Posted on October 11, 2009 by by jr

Why isn’t the mainstream media asking the hard question:

“What had Barack Obama actually achieved to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?”

Applications for nominees closed on February 1st 2009. At that time President Obama had only been in office for less than two weeks.

Within that two week period he had already ordered an extension of the bombing regimes into Pakistan which resulted in the death of innocent civilians, talked about refocusing and increasing the allied presence in Afghanistan and ordered secret nuclear talks with Syria and Iran. (hardly peace-like moves). To his credit he did indicate that he was going to close Guantanamo within a year… but since then we have seen that this will probably not be the case.

Some critics are arguing that it wasn’t about what he achieved in those first two weeks of office, but about the campaign his people ran up to the US election offering the people of America the promise of change, and that for this he should be considered visionary.

Words and promises are cheap, especially in politics.

In Australia we have heard it all before:

• “We set ourselves this first goal: by 1990 no Australian child will be living in poverty,” by former Prime Minister Mr Hawke on June 23, 1987 at an election campaign launch. This was later corrected by the party spin doctors to read and mean “By 1990 no Australian child need live in poverty.”
• Former Prime John Howard, in June 1996 when taking government, stating that some of his party’s election promises were “core” promises, and some were “non-core”, and that his government (in the light of the unexpectedly poor finances it had inherited) would keep only core promises.
• And at a local Canberra level, most recently the Stanhope government adopting the mantra that some of the promises and targets they pledged to achieve and never will, simply become “aspirational” in nature.

My argument is that had there been actual measurable outcomes that merited the awarding of the Nobel Peace then there is no reason for it not to have been awarded. However as I see events there are an increasing number of promises where the American President is now back-pedaling or simply failing to deliver as promised.

The failure to deliver was succinctly summed up on Friday evening in the opening skit of the American Comedy show “Saturday Night Live” (before there was any public knowledge of the awarding of the Nobel prize):

http://www.dailymotion.com/videoxap296

Perhaps it would have been better to have nominated and considered President Obama this time next year when there would be a true track record of his actual achievements towards genuine “peace”.

Does Obama really deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for what he has done?, 5.0 out of 5 based on 3 ratings

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