Nobel Prize Joke

There was a time when the Nobel Peace Prize meant something. It went to men and women who earned their stature with lives of courage such as Andrei Sakharov who openly opposed the oppression of the former Soviet Union and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who gave his life for the cause of equality in which he believed.

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Giving the prize to Barack Hussein Obama has rendered it a joke. In office less than a year, Obama has, in the words of a recent Saturday Night Live satirical skit, done “nothing” to deserve what once was one of the highest international accolades anyone could receive. In addition to men and women of genuine repute, in more recent times the pathetic Norwegian committee responsible for selecting the winners of the Peace Prize have given it to the father of modern terrorism, Yassir Arafat whose Palestinian Liberation Organization continues to make war on Israel when it isn’t also defending itself against Hamas, another Palestinian group equally devoted to the annihilation of a sovereign nation and its people. Other winners include Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations who presided over one of the worst scandals of that scandal-ridden institution, the Food-For-Oil scheme that enriched Saddam Hussein and who had previously turned a blind eye to the Rwandan intra-tribal massacres. Earlier the award had gone to the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces, now more famed for the rape of populations they are sent to protect and idleness while others are slaughtered. Among the Americans who earned the prize in recent times were Jimmy Carter and Al Gore. Carter, a former U.S. President, has disgraced himself by his appalling anti-Semitism and friendship with the most scurrilous figures on the world scene. Al Gore, a former Vice President, will be written into the history books as having been the leading voice for the greatest hoax, global warming, of the modern era. Begun in 1901, the Nobel Peace Prize once stood for true achievement. It has long since become a pathetic instrument by a handful of men on the committee tasked with awarding it. The award to President Obama is a blatant effort to influence his decision on the conflict in Afghanistan. The official reason for the award to Obama was “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Perhaps the committee had in mind his extraordinary world tour at the beginning of his presidency to apologize for what he perceived to be America’s failures. In reality, the only thing his brief tenure in office has earned him is the contempt of the world’s leaders for his endless posturing, his preference for words over action, and his constant search for the world’s center stage spotlight. Little wonder that Reuters reported that the announcement was greeted with “gasps of astonishment from journalists” in Oslo. They aren’t the only ones who are astonished.