Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize for his promise, not for his performance
Barak Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize that honoured the first-year U.S. president more for promise than achievement and drew both praise and skepticism around the globe. Describing himself as surprised and deeply humbled , Obama said he would accept the award as a call to action’ to confront the global challenges of the 21st century. Obama created a new international politics. only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the worlds attention and given its people hope for a better future . The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples’ citing his fledgling push for nuclear disarmament and his outreach to the Muslim world. Obama, took office as the first black US President in January, has been widely credited with improving America’s global image after the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush, who alienated both friends and foes with go-it-alone politics like the 2003 US led invasion of Iraq.
Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki called the Nobel decision ‘ hasty’. The appropriate time for awarding such a prize is when foreign military forces leave Iraq and Afghanistan and when one stands by the rights of the oppressed Palestinian people. “We are in need of actions, not sayings”’ Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said. He continued ,” If there is no fundamental and true change in American policies toward the acknowledgement of the rights of the Palestinian people, I think this prize won’t move us forward or backward.”
In Nobel tradition, nominations are kept secret since its inception, unless those making the submission go public about their picks. This year’s nominations included Colombian activist Piedad Cordoba, Afghan woman’s rights activist Simi Samar and Denis Mukwege, a physician in war-torn Congo who opened a clinic to help rape victims. Nominators for the prize are broad and include former laureates, current and former members of the committee and their staff, members of national governments and legislatures, university professors of law, theology, social sciences, history and philosophy, leaders of peace research and foreign affairs institutes and members of international courts of law. But critics called the Nobel Committee’s this year’s decision premature , given that Obama has achieved few tangible gains as he grapples with challenges ranging from the War in Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to nuclear standoffs with Iran and North Korea. He won the award on the same day he was convening his war counsel to weigh whether to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan to turn the tide against a resurgent Taliban.
His troubles at home include a battered economy and a fierce debate over healthcare reform that have chipped away at his once –lofty approval ratings and a Republican opposition that has moved well past the honeymoon phase. When Mohter Teresa of Calcutta received the award in 1979 as Catholic org points out she stated in her reception speech “I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war , a direct killing- direct murder by the mother herself. Because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you kill me-there is nothing between.” Obama has denied repeatedly that his reform would fund abortion but as Fact Check org. stated in August, as for the House bill as it stands now, it’s a matter of fact that it would allow both a public plan an newly subsidized private plans to cover all. Critics continue saying that awarding Piece prize to Obama is an insult to the memory of former award winners like the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jody Williams, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Dalai Lama, Lech Walesa and others who put their lives and careers on the line to struggle for peace and human dignity to give this award to a man who has accomplished so little and who in fact in his short term in office has managed to expand one war, to block the international condemnation of the brutality of another and who has done nothing to reverse his own country’s leading role as a promoter of war and international violence.
Under Obama Guantanamo’s terrorist prison is still in operation and is holding people whom even the government admits are guilty of nothing. Under him the US has also blocked the Goldstone Report which condemns Israel of war crimes in its recent assault on Gaza.a nd. Under Obama the US military in Afghanistan has continued to slaughter disproportionate numbers of civilians through its wanton use of aerial bombardment, pilotless Predator drowns and antipersonnel weaponry. His administration continues to refuse to sign the international anti-landmine treaty. And under Obama, the US continues its role as not only the leading producer and exporter of arms, but also as the major initiator of wars in the world. Under Obama the US continues to outspend the rest of the world’s nations combined on its military. He continues threatening Iran though not in the same tone as Bush did. So critics around the world continue to say that it is a travesty. They again say that It is not as much of a travesty as when Henry Kissinger , a war criminal of the first order who as an architect of the latter stages of the Indochina War and was personally responsible for the slaughter of well over a million innocent people, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 while that war was still raging but the awarding of the latest Noebl peace Prize to Obama is travesty enough. Henry Kissinger, the US Secretary of state, along with the North Vietnamese negotiator, Le Duc Tho, won this prize even when the war was going on . the Nobel committee, choice for peace prize has been criticized before when Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin won it in 1978, compared to those controversial recipients one must say that Obama is far better a choice , as he has visibly made some efforts towards peace building in some parts of the world
Obama’s early pronouncement to close Guantanamo, to bring the troops home from Iraq, to want a nuclear weapon-free world, to deliver great speech to the Islamic world in Cairo to eliminate the useless term ‘ The War on Terror’ and put an end to torture-have all made us and the rest of the world feel a bit more safe considering the disaster of the past eight years. In eight months he has done and taken his country in a much more sane direction. The Taliban is a different matter and it’s a problem for the people of Afghanistan to resolve-just as America did in 1776, the French did in 1789, the Cubans did in 1959, the Nicaraguans did in 1979 and the people of the East Berlin id in 1989. One thing is certain though all revolutions by people who wish to be free –they ultimately have to bring about that freedom themselves. The outside force cannot really make it happen which Barack Obama must understand.
It is true that Obama has not yet achieved anything substantive towards peace. But in Europe and much of the world, Obama is praised for bringing the US closer to mainstream global thinking on such issues as climate change and multilateralism. A 25-nation poll of 27000 people released in July by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found double digit boosts to the percentage of people viewing the US favorably in countries around the world. That indicator had plunged across the world under President George Bush. The award appeared to be at least party a slap at Bush from a committee that harshly criticized Obama’s predecessor for his largely unilateral military action in the wake of the September 11 terror attack.
And Obama at least has changed the tone America uses to speak to the world generally and the Muslim world specially. His speech in Cairo, his first week interview on al-Arabiya and the extraordinary conciliatory holiday video he sent to Iran are all substantial illustrations of his intention to lead the troubled world to peace process. His willingness to sit down and negotiate with Iran rather than threaten and berate like Bush has already produced tangible results. He has at least preliminarily broken from Bush’s full-scale subservience to Israelis to cease settlement activities even though it subjected him to the sorts of domestic political risks and vicious smears that have made prior president s afraid to do so. His decision to use his first full day in office to issue executive orders to close Guantanamo, ostensibly ban torture and bar CIA black sites was an important symbol offered to the world. He refused to reflexively support the right-wing, civil-liberty crushing coup leaders in Honduras, merely because they were pro-American and anti-Chavez, this siding with the vast bulk of Latin American’s governments –a move George Bush, or John AcCain , never would have made. Thus foreign affairs is one area where he has shown genuine potential for some constructive changes and has on occasion, merited real praise for taking steps in the general peace direction which this prize is meant to honour. The peace prize was awarded to encourage ongoing peace efforts. Let Obama be a true man of peace


Md. Masum Billah
Senior Manager: BRAC Education Programme, PACE
( He writes regularly on various national and international issues)
Phone: 9355253 (home), 01714-091431(cell)
Email: mmbillah2000@yahoo.com