Obama awarded Nobel Peace Prize

I just posted in the Common Knowledge group a message proposing to change how we put Nobel Prizes in:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/74761

I was amazed to find nobody had started a political thread about it. So here it is.

Grist:
CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/10/09/obama.nobel.international.reactio...
Huffington Post/Twitter: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/09/twitter-reacts-to-obama-n_n_315136.html
AP: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gzqP6wOm-0n3ddq-Zez6X801zp1AD9...
Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/09/AR2009100900914....
NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/world/10nobel.html
WSJ Washington Wire: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/10/09/praise-and-doubt-for-obamas-nobel-prize...
Fox: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/09/president-barack-obama-wins-nobel-pea...

Google blog search: http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&r...

I must have woken up in Bizarro world, because I have no idea what the POTUS was awarded this for. He only held the office for twelve days before the nomination deadline.

Of course Jimmy Carter is blathering away about what a great thing this is.

Looks like the Nobel Prize is now a meaningless thing.

OK, now, while I voted for Obama and still have high hopes for the man, I personally consider this a bit premature. Are they going to award it to him again in a couple years when he might have actually accomplished something?

I'm shocked. I thought Sarah Palin would receive it.

Quoted on the BBC:
Asked why the prize had been awarded to Mr Obama less than a year after he took office, Nobel Committee head Thorbjoern Jagland said: "It was because we would like to support what he is trying to achieve. It is a clear signal that we want to advocate the same as he has done"

This is the clearest indication to me that the prize in no way rewards action but instead validates intention. No offense to Mr Obama but it was more about the Nobel committee postitioning themselves in the debate than any real achievement on his part. While we all hope he can achieve something good, outside of the US I don't think he's viewed as quite such a saviour on a white horse (or in a white house) as he seems to be over the pond. I was always amazed from the Inauguration onwards, that there could be hope for all under-represented groups now that Obama broke that ground. I mean, without him how would we ever manage to overcome the issue of race (erm ... there's not that big an issue here in the UK .. but whatever), of gender (yes, I mean it's not like we've had any strong female leaders before), of background (excuse me while I just kick the downtrodden member of the working classes who's buffing my shoes) etc. etc. If only we could all get Peace prizes for our ideas rather than our results ...

Sorry, ranting over ... I just expected better from Nobel.

The best reason I have seen so far is that the device NASA fired into the moon has done something funky and altered the space-time continuum. We are now sliding into an alternate universe.

Or, as ex-LTLuke said on his tweet feed (which made me chuckle a lot):

"Like Dakota Fanning winning a lifetime achievement award" is how I describe the news of the day. (via @saintlukas)

I'm shocked. I thought Sarah Palin would receive it.

She didn't complete the paperwork.

I'm shocked. I thought Sarah Palin would receive it.
Can't she see Sweden from her outside privvy?

5>
Speaking from a navel-gazing US-centric perspective, perhaps the Nobel Committee intended to send American conservatives into hysterics. Again. I'm not sure what is more toxic, H1N1 or Obama Derangement Syndrome (ODS).

9>
On a clear day, she can see forever.

Seems like this award is more of a global sigh of relief that Bush is no longer in office, more than anything else.
We could have elected a goat, and they would have bestowed this award.
I'm an Obama supporter, but my first impression was
"for what?" This is strange, indeed.

I think this was a mistake at this time. The Nobel awards a body of work, or an outstanding achievement of some sort. So far Obama is more symbolic than real.

This was a blatant political comment on American politics and just goes to show the tone-deafness of Europeans to American politics. This is ammunition for those who reject peace as weakness and push for bullying wars.

With friends like this, who needs enemies?

Seems like this award is more of a global sigh of relief that Bush is no longer in office, more than anything else.

He should get one for completely vanishing from the scene. Bush who? (Cheney should get one too, for not resisting very much when they dragged him from the Situation Room.)

I think this was a mistake at this time. The Nobel awards a body of work, or an outstanding achievement of some sort. So far Obama is more symbolic than real.

Luke, former LT employee, said it was like giving Dakota Fanning a Lifetime Achievement Award.

13: True. People who say Europeans are all fools who should be ignored now have something to point towards when they make such blanket claims.

More directly on point, if I were Obama, I'd be embarrassed by the bewstowal of this unachieved honor.

16- I'd still pocket the payola. Obama got fiscally stimulated. He should buy some union goods.

