From the position of a wistful and quixotic leftism, the announcement by the Nobel Committee of its decision to award President Barack Obama the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize created not so much ambivalence as dismay. And I have struggled with the meaning of the decision—interested less in having something new to say about it, and more in how to figure out how to feel about it, and how to discern its symbolic message, intended or not.
An obvious and immediate concern was that this award was tailor-made to serve the interests of the talk-show savvy political right.
And Rush Limbaugh had it right, observing quite correctly that this was “a political decision.” The Nobel Committee is a political committee, whose members are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament and are mostly comprised of persons who previously served in that body. The political leanings of many of their award decisions concerning Literature and Peace are not hard to see.
But Limbaugh goes a step further. He claims to know precisely what political message was intended. It is, he argues, an anti-surge-in-Afghanistan award..
Maybe. I’m less certain of how to read this decision as there are many ways to go. And perhaps a quick survey of several recent Nobel Peace Prize recipients who were also political figures may offer a longer historical view of the matter.
Surely the most dramatic award in recent memory was the 1978 decision to recognize two men: Anwar al-Sadat and Menachim Begin. It came again to three men in 1994: Yassar Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin. The Nobel Committee was clearly offering its support and congratulations to renewed Arab-Israeli peace processes. The 2002 decision to make the award to Jimmy Carter seemed similarly motivated. Yet it is a cautionary tale for all of us, the fact that these several awards spanning a quarter century did not advance the cause of Arab-Israeli understanding one iota. If peace is a process, then the process has stalled completely. Many in this generation think it has stalled permanently. They no longer even see peace as a practicable goal; they accept the state of semi-permanent violent confrontation as the way of that world. The Wall is one result.
The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to the 14th Dalai Lama in 1989 seemed a fairly clear shot fired across the Chinese bow. At least the Chinese government read it that way. Yet here again, the decision has changed little of substance “on the ground” in Tibet.
The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Mikhail Gorbachev the very next year (1990) was clearly intended as a gesture of support for his new politics of openness (glasnost) and democratizing reforms in the former Soviet Union. It was the opening of a door, a path, to fuller European-ness, with the requisite economic and political reforms. The came Yeltsin. Then came Putin. And the dream died.
The record of none of these frankly political Nobel decisions is positive. None of the political issues on which the Nobel committees intended to weigh-in have swung in the directions they desired.
And that is a cautionary tale for progressive politics today. So much depends on what the intended symbolics of this Nobel award actually were.
The irony of awarding a Peace Prize to a man currently conducting two wars, and considering the significant up-tick and expansion of one of them, was lost on no one. So if the political aim of the Prize was to weigh in on Iraq or Afghanistan, as Limbaugh suggests, then it will likely have as little impact as the previous awards I mentioned.
But what else might it be? The Nobel Peace Prize has also gone to other persons and other organizations—like Martin Luther King Jr. (1964), Mother Theresa (1979), “Doctors Without Borders” (1999). In these cases, and in many others, the Nobel Committee presumably wished to express solidarity with opposition leaders and the grassroots organizations they helped to inspire.
Might that be the subtle and half-hidden purpose of the Nobel Committee? Does this award to the current US President offer a more subtle reminder of his own roots in community organizing and his electoral refrain that change must come from the bottom up?
One can hope. For if the prize were to remind the President of those things, then it represents a powerful plea for creativity and imagination, rather than “stay-the-course” traditionalism in the face of the greatest issues before him: the economy, health care, and the wars.
Tags: afghanistan, arab israeli peace process, israel, jimmy carter, nobel peace prize, palestine, rush limbaugh
It's hard to establish "intent" in a court of law and I suspect even harder in this case. But you make very good guesses, that is, to " ... express solidarity with opposition leaders and the grassroots organizations they helped to inspire ... " and as a " ... reminder of his own roots in community organizing and his electoral refrain that change must come from the bottom up?" A few decades ago, the eloquent American democratic socialist Michael Harrington once said that the question is not: Is the economy internationalizing? Rather, it's: Will the internationalization of the economy be from top down or from the bottom up? Bush, in my view, represented the top down current. One of the conservative gas bags (there are "liberal" ones too) said sarcastically that they gave him the prize because he's not Bush. In a sense, that's right. The tide has turned. Obama, unlike his predecessor, wants to engage the international community and not behave in a unilaterally arrogant "your-with- us-or-your-against-us" kind of way. The tide has turned. And it's that momentum, I would guess, that the Nobel Prize committee are trying to encourage. May we help Obama keep up the momentum!
Last week when Chicago was denied the Olympics people as Rush Limbaugh and other "Ditto heads" along with the regular media charged Obama was denied because of the old "Eurocentic thinking" now your writer along with the God in Trust quesionable followers have found another excuse, or maybe your esteem writer and the Limbaugh's are reflective of the Nationalistic thought which America has been known for since here birth and exposed by the great defender of America democracy, Tocqueville the senselessness of it all!
One former Norwegian prime minister is head of the Peace Prize Committee. Another commented on the award to Obama at a reception at the South African Embassy the night of the award. He said that Obama has brought the U.S. back into the family of nation. That, of course is a major accomplishment in just eight months.
Words must come before action--they guide the action. Obama has, through his words, relaxed world tensions, and given hope to the world. Through his actions he has rejoined the UN by paying the dues. Heck, in Jesus's 3 years he just talked--except when he threw the Pharisees out of the temple. So obviously the hard Republican right wouldn't back their Christ for the prize! Words are obviously not enough!
Please note: The Pharisees did NOT run the Temple... Not even in the Christian gospels is this so. It was "money changers" that get chased out by the angry Jesus, not the Pharisees. Pharisees were NOT in charge of the Temple and its services. You are mistakenly conflating very different groups of people here...
The Pharisees were a lay persons religious movement that after the destruction of the temple gave rise to Rabbinic Judaism. Jesus of Nazareth had much in common with the movement and the fierce opposition and hypocritical characters ascribed to the Pharisees are later impositions that reflect the struggle between the early Christian Church and the emerging Synagogue over who was the legitimate heir to Judaism...
To use this metaphor/analogy is to perpetuate the anti-Judaic tropes that have legitimized and led to so much heinous persecution of Jews. Please reconsider your misquoting (and misuse) of Christian scripture to illustrate your point.
Who goes to Chicago when they can go to Rio?
No matter what you say about President Obama, or whether you think he should or should not have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, why do you even weigh Rush Limbaugh'comments as right (or wrong)? Limbaugh's comments are always obscene and terribly disheartening and polarizing for all Americans who want the truth.
Of all the people who you could have quoted, what do you find valid about Rush Limbaugh? I really hate to even mention his name because he just adores publicity and attention--negative or positive. He does not have this country's interests in mind; he is not patriotic; he is self-involved and has a full-blown narcissistic personality disorder. I can only be relived that Rush Limbaugh hasn't a chance of ever being nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize-politics or no politics.
The Noble peace price is not given by the president of the united state? Why blame him for receiving the price when he did not even know it was coming. This story is been made public by people who want the price but cant have it. It is some how insane to me! Congrats to you Obama.
From the Secret Gold Guide guy
>>Who goes to Chicago when they can go to Rio?
Haha, I got to agree! Given a choice, I would definitely prefer going to Rio!
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I am with everyone here. In between Chicago and Rio, it would not take me even a minute to pick up the best destination for myself...well, you guessed it! ;)
BTW, nice blog. Keep it up :)
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