I thought it would go away quickly, the loud complaint that President Obama didn’t deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. But, no. Our opponents have no real material contributions (let alone solutions) to real problems, so they have to latch on to any kind of personal issue they can, no matter how ridiculous.
Birthers, deathers, and now the deniers. “Deniers” let’s call the people who deny that Obama deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, because they claim he has “no accomplishment” to justify it (even in the face of an enormous, certifiable accomplishment toward world peace, which I will get to shortly).
I’m probably a poor person to defend Mr. Obama against these claims, considering that he’s yet to prove to me that he really represents me on most issues. But, when we defend the rights of others we defend our own rights. Obama is being unfairly denigrated, and primarily for political reasons. An injustice is an injustice. Every injustice deserves to be redressed, although, shockingly, that isn’t always feasible.
We saw this with the calls for Obama to release his birth certificate (even in the face of overwhelming proof of his birth in Hawaii). We saw it again with the claims that healthcare reform would create government death panels (even in the face of corporate death panels). Birthers, Deathers, and Deniers. Personal hostility and over-the-top attacks are sure signs of a losing argument. Our opposition is a bunch of losers. They don’t have any substantive arguments to make. All they can do is claim that Obama doesn’t deserve the award he got, denying reality, because he obviously does.
When I wrote Sunday that the slow pundits are not Nobel material, I thought I was late to the game. That after the Sunday talk shows this issue would simply go away. Oh, how wrong I was! No, this will be around for a long time. Why? Because it is the same as the birth certificate issue (no matter how much proof you give, there’s not enough for some people) and the death panels issue (no matter what the facts are they can’t contradict what the bogus believe). Gullible people can be persuaded that Obama didn’t deserve the Nobel Prize, so the opposition will continue to push it.
Thus, Monday we had denier Liz Cheney out there claiming that Obama is unworthy. She thinks that Obama should snub the Nobel voters:
[Send a military mom to pick up the prize so that the Nobel committee gets the message.] Each one of them sleeps soundly at night because of the U.S. armed forces.
Carefully forgetting, perhaps, that Europe has more men and women under arms than the U.S. Let’s not just insult the Nobel committee, let’s insult our NATO allies!
If you look at the language of the citation, you can see that they talk about President Obama ruling in a way that makes sense to the majority of people of the world. You know, Americans don’t elect the President to do that. We elect the President to defend our national interest.
Carefully forgetting, perhaps, that the U.S. is a very small part of the world (literally 4%, if you count heads) and that not going off half cocked does, in fact, defend our national interest. Even if that’s all we really elected the President to do. (Not that the Constitution would matter or anything.)
I think the President himself understands he didn’t earn this prize.
I guess Liz Cheney wouldn’t understand humility. But, whether he understands it or not is immaterial, because he obviously deserves it, based on his accomplishments.
Not that anyone on the opposition side would even acknowledge that he has accomplished squat. That would ruin the narrative. Denier Christopher Hitchens pushed this meme on Chris Matthews and the hapless Mark Green on Hardball:
Matthews: What is wrong with him [Obama] taking it?
Hitchens: Well, it would be like giving someone an Oscar in the hope that he would one day make a good motion picture.
Sorry, Hitchens. You can talk over the other guy on Hardball or push the big lie on Matthews, but you can’t pull the wool over our eyes. Perhaps you don’t want to see the accomplishment, because it represents an enormous defeat for your side. If you were in a forest would you deny it is a forest just because all you can see are trees?
Obama has an enormous accomplishment that furthered world peace in a way that few other Nobel laureates have. Their accomplishments are not diminished by that, but let me say that to bring the Mideast closer to peace (as Begin and Sadat did, for example) is no more of an accomplishment. In that case, peace in that region has huge implications for peace on earth. It’s a big deal. But, what Obama did also has huge implications for world peace. And, his accomplishment directly affects the entire world, not just a small chunk of it.
So, why does Obama deserve the Peace Prize? What is Obama’s great accomplishment? His accomplishment is winning the presidency of the United States. This is the act that shows us the meaning. He won this battle against a party with a stated aim of making the world bow to us through military might. The voters were told that to elect Obama was to weaken the U.S. They rejected that. Obama put together a campaign that enlisted the American people in a vision of the world where we would not win through military might, but instead by engaging other countries with us to work together for the good of all. Obama, heading the Democrats, defeated the party of war. Imagine what that party would be doing now if we had given them another four or eight years to take us further down the killing road.
The election could have gone the other way. Had not Obama made the case for moving away from war, this country would still be on course to use military might to get its way. The preference of John McCain was to bomb Iran to get it to give up nuclear weapons. Obama has chosen negotiation. The preference of Republicans is still to go to war when we can. The preference of Obama is to find a way to work with other countries to resolve differences. This is not a theoretical difference, nor a hoped-for future accomplishment. It’s real. It’s now. It was sealed and certified with the presidential election.
Only the skill of the Obama team at soothing the American voters, despite attempts by the opposition to inject as much fear into them as possible, made it possible for them to vote for him, and in doing that to set the world on a different (and more peaceful) course. It does not require the signature on a peace pact to further world peace. Securing the November 2008 elections secured peace, by and large, for the world at large.
The Nobel committee was not hanging out in hope. They did not award this to Obama in the hopes of future performance. They gave him what he deserved, the accolade of peace bringer. I hope he will continue to deserve it, but it is clear he deserved it as of the day he won the presidency of the United States. Let us celebrate his achievement and (heaving a big sigh of relief) the fact that the American people backed him up.
The entire Republican campaign can be summarized as this message to voters: Be afraid. The country can only be safe if you let us go out with bombs and bullets to defend you. We will wage war on your behalf and keep you safe.
The Obama response to that was: Be not afraid. The world is with us and we can be safe if we engage with that world and work jointly to overcome hostility.
Who won? Obama. That is his accomplishment.
[Unattributed citations above are from Countdown and The Ed Show.]