not even as towering an ego as Clinton expected to win it while a sitting president, as Wilson and Roosevelt had, but not even they came close to winning it before they had spent a year in the White House.
The Nobel committee has become one (at least this year) that values celebrified politics over everything else. Obama's fame - not his actual policy or record - is what is being honored here.
Taylor Marsh: Why Was Obama Awarded the Nobel?
Beyond the Bush tailspin, why was Obama awarded the Nobel? For his outreach to the Muslim community, his charge on nuclear nonproliferation, and his determination to help Afghans help themselves.
Ali A. Rizvi: The Real Reason Obama Deserves the Nobel Win
The impact of Obama's election stretches far beyond even what Martin Luther King, Jr. called the "fierce urgency of now." It goes beyond race and beyond policy issues.
Hoyt Hilsman: Does President Obama -- and America -- Deserve the Nobel Prize?
This movement to change America did not begin when Barack Obama took the presidential oath of office -- it has been underway for decades.
John Prendergast: Nobel Hope and Reality in Africa
Peace activists are hoping that President Obama, with the added luster of a Nobel Prize, will wade more deeply into resolving the conflicts in Sudan and the Congo, the deadliest in the world.
Dawn Teo: The GOP: Sore Losers - Need a Time-Out
The Urban Dictionary defines sore loser as "someone who loses in a fair competition but whines about it on a constant basis, blaming everyone around them for their loss, except themselves."
Max Bergmann: Nobel Critics Ignore Obama's Massive Foreign Policy Impact
Pundits and cynics alike should recognize that in the last nine months, President Obama has completely altered the direction of American foreign policy and American engagement with the world.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson: Obama's Nobel Peace Prize Is a Huge Stretch
I have to think that privately Obama scratched his head and wondered, why me?
MJ Rosenberg: Nobel Honors America, Not Only Obama
It is rare for nations to honor another nation for seeking to lead them, but that it what this award means. It is a tribute to the President but even more to our country.
Saad Khan: Obama's Nobel Victory and the Muslim world
The real question raised by this "great achievement" of Obama is "Will he actually deliver?"
Wael Nawara: For Peace-to-Be: Obama Wins Nobel Prize for Hope!
Obama indeed may have won the Nobel Prize, not for the Peace he helped realize, but for the Hope he has managed to inspire.
Mike Hegedus: Barack Obama, Nobel Laureate; First the Reward, Now the Risk
Barack Obama won the Nobel Prize because the world outside our own borders hopes, wants, and prays for his success internationally. And that's a good thing, a very good thing.
Bart Motes: Obama Deserves the Nobel Peace Prize
Obama has given new possibilities to a world that only a year ago was defined by conflict. He's rejected the zero-sum game of the Bush years in favor for respect driven diplomacy.
The prize places this very new American president in the position of herculean expectations to fulfill his vision that the world might live together peaceably in a nuclear-free environment.
Peter M. Shane: Obama's Peace Prize: The World Bets on America
It seems a safe bet that, in choosing President Obama for the Nobel Peace Prize, the Committee wanted to send a larger message. As I read it, that message is, "America, we need you."
What Obama did, from the morning he entered the White House, was change the environment for the whole world regarding the prospects for peace, regarding peaceful diplomatic resolutions, regarding respecting world treaties and agreements, regarding respecting the peoples of the world, regarding what had til then been the hooligan use of weapons.
Obama did EXACTLY what is the mission of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate: he made straight the path toward peace.
Our President won the Nobel Prize for peace because his election immediately changed our relationship to the world. In that instant the rest of the world believed that a big rich nation could with a long history of racism and a recent history of terribly misguided foreign policy could elect a black man named named Barrack Hussein who believed in talking to countries even when they don't do what we say. To say that Obama hasn't accomplished enough is to discount the vital role that relationships play in effective leadership-whether in our families or on the global stage.
It is also to trivialzie vital role that aspirational leadership plays in the 21st Century. When the world is moving as fast as it is leadership must constantly aspire to the future. The Nobel Committee recognized that Obama manifests a future based on dialogue and hope rather than ultimatums and fear.
1. Denigrating the NPP as a completely meaningless and worthless sop of/to the left
2. Objecting mightily to the recipients of it.
If it's such a meaningless honor, why do they care so much to whom it's given? Sounds like Nobel envy to me.
What do they hope to gain by bribing President Obama with a Noble Peace Medal?
I'm sure she has some crackpot idea.
RNC is there to help when you think there just
Rn't
'Nuff
Conspiracies
in the world.
You keep eating them up, we'll make more.
If he has failed to make so much progress here at home, well then, there's plenty of reason for that as we can see every night on the teevee where the rightwing nutjobs are contorting themselves into pretzels trying to find a way to take him down.
Yes, we're still in Afghanistan. But the very same pundits on the left who are now lambasting President Obama for "escalating" the Afghanistan War were only a few months ago lambasting President Bush for failing to commit ENOUGH resources to Afghanistan. This is not a man who is going to keep us there for 100 years, like McCain. He's working to get us out as fast as possible without permitting a resurgence of ter r 0 r ism.
Congratulations, Mr. President. Don't listen to the incessant critics. You deserve this as much as anyone.
Could not name a person who deserved it more than Barak Obama....
They awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the American President--by unanimous vote.
Are there other people who deserve the Nobel Peace Prize who have accomplished more in improving peoples' lives & circumstances in real terms than Obama has done? Certainly.
Was there any person or organization the NPP committee could have given the award to that would have made a bigger impact in promoting progress on as many critical issues as awarding it to Obama may do? I can't think of any.
I hope I can use this as an example and demand bonus for my future performance at work.
But in the end - he is my president and I am proud. I hope he performs and succeeds to deserve this award.
One would hope that after several years of a financial near-meltdown and a discussion of bonus payments, people should by now begin to realize that in management and administration, the measurement of performance is a tricky business.
But one thing is very certain, whether you believe it or not - your boss knows, I'm sure:
if changing the minds of people is nothing, then management, administration, marketing, sales, business, finance and the economy are each: nothing, respectively.
Here's what REALLY surprises me:
people who spend their lives doing diplomacy or writing about it or reporting about it are equally ignorant and even they claim to never have heard of the notion that in diplomacy, to perform means to change the ideas of others, to change the way others think.
But no biggie. The very fact that such people can go about their business in international media outlets proves how very necessary it was for the US to have a president who understands the importance of changing the minds of people. Not even the professional writers can claim that they already knew, because they didn't.
The president was only in office two weeks when he was nominated.
There was a record 205 nominees.
He clinched it with a UNANIMOUS vote.
Yeah baby bringing home the gold. Love it.
Take heed my fellow Americans take heed. Don't listen to the GOP (Gang of Predators) Keep hope alive.
I am doing it.
http://obamaequalitycenter.org
Thank you.
LeeAndrew
Not only did Obama win the Nobel Prize,
he has also just been nominated for the " Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence"