When I heard that President Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, my first reaction was just to laugh. It represents a level of absurdity beyond which no other reaction is frankly possible. Is there anyone out there who honestly can take this seriously?
I still think it looks like a chicken's foot.
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Peace should never be its own goal, because peace is a double edged sword. Peace is not merely the absence of war – not meaningful peace, anyway. Could Europe truly have been at peace had everyone refused to fight the Nazis? Was there peace in Iraq before 2002 or even 1990? Are the North Koreans who have to eat grass and bark to survive in Kim Jong Il’s paradise at peace?
There is peace in slavery, and the pathetic peace of those who never take a risk. You don’t need liberty to have peace – just a Master who makes sure it’s not worth your while to make a fuss. The ultimate peace can be found in the grave.
I wonder if that last part is why Yassir Arafat also got this award…
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Liberty is the purpose of government. Liberty requires peace, for there can be no freedom in the anarchy of war. But liberty also cannot exist in the “peace” of surrender. Governments – and presidents – of free people must never forget that peace is a means to an end, not the end itself.
As for me, I think that Reagan (who actually deserves the Prize) had it right – we achieve Peace through Strength. The other way around never really works out, no matter what that Kucinich bumper sticker I saw the other day said.
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Obama’s foreign policy has been a profile in weakness and fecklessness since he took office. Afghanistan deteriorates. Iran continues to develop their nuclear technology, and to lie about it while they launch missiles. North Korea has stepped up their own missile launches so much so that the news here barely notices any more. Even the French excoriate us for our spinelessness in the face of evil. A personal appeal from the President himself can’t even convince the Olympic Committee to take our graft!
What is so frightening about the award is that the international community, or at least a small cabal of Scandinavian hippies, is endorsing this weakness and fecklessness. There are a lot of bad people in the world who stand to benefit from America’s weakness, and who will applaud this endorsement of Obama’s present course and apparent future plans. That more than anything should make us question that course.
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If America stops being the Big Dog on the block, that doesn’t mean the world will be without a dominant super power. It just means someone else will step up to the role.
And that’s when we – and millions upon millions of people all over the world who safely enjoy the aegis we provide and fund for them – have to truly worry about those other forms of “peace.”
Great post.
If the Nobel committee doesn’t even take their own award seriously why should we? It is precisely because of people such as these that the international organizations they are so fond of are so utterly incapable of keeping the peace and protecting the innocent.
As you point out, someone else will fill the void in the absence of American power. The US is the only nation that is both morally and militarily capable of deterring or defeating the world’s bad actors. The decline of America does not portend well for the world.
Whenever the US has retreated from the world or portrayed weakness it has emboldened the most sinister regimes and they have responded with aggression. I can’t help but think of the end of this
Man: He said, “There’s a storm coming.”
Sarah: I know.
I was supposed to put a link there near the end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrSx20my5_w
Exactly. The motto of the college I went to (translated from Latin) is “From Knowledge, Sea Power”. I proposed for my own class motto a continuation of the equation: “From Sea Power, Peace”. It was accepted. In hindsight, I should have given credit to President Reagan, but I think that was understood by most people who pay attention to such things (too few, sadly). Freedom is easy to define for me. It’s the ability to live one’s life exactly as one wishes limited only by the expectation that that principle be applied to others. Applying that principle to one’s self, much less extending it to anyone else, is an untenable philosophy from a position of weakness.
Mahan might have been more appropriate for giving credit, since he created the original philosophy behind the 600 Ship Navy.
I think perhaps the award is so much more meaningless because it doesn’t recognize those actually striving for peace. The award going to Ghandi or Mother Theresa made sense. No one threw their arms up in the air and said “Wait a minute, wait a minute, THOSE guys?!??”
My grandfather was so incensed that I requested he let me look up who decides the Peace Prize. (He is constantly fascinated by my abilities on the Interwebs.) And once we came across the answer, that politicians appoint them, he said, “Well, what do you expect?”
He has a point. Look at the Scandahoovians in our own country. They’re just too tall to make sense. I think it’s the lack of oxygen up there… 😉