17: That raises an intersting question we were batting around in the office today (for anyone who does not know, I am a lawyer, and I work for the U.S. government). The Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch (which covers even the President) places significant limitations on the gifts an employee may accept as a consequence of their position. The prohibition is that you cannot use public office for private gain. This prohibition is very broad. I cannot, for example, bring my daughter's girl scout cookie order form into work and pass it around, as that would be using the fact that I work here to benefit my daughter.

So, the question is, can Obama accept the prize money? I think the answer is no.

Once again feel good, pat ourselves on the back fuzzy thinking overshadows any real accomplishment.

You don't give awards and honors to something that might be. As someone who has earned every piece of colored cloth that is on my uniform, I find this a sad state of affairs.

That's an interesting question. It would seem that he clearly couldn't surely? As it's been awarded for the work he's done while in office?

Everyone here is right. It really stinks that Europeans see Obama as a beacon of hope and want to get behind his policies. I'll bet this means we have to call them french fries instead of freedom fries again.

The Nobel Committee prides itself on not just being an after the fact award but an attempt to bring attention and focus to people and institutions that are making the world a better place. I can really see how we'd all be disappointed that they'd see our President in that light.

They wanted to make a bold and unexpected statement. The Taliban heard it - they've already released their criticism.

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Does accepting a million dollars from a committee appointed directly by the Norwegian Parliament, indeed proportional to Norwegian political party representation (according to Wikipedia) constitute a "present... of any kind whatever" from a "foreign State"? I'd say yes. That may not be fair (and I find all the spleen against Obama for winning something he didn't campaign for very silly) but it looks to me what the Constitution says.

They wanted to make a bold and unexpected statement. The Taliban heard it - they've already released their criticism.

We should bin Laden and Mullah Omar a prize, and extradite them when they show up to get it.

I too was schocked by this and thought it was some sort of joke headline. I am a big Obama fan and think he is doing a decent job all things considered. I agree with Geneg that this will simply be ammo for the other side. I also think this has more to do with him having followed G.W. Bush than anything else. In a way it makes me sad, because if he were to bring a peaceful solution to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, or if he were to be the one to help broker a solution to the Israel conflict (these are all high hopes, I know, but hey, I live in hope) what can they really do, give him another one? Oy.

As for the money, he could just do what Mother Teresa did and give it away. Problem solved.

He can't accept the money. As posted above, there are strict ethics rules and regulations for anyone employed by the US Gov't.

If wounded servicemen & women in hospitals are forbidden from accepting gifts and donations, then the same rules apply to the CinC.

Oh, Tim, come on. You're worried about the Nobility Clause?

There is a foreign gifts statute governing gifts and honors that may be accepted and not accepted, and exceptions to that statute go to Congress. I believe the money is required by statute to go to the Treasury (thank you, Nobel Committee, every bit counts), unless a decision is made to do something symbolic, and I believe Congress would need to consent to that.

Do you want to propose that Congress require that the President turn down the Nobel Peace Prize?

> 18

Did Wilson and Roosevelt accept the prize money?

If the POTUS has any sense of honor, he would decline this.

26: I don't know. It doesn't really matter, the current standards were not in force then.

A Norweigan offers you a great big smooch and you say no?

> 28

The provision of the United States Constitution to which Tim refers was quite definitely in force then!

> 29

That rather depends on which Norwegian.

21: I agree its good gesture. I think they could have done something else. Made a special recognition by the committee, give a letter of commendation, something else. The Nobel Peace Prize wasn't the best move.

27: Oh, be real. No one turns down the Nobel Prize.

>32 Madcow299: - No one other than French Existentialists.

I think the federal law on gift giving has been around a long time; there's even an office to handle Presidential gifts. I may run check a statute or two.

I am being real. Honor is not something found in Shakespeare.

Unfortunately I find it lacking in far too many people. To include some I have served with over the years and very recently. Which is why I look at any award with suspicion.

Perhaps the honor is in humbly accepting the faith that others have placed in you and then trying to live up to it. Maybe thats the best Obama can do at this point.

Oh, Tim, come on. You're worried about the Nobility Clause?

