Obama Does Not Deserve The Nobel Peace Prize

The fact that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize came as a surprise to many, including the U.S. president himself, since he has not accomplished any real achievement that would render him worthy of the prize, let alone the fact that he’s only been in office for nine months. In other words, he is still in the process of feeling his way along a path laden with dangerous booby traps, on both a domestic and an international stage.

It is customary for the prize to be awarded to those who play the most important role in ending wars and armed conflict. For this reason, we cannot consider Obama as having fulfilled the requirements for the prize, since the man is leading a country still in the middle of two bloody wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and thus carries the responsibility of the highest commander of the armed forces.

It is true that Obama stuck to his promises regarding the withdrawal of troops from war-ridden Iraq “voluntarily.” Yet, at the same time, Obama was resolute in continuing America’s second war in Afghanistan, as a “necessary war.” And it is expected that in the coming days Obama will endorse Commander General Stanley McChrystal’s request to increase U.S. forces in Afghanistan by 40,000 soldiers.

Whoever involves himself in two wars at the same time, sending planes to bomb innocent civilians along the Afghani-Pakistani border on a daily basis – under the guise of the chasing terrorists – cannot be called a man of peace, regardless of whether that man has won the most important prize in this field.

On this occasion, the Nobel prize was awarded on the basis of “intentions” and not on the basis of “achievements,” as if it were an attempt to draw the young American president into the peace camp, at the same time distancing him from waging another war. It is too early to say that this method, whether right or wrong, will produce the fruits it intends to reap. The U.S. president said in his speech yesterday, in which he welcomed the prize, that he will not tolerate nuclear powers that constitute a threat, in direct reference to Iran. But to be fair, he did also say that countries have the right to posses peaceful nuclear programs as long as they clearly and honestly state their intentions.

The Middle East and specifically the Palestinian issue is the real testing ground for the president’s peaceful intentions and his ability to live up to the label “peacemaker.” It is paradoxical that the committee overseeing the giving of the prize relied on his speech delivered in Cairo University five months ago. In it he addressed the Islamic world, promising to follow a conciliatory foreign policy based on shared respect and interests, as if giving a reason to award him the prize.

Even though he’s been making those efforts for six months – sending a peace envoy to the region more than once and meeting Palestinian and Israeli officials more than once in Washington and New York – the president remains at square one and hasn’t accomplished anything. President Obama is unable to freeze the building of hundreds of settlements on occupied Arab land; instead he’s consented to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conditions.

These aren’t the characteristics of someone who can make peace. If he can’t even convince his closest allies of his opinion, how can he possibly succeed in ending a conflict that is over a hundred years old and is considered the most complicated of its kind?

Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama in this way will not do much for him, nor will it reverse his declining popularity in his country, particularly if the number of losses in the armed forces or civilians in Afghanistan continues to increase. Nor will it do much to prevent him resorting to war should the present round of negotiations with Iran fail and the limitations of an economic blockade become realized.

It is sure that this prize, the Nobel Peace Prize, has lost a great deal of its value and importance as a result of the hasty decision to award it to the U.S. president who’s still in the first stages of his presidency, in which his domestic and foreign policies are yet to crystallize.