Obama's Nobel Prize is richly deserved
There has been much controversy swirling around president Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, which I wont bore my readers by recapping. Basically the well intentioned criticism -- we can discount the ill intentioned -- boils down to, "why so soon, he hasn't done anything yet". They are all missing the point.
First, we should take a step back from the prize... it is very much a creature of the moment it is given. It is not some sort of universal "Mount Rushmore" of the good and the great: Mahatma Gandhi never received it and Henry Kissinger (a war criminal) and Menachem Begin and Yasser Arafat (terrorists) did.
So the Nobel Peace Prize is not like being made a Saint in the Catholic Church and getting your own office in heaven.
What the prize does is to send a message.
If you look at the Nobel Peace Prizes awarded since 2001 you can see a pattern:
- 2001 - United Nations, Kofi Annan
- 2002 - Jimmy Carter
- 2003 - Shirin Ebadi(first Muslim woman to win the prize)
- 2004 - Wangari Maathai (African woman ecologist)
- 2005 - International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei
- 2006 - Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank (micro-credit)
- 2007 - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Al Gore
The thread running though it all being, "the Nobel Committee abjures George Walker Bush and all his works".
- 2008 - Martti Ahtisaari (UN diplomat and peacemaker)
So, Bush has gone, you say, why give the award to Obama so soon?
Bush is gone, but not what he did.
George W. Bush pulled the mask off the United States of America and Barack Obama is putting the mask back in place and that is why he has been given the prize.
What do I mean by "mask"?
Well, for anyone who has been reading Noam Chomsky for some time and paying attention, or who has recently read Naomi Klein's dot-connecting masterpiece, "The Shock Doctrine", it is no surprise to see the USA portrayed as a "rogue state": it has acted as one for decades.
In short: behind its mask of benevolent defender of democracy and human rights, the USA had been attacking and invading other countries and torturing people for a long, long, time.
But for much of the western world this was an "inconvenient truth"... unthinkable, bad for business and bad for morale, something not mentioned in polite, moderate-centrist, company.
From the vantage of international law, the USA is "like unto a whited sepulcher", which, to quote the King James Bible's protagonist, "indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness".
What changed?
Bush made Noam Chomsky a main-stream, best-selling author.
In the year 2001 destiny crossed 9-11 with George W. Bush and Bush in all his arrogant, incompetent, ignorant, meanness ripped off America's mask and kicked the top off the sepulcher and what was behind the mask was too ugly for the world to face every day on the news and all the maggots that came crawling out of the sepulcher stank unbearably.
And then the economy collapsed.
What Madelene Albright called "the indispensable nation" turned out to be "the unspeakable nation" and the corner stone of the world system turned out to be a grave stone... and no alternative is sight.
Well, you say, Iraq and Afghanistan are still at war and the USA is still killing civilians; Guantanamo and Bagram prisons are still in business, the international currency of reference, the US dollar, appears headed for collapse, even golden California is bankrupt. What has changed?
The magic of Obama has put the mask back on.
Air Wick has been hung in the sepulcher and Glade has been sprayed.
And all in only nine months.
However, the powerful forces that lay behind that which we chose to call "Bush" are mobilizing the AstroTurf of birthers and teabaggers and yet unknown McVeighs and Oswalds conspire against this mild attempt, this pretense of normalcy, and so the horrid face behind the benign mask is reappearing at the edges... and downwind the sepulcher still has quite a breath on it.
So the Nobel Committee is rushing to do its part in propping up the idea of an imagined return to a pre-Bush America: A certain idea of the civilized world.
If, in the future, having replaced the mask and chased the worms back into the sepulcher, President Obama actually manages to change some of the underlying reality itself, he will rank up there with M. K. Gandhi and require no further prize, for then he will be able to hand out the peace prizes, not a roomful of Norwegians.
Advertisement
I do get your drift... David . . .
But one minor point of possible correction . . .
It began before the "...all in only nine months..." that many would mislead us to believe.
Obama to the world at large, personally addressed the needs and issues that faced all of us on this planet on July 24, 2008. The following words did not fall on deaf ears throughout Europe and the world:
Now ... If that's not placing the mask back on the face I don't know what is...
And those on the Nobel committee in addition to millions of others throughout the world recognized the message long before the "citizen" Barack Obama become President Barack Obama.
Too bad so many here at home in the U.S. on both the left and right are too damn busy re-fighting the civil-war to recall what's transpired in just over the last two and one-half years outside their myopic little bubble enviornment.
And again David... Great piece here.
~OGD~
October 12, 2009 4:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
What I am trying to say is that with the prize the Nobel Committee is trying to support "a certain idea of the civilized world and that Obama's rhetoric contributes to that "idea". Obviously as far as "reality" itself, little has changed for the moment.
October 13, 2009 1:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just a FYI while Gandhi did not receive it during his life, once he was Assassinated in 1948 he was no longer eligible. The Nobel Peace Prize cannot be awarded posthumously .
October 12, 2009 4:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't know this, but it's a pretty good policy I think. Why not limit the thing to people who can still potentially make a difference?
Gandhi's difference is a legend unto itself. Obama still has a lot to deliver. Make history further vindicate the award. Good.
October 12, 2009 5:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I, for one, am just sick of people passing their uninformed judgments about whether Obama "deserved" the Nobel. It's very simple in my view. The Nobel Committee charged with awarding the Peace Prize decided Obama deserved it and therefore he deserves it. The committee is the only legitimate judge of who "deserves" the prize. My guess is that 99.9999% of those passing judgment on the Committee don't know anything about how or why the recipients of this award are picked, they know nothing of the criteria, etc... fuck em!
