It's screaming all over the airwaves and fibre optics cable (yay to Charles Kao!): Obama seized the Nobel Peace prize. From the citation of the Nobel committee, it seems that they admire his world vision and hope to use the prize to cement his conviction in that area.
I dunno about that, but it sounds so lame. I mean, I bet there are people with way better world vision than Obama and have committed more (and, for some, achieved more). Even previous winners awarded for their vision, like Aung San Suu Kyi, has achieved something (in her case, winning a biased election by emphasis on nonviolence protest). Giving it to Obama reminds me of the case of Henry Kissinger, US Secretary of State during Nixon's and Ford's time, who also won the Peace prize in 1973. He was praised for his role in the negotiation for a ceasefire between North and South Vietnam, which, of course, as we all know, was broken very soon and developed into a full scale war with the eventual defeat of the latter.
It doesn't appear that I'm the only one to think this way. BBC's reader feedback seem to be flooded with disparaging comments, mostly towards the Nobel committee. If that's indicative of the general mood towards this decision, then I think the reputation for the Nobel committee for Peace is gonna take a bad hit.
This award for Obama is at best premature, at worst blinded. At the time of writing, Obama has yet to step forth to accept the prize. I dunno about him, but if I were him, I would've rejected the prize.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment