Nobel Prize and Obama
President Barack Obama’s Nobel win was a sad commentary on the Nobel Award Committee. I wonder how it slipped the minds of distinguished members of the Committee and how they could put President Obama on the same pedestal as Mother Teresa, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and Dalai Lama (earlier recipients of Nobel Peace Prize) so early?
Does Obama possess any sterling quality that can be compared to that of those great recipients or has the President made any signal contribution to the humanity or global peace?
On the steps of the US Capitol, just a short distance of from where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a Dream” speech, Obama took oath on January 20 using the same Bible, which Abraham Lincoln did for his inauguration. In his victory speech, Obama told before hundreds and thousands of his supporters in Chicago that “Change has come to America”.
He also said: “The challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America‑–they will be met.
…We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus—and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; …that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in an era of peace.”
Well, what’s the President Obama done over the last nine months? What’s his performance report card: US economy is in a mess. Health care reforms are in a limbo. Unemployment rate is rising at an alarming rate. The number of credit card defaults keeps ascending. In the month of August only, as many as 210000 persons lost their jobs in the US.
In fact, Obama is really in the doghouse. The President is grappling with Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. Well, I agree they are the results of his predecessors’ flawed policies. And, it’s too early to make any final comment on his administrative acumen or international diplomacy.
But then, what prompted the Nobel Award Committee to choose Obama as this year’s Peace Prize winner? Maybe, this will be a subject of intense debate in the coming days.
But, there can be no gainsaying that the President has not shown evidence of super skills to lift America from the present predicament or made any significant steps to foster international brotherhood and global peace.
Has Obama provided any panacea to cure the present ills? Well, he has more than four years to show his honest intention to rid the world of “axis of evil”.
Every Miss World/Miss Universe contestant says she would work for world peace, but do they get the Nobel Peace Prize?