As for me, I'm delighted for the President and for all of us because I view it as much an award to every American who voted for him. I'm looking forward to how he uses the acceptance platform to forward his agenda on the international stage. I hope he takes some bold step, but we'll see.
October 12, 2009 5:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Were you trying to be funny?
I'm new here, and it's hard for me to distinguish between parodists and psychos.
A Nobel Peace Prize for everybody who voted for Obama!
That's an incredibly funny idea, unless you're one of the psychos who believes it.
October 12, 2009 10:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
When I read your title, my first thought was, "Who are you and what have you done with David."
I'm glad to see you're safe and sound and still riding your one-trick pony. :)
October 12, 2009 7:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
YaMon
I got a bit excited, meself.
October 12, 2009 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed. While Obama the President has not yet had time to deserve a Nobel Prize beyond the re-installation of the better idea of America (nothing to sneeze at if it leads the American voters to elect politicians who act in accord with that vision), Candidate Obama does deserve the Nobel Prize for persuading the American Voters to pry the hands of the Rethuglicans off the levers of the greatest war machine ever built on the planet.
Can anyone listening to Lynne Cheney believe that if her side had won, that we would not now be at war in Iran? That McChrystal would not already have his troops?
Obama is not a pacifist but he does understand that some goals cannot be achieved by force of arms and that negotiation should be the first, not the last, resort.
I've not been an Obama fan. Prior to the election I feared that he would destabilize Pakistan and was providing propaganda fodder there for Al Qaeda. That he was not a good bargainer -- tending to make his best offer first and that in the bargaining cultures this would be misunderstood as weakness and that attempts would be made that would not be made if McCain were describing with crystal clarity where the hair triggers were (and scaring everybody, including in the US, half to death in the first place.) However, Al Qaeda as it did in Iraq is overplaying its hand and committing so much carnage among people who would otherwise be disposed to be sympathetic to its aims that it is hampering its own effectiveness.
We shall see.
October 12, 2009 10:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
So what you're saying is that Bush was honest, Obama is not, and that only liars deserve Nobel Prizes?
I have read Chomsky (well, some of his actual scholarly stuff on linguistics and "Hegemony or Survival"), so I assume what you're saying is that the consensual fantasy world that Chomsky asserts the Western World inhabits is supported by Obama but was denied by Bush.
I'm not sure why that earns anyone a Nobel prize, but hey, it's been a slow year for peace.
October 12, 2009 7:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
As to the prize itself, all sorts of people have received it. In my opinion it is more a statement about the moment it is given than about the person it is given to.
October 13, 2009 3:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
In that spirit, I'll agree with you about why Nobels are given. I mean... Kissinger got one. Al Gore got one!
October 14, 2009 3:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is ironic that Kramer from CNBC (not Seinfeld) is speaking right now on the second showing of Matthews. Telling us what a good job My President is doing with the economy but that we need a new stimulus. I mentioned this in Wendy's blog.
There were times last year that he would look up and say that an Obama Administration would destroy the economy.
I have that funny feeling that if some charlatan like Kramer thinks he is doing a good job, we are in big trouble.
The mask idea is hard to argue with except we would never have the stimulus package that has already been passed. Never have the new SChips program, never have the investigations we now have through the DOJ, never have the pressure we now have on contractors, never have the smaller program for homeowners,......
Yeah. There is a long way to go David and I become depressed about it.
I have myself sung Barack Obama's praise and I wll keep on as time goes on.
I love Noam. I have read and listened to him my whole life. But he is a socialist like I am, he hates the entire American Capitalist system that is owned and controlled by an oligarchy.
But the American People are none to bright sometimes...like 1972 1980, 1984, 1988 & 2004.
I love our President. But one man cannot turn it all around without 40% unemployment.
Oh well, good metaphor. Good essay.
October 12, 2009 7:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Barack Obama is a brand. And the Obama brand is designed to make us feel good about our government while corporate overlords loot the Treasury, our elected officials continue to have their palms greased by armies of corporate lobbyists, our corporate media diverts us with gossip and trivia and our imperial wars expand in the Middle East. Chris Hedges
Norwegians are so shopaholic.
October 13, 2009 11:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the link and quote from the great war corerespondent Chris Hedges.
One true voice, and then all this nonsense.
October 13, 2009 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's a bit more than that... but not much, I'm afraid.
October 13, 2009 1:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
And now, for a word from the Democrats' own personal bête noire.
October 13, 2009 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh I still love Ralph. After something I saw a month or so ago on Moyers and something on CSPAN I was going to do a blog on his relationship with the Carter Administration.
There were all these Nader's Raiders in the Carter Administration.
The ideal amidst the real.
RALPH GOT SO GODDAMNABLY MAD AT HIS OLD TROOPS.
You cannot elect a gadfly and you certainly would not wish a gadfly to be your leader.
IT DOES NOT WORK.
Oh and dont ask. I have no idea what I was attempting to get at. Thank you for the link I guess.
October 13, 2009 1:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
The thing I like best about Obama is his luck. I hope it wears off on all the rest of us.
You remember Napoleon's question when picking his generals, "Is he lucky?"
All great men are lucky, but not all lucky men are great.
Let's keep our fingers crossed.
October 13, 2009 3:05 PM | Reply | Permalink