No, I'm not worried about it. I don't really care. But yes, the Nobility clause mentions gits too. It's in statutes, as you say, but, this is just Congress spelling out a Constitutional mandate. It's why presidential libraries have so much stuff. See, for example, this page from the Reagan Library (http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/reference/gifts.html):

"Even though heads of state have traditionally exchanged gifts as expressions of goodwill, the Constitution (Article I, Section 9) prohibits anyone in the US Government from receiving a personal gift from a foreign head of state without the consent of Congress. Today, the handling of gifts from a foreign official to any Federal Government employee, including the President, is largely governed by the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act of 1966 and further legislation passed in 1977. Congress has allowed Federal employees to retain any gift from a foreign government, as long as the total US retail value of the gifts presented at one occasion does not exceed an amount established by the General Services Administration (GSA). Foreign official gifts over this “minimal value” are considered gifts to the people of the United States, which the recipient must purchase from GSA, at fair market value, in order to retain. The White House Gift Unit sees to the disposition of foreign official gifts that the President and First Lady do not retain.

So, no, I'm not all worked up about it. But no, he shouldn't get to keep it.

27: Oh, be real. No one turns down the Nobel Prize.

I'm NOT saying he should, but it's actually pretty common.

Not a bad response.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/10/09/nobel.peace.prize/index.html

You don't accept an award based on possible future accomplishments. That just makes a mockery of it.

36: Who? I'd be genuinely interested to know who and why.

From the Nobel site, on Roosevelt's money:

The $36,734.79 prize was held in trust for Roosevelt's intention by a committee which included the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor. They made no use of the money, and it gathered interest until 1917 when Roosevelt asked Congress to return it to him for distribution among various charities in the United States and Europe which were providing relief to victims of the World War. In August of that year, the total sum - $45,482.83 - was so distributed.

The president has to worry about more than honor, there's also diplomacy. To turn down the prize would probably be seen as a snub. To be honorable and diplomatic he probably should quietly accept it and let the story die quickly.

I do agree though that it looks like Obama got the Nobel prize for not being Bush.

Madcow - Sartre very publicly turned down the Nobel prize in literature, and it's driven the Committee crazy ever since. I was just on the Nobel's web site, and it turns out that Le Duc Tho also turned down the Peace Prize he was awarded with Henry Kissinger. So it's not just French existentialists.

Speaking of fairness, will Obama's speech be followed by a response by John Boehner? Equal time, you know! :)

Just woke up and found out about this.

What. The. Fuck.

Other refusals: Solzhenitsyn (until after he was deported), Pasternak (under Soviet pressure). I think that's it, though. I didn't check chemistry, etc.

A_musing: Thanks, I'll have to go on there and check it out. You Too Tim

BTW: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/nobelprize_facts.html this link shows some facts, including those who declined and those who were forced to decline.

30: Yes it was, but the statues that implement it were not. Those would be the "current standards". I don't know what the statutes said in 1906 and 1919 but I do know they weren't the ones in place now.

This year's Peace Prize nominees included 172 people -- among them three Chinese dissidents, an Afghan activist and a controversial Colombian lawmaker -- and 33 organizations, the highest number of nominations ever.

The tragedy, that's too strong, how about disappointment, is that the award probably isn't going to affect Obama that much. He already has the resources of the US gov't behind him and a bunch of international good will for not being George Bush. But it may have helped that Colombian lawmaker a lot more continue to do whatever he's doing that he was nominated for.

Yassir Arafat received the Nobel Peace Prize. So I'm not so sure why so many are shocked. The Nobel Committee is committed to handing out the Peace Prize to unapologetic baby killers.

> 36

Nobility clause mentions gits too.

Is that for people who win the Upper Class Twit of the Year award? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSqkdcT25ss

I'm sure Israel will be fine. I'm confident her spies have stolen from the United States all the anti-missile related technology necessary to protect themselves against an Iranian onslaught.

Some gracious reactions:

''Under any circumstance an appropriate response is to say congratulations.'' -- Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn.

John McCain: "Americans are always pleased when their president is recognized by something on this order.":

"I believe Obama is working hard for peace," said Muhammad Habash, a Syrian member of parliament and director of the Islamic Studies Center in Damascus. "We in Syria believe that Obama's initiative have been suitable, and that Syria is now witnessing important steps to correct the relationship with the United States. I believe everyone here will be very happy for Obama."

Do people really think Obama needs the money attached to the Prize? It's an odd thing to fixate on. Obviously, he can dispense of it via the charitable giving route.

I thought his statement was appropriate: the award is more about spurring future action than rewarding achievements to date.

