It would be hard to think of a more electrifying and deserved recipient of this year's Nobel Peace prize than President Obama. Obama is the fourth American president to win the Nobel prize. His predecessors are Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jimmy Carter.
Obviously, the award is based on the hope that Obama will achieve real progress in advancing diplomacy rather than confrontation around the globe. To some degree, he already has. American relations with Europe are vastly improved. He is focusing on global warming. Negotiations are underway with Iran. So are nuclear arms reductions talks with Russia. Leading conservatives such as George Shultz are calling for immediately ending sanctions on Cuba and restoring relations with it, as was emphasized at a New American Foundation event on the presidential Sequoia yacht hosted by Steve Clemons in Washington, D.C. last night.
In short, the moment is ripe for real change. So Obama needs to do more. Obviously, it would be utopian to expect that he can solve the world's ills overnight. But in foreign, as opposed to domestic, policy, Obama can seek to avoid the kind of bickering and squabbling that has dragged down health care. The fact is that the Nobel committee had handed him a unique opportunity. His acceptance speech in Oslo will offer him a golden chance to set forward a more sweeping and comprehensive vision of what his administration and America can do to advance peace. Obama should use the occasion to focus on the most volatile and dangerous region in the world, the Middle East.
This may be the biggest speech of Obama's presidency. Obama's prestige will never be higher. And the world will be listening. Obama needs to speak to it.
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We must NOT expect more from this group (the repelli-cants) who have shown us quite clearly who they are...and what they stand for -- I don't think they know any better.
After watching the dim witted radical republicans under Bush and now the same thing with the democratic party I truly believe that people as a whole in this country are becoming less intelligent.
This country also needs a third party because the two we have now are extremely corrupt and ineffective. Put down the Obama cool aid you are doing the same thing the republican party did under Bush.
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.
Obama made many promises during the campaign....How many of them has he kept?
It is not awarded based on a Republican political tally.
It should really drive the right-wing nuts nuts.
Watch the fur fly around those who--unaccountably--hate him.
While the Nobel Committee has caught many people by surprise, it was a pleasant surprise.
In November 2008, most American people gave president Obama a clear mandate to change the status quo in Washington and elsewhere. Most of the world's peoples have been delighted by the Americans' choice of a charismatic and smart president whom they respect ; a leader who in nine months has improved America's image around the world; someone whose audacity of hope and yes we can attitude have brought hope to the hopeless; someone who has told us to believe in ourselves and in what we can achieve if we are united; a global bridge builder and global thinker.
Now is the time for the forces of status quo to stop progress from taking place. Those forces are in the minority and on the wrong side of history.
I thank the Committee for its vision and selection and I congratulate the 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate Barack H. Obama.
Zekeh.
Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize--and the award of the prize to other Nobel laureates--can hardly be described as a "losing streak". When you win your Nobel Prize, don't despair about sinking so low into the loser column. Try to feel a little good about it.
BTW, the NAACP was in engaged in an anti-lynching campaign during the Wilson years--a practice Wilson was not involved in. The NAACP convinced him to write a public statement in July, 1918 against lynching, which they then distributed 50,000 copies of. Wilson was lukewarm about black rights, but far from setting black rights backward 50 years, Wilson helped the NAACP in their campaign goals. The NAACP was created after the race riots of 1908--years before Wilson.
He can conceptualize a future world so tranquil and peaceful that all the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize will likewise have done, absolutely nothing.