Obama Peace Prize Reaction

Mine was to burst out laughing.

It seems that most people think it's too soon. That includes a worthy recipient of the award Lech Walesa.

Mickey Kaus says Obama should turn it down. Yeah, right.

Nor surprisingly, there are idiots who think this is AWESOME.

Behold David Ignatius in the Washington Post.

The Nobel Peace Prize award to Barack Obama seems so goofy -- even if you’re a fan, you have to admit that he hasn’t really done much yet as a peacemaker. But there’s an aspect of this prize that is real and important -- and that validates Obama’s strategy from the day he took office.

The Obama team came to the White House convinced that one of America’s biggest problems in the world was “reflexive anti-Americanism,” as Obama put it in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly two weeks ago. They saw America’s unpopularity as a big national-security problem, and they were right.

So they set about winning hearts and minds (the Nobel judges among them) from Day One. Obama gave a series of speeches calculated to position him as the Un-Bush. He listed his achievements in that same U.N. speech -- halting torture, ordering the closure of Guantanamo, withdrawing from Iraq, backing negotiations on climate change, and paying America’s debts at the United Nations itself.

Europeans liked it, too, when the president picked a fight with Israel over settlements, and when he showed himself so determined to negotiate with Iran that he overlooked the fact that its government had stolen an election.

That’s what he’s being honored for, really: reconnecting America to the world and making us popular again.

High school kids want to be popular. Nations want to be prosperous, secure and in America's case, a force for good in the world. Those things don't usually lead to popularity because it means making hard choices and doing the right but often un-popular thing....you know, like a grown up.

Obama is making America popular again by talking us down and saying in effect, "We are nothing special, just one of the gang. We've been bad before and I'm sorry. I won't do anything you don't like."

That's morally bankrupt and dangerous. But who cares? We can eat lunch with the cool kids again!

No reaction yet from another Nobel Peace Prize winner...the Dalai Lama. You know the guy Mr. Wonderful refuses to meet with to placate the peace loving Chinese government.

Integrity.

posted by DrewM. at 10:10 AM

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