54: No, I don't think he needs the money. That's not the question. The question is whether he can accept it. And dispensing of it via charitable giving is accepting the money (at least as far as the law is concerned).

#18, "I cannot, for example, bring my daughter's girl scout cookie order form into work and pass it around...".

That's just downright stupid. Unless you twisted the arms of your subordinates to buy the cookies, but I suspect that could be dealt with through other restrictions, but not being able to sell cookies or candy to support your child's team, band, school, bracelet collection, is just dumb.

It's wishful thinking, and it's sad to see such a smart person fall for such blatant bologna. Obama has not deviated substantially from Bush in the realm of foreign policy, especially in matters dealing with armed force. Obama has escalated the war in Afghanistan, pushed it farther into Pakistan, and has made his intentions clear on Iran (i.e. military action is not off the table).

Is the "idea" of Obama so powerful that people are incapable of seeing past the surface shine to the rotten core?

This a a really bizarre thread. His statement was gracious and appropriate. He certainly will not keep the money. That is a non-issue. I can tell you from personal experience, Norwegians aren't stupid. It is a small country that nobody cares about (except BP). I am confident that this was one country's attempt to give Obama a boost in his efforts to undue the tragic trajectory of the previous 8 years of American non-leadership. Nothing more, nothing less. We Americans greatly underestimate most of the world's contempt for the previous president, whether it is justified or not. Let me guess the next response: "Well if they don't like us, they can go to hell."

56: Maybe it is stupid. It is, however, the way the law works for Federal employees of the executive branch.

#45, Tim:"Other refusals: Solzhenitsyn (until after he was deported), Pasternak (under Soviet pressure). I think that's it, though. I didn't check chemistry, etc."

Jean-Paul Sartre declined the Literature Prize 1964 on principle (he never accepted any awards).

Also, the Nazis tried to pressure Carl von Ossiezky into not accepting the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize. He refused, but wasn't allowed to travel to Oslo to collect the prize.
The only one actually refusing the Peace Prize after being awarded with it was Lê Ðức Thọ of Vietnam in 1973 (who was awarded the Prize together with Henry Kissinger).

#38, OldSarge: "You don't accept an award based on possible future accomplishments. That just makes a mockery of it."

Actually, that's the way the Peace Prize was awarded in many cases. It is actually intended to influence in a positive way in their future work for peace. Of course, that doesn't always meet people's consent.This article, dated 26 April 2001, by Francis Sejerstedt, former chairman of the Nobel Committee, explains this:

I have cited the general clause in Nobel's will saying that the prizes should be given to those who "in the preceding year have conferred the greatest benefit on makind." With regard to the Peace Prize, Nobel defined this as having "done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." The most difficult stipulation to live up to has undoubtedly been "in the preceding year." This is now understood to indicate the most recent contributions in the various cultural fields to which the will refers. Where the Peace Prize is concerned, the wording has been seen as opening up opportunities to engage in processes which have not yet reached a conclusion, but where there has been clear evidence of progress, as in the democratisation process in South Africa or the peace process in the Middle East, for which the Peace Prizes were awarded in 1993 and 1994. The Prize awarded in 1998 to John Hume and David Trimble of Northern Ireland can be seen in the same light. The Prize, in other words, is not only for past achievement, although that is the most important criterion. The committee also takes the possible positive effects of its choices into account. Among the reasons for adding this as a criterion is the obvious point that Nobel wanted the Prize to have political effects. Awarding a Peace Prize is, to put it bluntly, a political act – which is also the reason why the choices so often stir up controversy.

I'm sure the GSA has a statutorily legitimate method of handling these situations. Nations and national leaders have been giving American Presidents gifts since the founding of the country. Remember, the bushel of potatoes from the Stolichnya farms Kruschev gave Eisenhower? I'm sure there must be methods worked out on the handling of such.

BTW, which will be more valuable in the coming years: the million dollars or the medallion itself?

I expect the money will not go to Obama, but the medallion will end up in his Presidential Library.

61: Yes it does. It has a vault into which all such gifts are kept until the end of a President's term in office. At the end of his term, if the President has not elected to pay the fair market value of an item and keep it, the remaining items are auctioned off and the money placed in the msicellaneous receipts fund in the U.S. Treasury. The prize money will probably simply go directly to miscellaneous receipts.

The question is, what is the fair market value of the medal itself?

