So President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year. There have been several different reactions to this. As he is the third Democrat President to receive the prize in the fairly recent past, some Republicans have questioned the political impartiality of the award committee. Other people have pointed out that although he has said a fair amount and tried to get things started on the peace front, Obama has not actually achieved anything very much as yet: maybe awarding him the prize this year is a little premature. Others say that he has put in a lot of effort and deserves the prize for that alone.
I have no idea who else was nominated for the prize, but looking around I see few signs of anyone else even faintly deserving of it. Blair's efforts in the Middle East have been, so far as one can tell, spectacularly unsuccessful. Brown, Sarkozy, Merkel, Berlusconi - nothing. The puppet President of Russia? The Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian or Pakistani leaders? Again - nothing. Canada, Australia, New Zealand? They may have played their part in providing troops for Afghanistan, but is that deserving of the Peace Prize? And nobody comes to mind from Africa or South America. It's almost as though the committee selected the least worst, although I don't think that is what they did at all.
There is, of course, a monetary award with the prize - ten million Swedish kroner. I wonder if he will have to pay tax on it?
I really don't have any great or deep thoughts about Democrat versus Republican as internal American politics are none of my business, but since nominations for the NPP closed only about two months after Obama's inauguration and since he has not actually achieved anything much as yet, I do think this award is premature to say the least.
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