The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.
Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.
Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.
For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that "Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges."
Oslo, October 9, 2009

What is going on in our world?
Where is the truly spirit of the peace Nobel Prize?
How can a person be awarded and at the same time be on active war in several places around the world?

This nomination fell as a bomb on my thoughts and the immediate thing that I asked to myself was “where is this world going?” I like the president of the USA. He is still a good choice to try changing what he inherited from Bush and Americans are satisfied with his work. However I think it is extremely premature to award him. A person should receive some prize for what he or she has done and not for his or her wishing of discovery, willing to change something, effort in some project. I mean, first you should expose your theory, show your results and then be awarded if it justifies. Not the opposite, as it happened just now.

If one wants to be ironic, the motives of this surprising award were/are:
- He still didn’t close the Guantanamo prison;
- High risk prisoners and enemies continue to be tortured, threatened and treated in the margin of the US constitution;
- He authorized CIA to capture enemies and take them to countries where human rights are not respected;
- In Pakistan the civilian attacks multiply and we count tenths of people dead per week, despite the presence of American troops;
- He is (directly or indirectly) continuing with the oil wars in several countries, naming Iran, Uganda, Djibouti, Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan causing (again directly or indirectly) the dead of millions (yes millions!) of people;
- He just approved the sending of extra 40,000 troops to Afghanistan;
- He authorized the order to kill in case of a pirate attack to a ship (instead of trying the diplomatic way to solve the problem);
- He is doing a great job in the relationship between Palestine and Israeli by prolonging this important conflict and again by letting thousands of people to die;
- He did nothing (yet) for the global warming problem.

The man pointed almost as a saver of a nation is falling on the nets of corruption, hidden motives when helping someone and influences from really powerful people, specifically located on the fields of oil industry and banking.

Washington Post wrote: “Obama is pushing to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, stop Iran's nuclear enrichment program, pass legislation to slow global warming, and strengthen international nuclear nonproliferation protocols”

“Pushing to restart”? And meanwhile he is 1 million euro richer (not that he needs the money) and people continue to die! Trying to change the world is not so difficult but it should be recognized and motivated (however, not by the Nobel Prize). Changing it is the great challenge and if Obama changed something was the promises he made on the elections compared to what he is doing now.

The same newspaper says then “In some respects, the prize could make his [Obama’s] approach more difficult on issues as diverse as climate change and Afghanistan, where Obama has largely failed to secure significant new resources from NATO allies eight years into the war”. Isn’t this obvious?!

“Obama is the world leading speaking” does not mean he is the one deciding the meaning of the word “peace”. There are always two sides in a war and many times it is impossible to calculate which one is the good before the consequences are noted. I hope I can say this was the right decision in some years.

Once again, this is not a direct critic to the President of the USA. In my personal opinion, his general ideas fit with my beliefs. I just do not understand how a prize that is attributed for peace can be given to someone on war with half of the world. There are other ways to stimulate the “good work” made till now.

We should not put the cart in front of the bulls!