> 56, 57 Certainly not stupid if it's the BOSS selling Christmas greens to support his son's hockey team or informing you of your expected contribution for Toys for Tots*, etc. It IS stupid when the (ETA: Combined) Federal Campaign (sort of United Way for feds) charges additional percent to cover the time civil servants spend administering the program!

*ETA as geneg stated in #56: "Unless you twisted the arms of your subordinates "

More facts:
The press release by the Nobel Committee, with the rationale for the awarding (it's only 3 paragraphs, don't worry. The full text is not yet available in writing (only as video), or I can't find it).

I think the answer is obvious. Pod people have taken over Norway.

Margd, in #64, "informing you of your expected contribution for Toys for Tots, etc." That's what I was talking about when I said, "Unless you twisted the arms of your subordinates...". That is obviously wrong. But not allowing any fund raising is a mighty big hammer with which to squash that bug.

Hello, deniro. I was going to send you Obama's miillion dollars, but since you won't see this message, I just changed my mind.

Was just listening to CNN-Europe, where they were reading text messages by people from the Middle-East. Some of them were along the lines of "Congratulations :-). Now get to work!"

Pretty much my feelings, as well.

I thought his statement was appropriate: the award is more about spurring future action than rewarding achievements to date.

What's the precedent for this? Rabin and Arafat, partially. Anyone else? I'm not all up-in-arms over this, believe me, but I hope the prize doesn't go this way generally.

It's an odd thing to fixate on.

I'm not fixated. It's an interesting, funny legal question. Discussing a subject isn't being fixated on it.

Lê Ðức Thọ

Tell me you pasted that. I can't imagine how to get all those diacriticals in without pasting :)

The question is, what is the fair market value of the medal itself?

Can he sell it to Ahmadinejad?

69 > you being official now?

Turning it off. I want to be able to receive your gifts legally.

Tell me you pasted that. I can't imagine how to get all those diacriticals in without pasting.

Windows Alt Key codes. :)

I'm not sure how the Mac and Linux folks do it.

Tim: "Lê Ðức Thọ
Tell me you pasted that."

'Course not. Don't you have a Vietnamese keyboard? :-D

67: The issue covered by the prohibition on soliciting is not whether you twist our subordinates arms or not. The issue is the use of public office for private gain. I work in a public office. I may not solicit for any private purpose while at that office (including any charitable soliciations save for CFC). It is an in place for appearance issues as much as anything of substance. But it is how the law works.

> 72 Can you also post that in the Nuts and Bolts thread, please? (Then I will be able to find instructions when I should use one of those French accent thingies!)

I'm on a laptop with no numeric keypad, so I'll just have to make do with the standard "QWERTY" set and hope people know what i mean.

I've seen a lot of arm twisting over "voluntarily donating" to CFC in my career. Not giving is usually reflected in an offhand way on your evaluations and the chain of command is always "suggesting" you give.

CFC?

77 > When I worked at Sam's Club, one large irritant I had was, once a year EVERYONE had to fill out a form for how much we were going to give to United Way, even if the amount was 0. Why was it required to fill out? To guilt as many people as possible into giving something. By pissing me off they guaranteed I'd give nothing. My friend who worked at Target had the same experience.

> 72 Can you also post that in the Nuts and Bolts thread, please? (Then I will be able to find instructions when I should use one of those French accent thingies!)

Edit: Never mind; found the thread. Not sure why it didn't turn up in a search, but I was eventually able to find it manually. Info posted as requested.

Found this a moment ago.

Obama's acceptance speech.

78: The Combined Federal Campaign, which is a United Way-like organization for Federal workers. It is the only charity that is allowed to solicit donations on Federal property.

"And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action -- a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century."

A-ha. Well said.

Quote in #83 Oh gosh, don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for Obama but seriously, sometimes I just wish he'd shut up. He's President of the US, not the world ...

"I do not view it a recognition of my own accomplishments but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations."

And again I say, not my nation. Toddle off now.

Well, I kind of thought the same thing with some of the lines in that speech :-). But face it, the things he got the Prize for are concerning people all over. So, as I wrote before, he's now called to deliver :-).

#82
Thanks, StormRaven.

#86, I would think that he's probably as intimately aware of all the reasons why people don't think he should have it yet so I would think that that speech would have been a toughie. Nothing's going to be right.

