The President's Nobel Peace Prize

The other day, suddenly and unexpectedly, and after only nine months on the job, President B. Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and now the usual ogres that fill the ranks of the American Unthinking are beside themselves with apoplexy and rage. In the lead is the No. I villain among the news media, the FNN (short for that profane and sorry disservice called the "Fox Neo-Nazi or Nasty News") Just about every day since then they seem to have run some item of disapproval, with headlines on the order of "Pundits Pound Obama Peace Prize." I won't and can't quote what these items say, because reading Fox is bad for one's mental health, but I can guess with a fair amount of accuracy.

As soon as I heard about this award, I knew that one of the most interesting things about it would be the many and highly varied responses to it, of which one of the dumbest has been the contention that it will give fresh ammunition to Obama's detractors, to which my answer would be, "So what? Those suckers would react with drawn fangs even if he were to observe that the Sun rises in the East and sets down in the West." I saw that the reasons for his getting that prize were a matter that needed a lot of reflection -- something into which people like pundits and media people were not likely to put much effort and time, even if they had the equipment. So it was clear that it would be dangerous to jump out immediately with some say-so about the matter.

Michael Moore, the celebrated progressive moviemaker, was not so prudent, and like FNN and others of that ilk, with whom he is normally not aligned at all, he fell into the trap hook, line, and sinker, and the news had barely been announced when he rushed out an article with a theme on the order of "Congratulations, Mr. President on winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Now Please Go Out and Earn It." He was thinking of the occupation of Iraq, though that is being quietly wound down as well as it can be,at Mr. Obama's direction, and of the continued hostilities in Afghanistan, though that is not an easy matter to resolve, with both being wars that were started by Obama's predecessor and have been running for years longer than Obama has been in office.

In his haste Moore seems to have been blissfully unaware of how he was aligning himself with the forces represented by the likes of the FNN and against which all his work on film and in print till now had been directed. It is the curse of some Progressives to jump into this unforgiving mode whenever someone who is on their side doesn't do exactly what they decree, and a great many Democrats regularly receive their badly misdirected stings.

In Moore's case it took his wife to make him see the light, and a couple of days later he came out with an article titled "Second Thoughts," in which he was much more charitable toward the President.

In general the world leaders looked with considerably greater kindliness and perception on Obama getting the prize than did the pundits that the FNN found so much to its liking. The prime ministers and others picked up the point in the Norwegians' thinking that those chronic Obama disapprovers had no chance to sense -- namely that giving him the prize really amounted to a gigantic sigh of relief, and it had been given in recognition of a new direction that the U.S. is apparently taking under its new leadership, a position of much more accommodation to the needs of the rest of the world, instead of throwing its weight around heedlessly and recklessly, as had been the case during the previous administation. And Fidel Castro had the same thought that I had, that the prize was as much a repudiation of the previous administration as it was anything else. It highlighted the total lack of any prospect that GW Bush would ever have been considered for such a recognition of peacemaking. And since that hapless bygoner was so much the boy of the side whose horns are blown so relentlessly by the FNN, that accounts for their anger and helpless tears of indignation at this act that was so far beyond their influence and control.

Having managed to achieve a few painful needle pricks in the matters of people taken aboard by the White House, the Forces of the American Darkness now seem to be hoping that the President will apologize for receiving the prize. Thereby they assume the "Old Massa" stance yet again, which is their habit when all else fails.

Actually giving that award tio B. Obama was a master stroke by the Norwegians, because it was in itself their contribution to world peace. It will strengthen the President's much more benign hand, and meanwhile in whom better are such hopes to be invested than the President of such an influential organization as the U.S. And in Obama's case, peace and conciliations are precisely the directions he has taken in these first few months in many matters, and even in Afghanistan, where he believes Americans, militarily or otherwise, can have some role in forestalling further attempts at setting up terror bases.

His ignoring the efforts of some Israeli thinking to expend American time, money, equipment, integrity, and lives by pushing the U.S. into attacking Iran is enough to merit getting a Nobel Peace Prize right there.