I think that Obama calling on the world to move to action was an admission that US can't go it alone in the world. He's not demanding others to follow our lead, he's pointing out that these are issues that concern the entire world. A tacit admission that the world is moving to a post nation state organizing principle and we all have an interest in working toward establishing whatever comes as being a worldwide consensus, not driven by one country, or set of political poles. This was not some sort of rephrasing of "either you're with us or you're against us". Not all Americans are arrogant wannabe tin-horn dictators. Some actually are looking for ways to include all of us in the conversation.

Do you not wish to participate in the coming world wide conversation, klarusu? Being in Europe, you have a front row seat to the biggest peaceful revolution in national restructuring in history. I would expect you have a better vision of what's going on in the world than we, over here have.

Being in Europe, you have a front row seat to the biggest peaceful revolution in national restructuring in history.

It's a political restructuring but it's not working and it won't work and I don't necessarily think it should work. On the ground in Europe people are as nationalistic as they used to be. The European parliament is seen as a joke in many quarters and every country defends its self-interest to the hilt. I think they should too. We are very, very culturally different and we should celebrate that difference rather than try for a homogenised centralised view. You can participate in the debate, I think we all do, but I don't think that the world is moving towards a worldwide consensus. I'm not claiming to have any great political knowledge and possibly we've been so psychologically damaged in the UK by Tony Blair and the Bush White House that we tend to see reds, whites and blues under the bed whenever a US president makes sweeping statements.

I do genuinely like your President but the coverage of him in the UK is not high and I don't feel like I trust him enough to judge whether he's, as we say over here, all mouth and no trousers.

By and By Obama is donating the prize money to charity. Apparently its not an issue, well, at least not yet.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/09/president-barack-obama-wins-nobel-pea...

I guess I'm just waiting for the concern trolls to explain why this is a bad thing for the United States.

#90: Maybe we'll end up with a Europe of Two Speeds. The Treaty of Lisbon now offers this chance (and also the chance of getting out of the union). That is a positive over the gridlocked state of the last years.

If we don't learn to speak with one voice (internationally), we will become irrelevant. We will be able to comment (as before), but we will not be able to bring about change.
And internally...--well, let's put it this way: The EU has always been about solidarity, as well. That is something which marks a fundamental difference to the way things have been handled the last 2000 years around here.

The fact is that awards are symbolic. They don't mean anything other than that someone has chosen to give you some kind of recognition, whether anyone else agrees with that recognition or not.

The fact that so many people are getting torqued over this only shows that those people are buying into the idea that a group of folks in Stockholm are the ultimate arbiters of what is pure and noble in the human heart. Why shouldn't Obama accept it? Why is it that different than getting a plaque from the Kiwanis or the Rotary Club? The gracious thing to do, unless you find the group giving you the award to be particularly odious, is to smile and say "thanks" and try to honor the sentiment through action.

#93: I think the most influential action in the formation of the EU was the removal of border restrictions. While Tony Blair and his ilk would love to be able to say that they were responsible for educating the UK on the benefits of speaking with a single European voice (preferably under the banner of President Tony), I think that what will really cement the single voice of Europe will be the melding of national identities that comes generations down the line when people have moved freely across borders and a generation comes to adulthood that has a mixed European heritage from international intermarriage. I'm watching my daughter grow up in just such a family now and she's neither English nor Polish but a mix of both. Maybe a couple of generations down the line, there will be a generation that sees itself as European rather than English or French and this will be a result of an organic movement of people facilitated by freer cross-border movement.

The Combined Federal Campaign ... is the only charity that is allowed to solicit donations on Federal property.

Does that pay for the black helicopters?

He's President of the US, not the world ...

I'm torn. I don't want him to be anything more than the president of the US—not our national scold or daddy figure. And I don't think we need Bush to be Commander in Chief over everything from wars, to secret prisons, to our telephone lines. But, well, the world needs a scold, daddy and policeman. So, I propose we make him Senior Drab Civil Servant of the US--and God-Emperor of the World!

#96 Don't just stop at the world ... where's your vision. I'd say more but the Tourist Police are onto me ...

I ran across this on the interwebs.

Comment #25 reads in part, "So NOW we know what OBAMA'S little trip to COPENHAGEN was about. Copenhagen is very close to Denmark." Yes, indeed Copenhagen IS very close to Denmark. You know, I just never thought of that! And these people want to be in charge.

98

Copenhagen is very close to Denmark.

Ha! I assumed that he was just having an illicit liaison with the Little Mermaid. Also known, vulgarly, as "getting a little tail."

Ha! I assumed that he was just having an illicit liaison with the Little Mermaid.

Obama, not Clinton.

Congratulations! You have reached the 100th post on a political subject without anyone screaming at each other, name calling or insults.

You win a prize.

(Or are we just being polite because Tim's in the room?)

I do believe most of the people on this thread suffer from psychiatric disorders or are developmentally disabled. They should fornicate themselves. I speak only of those who consider themselves writers.

As that was directed at those who consider themselves writers outside of a review and in a context that indicates that you were not addressing them as writers, per se, but rather as participants on the thread, it's flaggable. Let 'er rip.

Whatever... I do have a psychiatric disorder. Two actually. So what?

>103 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

I am impressed!

Whatever... I do have a psychiatric disorder. Two actually. So what?

Most of us do...

You have no idea my friend. Nor would I want you to. It makes life very difficult.

I wasn't being flip. "Disorders" are much more common than you might suppose. If one of yours happens to be PTSD, my heart goes out to you. It's a motherfucker.

It's cool. I know you weren't and yes it is.

In honor of Jesse & his Simpsons knowledge, I offer this assessment of the situation (hearkening back to the original topic): "Stupid carbon rod. It's all just a popularity contest!"

In Rod I Trust.

Sometimes I even use it to my advantage. I'm "that guy" at the end of the bar who's not to be messed with.

>96 timspalding: Does CFC pay for the black helicopters?

You're joking, of course, but CFC contributes to an astonishingly comprehensive list of charities. I contributed without question for years, and then I read the list! (It included my professional society--American Fisheries Society--and NRA among thousands of others.) Luckily--if one reads the booklet in very fine print--there are ways to contribute to individual charities or suites of charities such as health and the poor.

And even if the boss doesn't get involved there are all kinds of ways to trample on an individual's privacy or autonomy. I remember that one colleague assigned with collecting for our office contributed on behalf of one 'conscientious objector' (her staffer) in pursuit of the bronze award (a penny-sized button for the office plaque, awarded for 100% employee participation).

During one of my rounds of collecting, I EARNED my penny--I upped the office's contribution--by increasing my own contribution! How silly we mortals can behave for a penny-sized award...

But I digress--we were talking about THE NOBEL PRIZE!

To assess Obama Derangement Syndrome compared to Bush Derangement Syndrome, we will have to wait until Obama's out of office. If the Nobel Committee awards Obama's successor a Nobel, solely to take a gratuitous swipe at Obama, then maybe we can conclude that ODS is within an order of magnitude of BDS.

Does that pay for the black helicopters?

No silly, those are paid for out of the black accounts.

#57: codyed: "Obama has escalated the war in Afghanistan, pushed it farther into Pakistan, and has made his intentions clear on Iran (i.e. military action is not off the table)."

In fact, if I read the press release right, he's getting the peace prize partly for those intentions toward Iran.

From the press release:
The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations.

From Obama's speech:
We cannot tolerate a world in which nuclear weapons spread to more nations and in which the terror of a nuclear holocaust endangers more people.

And even as we strive to seek a world in which conflicts are resolved peacefully and prosperity is widely shared, we have to confront the world as we know it today. I am the Commander-in-Chief of a country that's responsible for ending a war and working in another theater to confront a ruthless adversary that directly threatens the American people and our allies.
(emphasis mine)

So, does he see the Nobel Peace Prize as a call to invade Iran? And is it what the Nobel Committee had in mind? I'm trying to read between the lines here.

#15: Tim, I know about you and Eudora Welty, but who is Dakota Fanning? (oh, well, I'll google that before someone sends me a lmgtfy link).

She is America's greatest living actress.

#119: Thanks.

BTW I think you guys are really prescient, since you started talking about this topic back in May :-)
http://www.librarything.com/topic/65409

"So what has he accomplished?"

Does no one read the papers? I seem to be the only person in America who remembers that just a couple of weeks ago conservatives were in a tizzy that Obama announced that we were canceling the planned missile defense of Poland. And a few days later, Russia announced reciprocal reductions of their missiles.

All by itself, a reduction in the number of missiles fielded by nuclear powers counts as a step toward a Peace Prize.

He's brought the various interested parties back to the table on Iran.

Did anybody listen to his UN speech? He's declared that the United States is back in the world community.

Considered together, there are three distinct intiatives that are concrete steps toward peace.

And most of all, Obama kept John McCain (and probably Sarah Palin...) from getting access to the launch codes.

"So what has he accomplished?"

Well, to borrow a line from the ever-valuable Daniel Davies:

It is not really as if the Dalai Lama or Aung San Suu Kyi have actually achieved all that much either.

It is not really as if the Dalai Lama or Aung San Suu Kyi have actually achieved all that much either.

I mentioned this to my wife today, that the Dalai Lama hasn't really done much more that travel around in a sheet and tell people to be thoughtful and nice. Come to think of it, that's pretty much all Jesus did too - and we know what happened to him.

There were only 12 days from the time Obama was elected to when the nominations for the Peace Prize closed, Bob. So your defense doesn't quite add up.

An ambush in a remote part of eastern Afghanistan that raised questions about the whether U.S. troops had enough artillery, air support and intelligence has claimed a fifth U.S. service member.

Sgt. 1st Class Kenneth Westbrook , 41, of Colorado Springs, Colo. , died Wednesday at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington .

Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. May there be rainbows emanating from the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

123>
Crucified? Don't let your children grow up to be wandering prophets.

codyed, if you read the Nobel Prize page instead of simply repeating wingnut talking points, you would know that the nominations close early in the year so that the Committee can spend the balance of the year evaluating the nominees.

The prize is not decided upon in February.

(Unless, of course, you're agreeing that defeating Mc Cain really WAS sufficient grounds for their decision.)

If that is the case, then the Nobel Committee truly is comprised of overtly political individuals who are not interested in the cause of peace but, rather, appealing to their Stuff White People Like fetish for the "idea" of Obama.

Obama could, on the one hand, be credited with furthering along the process of nuclear disarmament. But on the other hand, he is responsible for ramping up troop deployments to Afghanistan, pushing the war deeper into Pakistan, and prepping the American public for a possible strike against Iran. So the latter completely negates the former, unless, of course, you adopt a utilitarian approach and conclude that the possible, future lives are more valuable than the real, present lives which are being systematically obliterated by American bombs and bullets.

Wait, you're against the Bush wars? We may yet find common ground here.

Obama could, on the one hand, be credited with furthering along the process of nuclear disarmament.

Furthering the process of nuclear disarmament is not nothing. So you're conceding the there is some justification for the award.

Would you concede that giving Obama the Peace Prize might put a brake upon the temptation to attack Iran?

The Nobel Committee has long shown a tendency to reward American leaders if we turn even some little way away from militarism and imperialism. Pace Henry Kissinger '73. Their hopes that we might some day become a peaceable country are so slight that they reward the most modest incrementalism in our position.

When you understand that, it is easy to see how the signs of some turn (slight though it be) away from unilateralism and preemptive first strikes was enough for them to choose Obama for the Prize.

>127 codyed:

It is interesting how so many discussions about Obama bring out the worst in people. Your overt racism is contemptible.

So Jimmy Carter is correct? Any and all criticism of the POTUS is racist?

I call bullshit.

>131 OldSarge:
Whether or not you agree with him, that's not really what Carter said.

I call distortion.

125
Crucified?

My current theory is that it was the anti-tax nutjobs that got him.

130
You're not familiar with codyed's mantra?:
RACE. PERMEATES. EVERYTHING. I. SAY.

>131 OldSarge:

What is not racist about attributing support for Obama to "Stuff White People Like fetish"?

Biblio, look here:
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/about/
It was a reference to this website, and less about race than about "Stuff "Liberals" like". So that cody can get most of us ;-).
JMHO.
Edited: Oh god, I'm caught. I like Banksy.

>135 GirlFromIpanema:

Nice try, but Bullshit. That great website, about which I am familiar, has nothing to do with codyed's racist comment. No different than Old Sarge's asinine comment (not a personal attack on Old Sarge, but an attack on the stupidity of his comment).

130/134>

Agreed. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck....just call it a duck (lower case d).

Off to see something nice at the local theatre. See you all tomorrow (hopefully).
*GFI silently closes the door behind her*

I'm sorry. I couldn't resist.

#101: Sarge, we made it to 130 posts before it fell apart. That's gotta be a record.

#140: That's fantastic.

#101: Sarge, we made it to 130 posts before it fell apart. That's gotta be a record.

When it falls apart, though... Boy, it falls apart.

Now you're just overstating things, Madcow. Since when is asking someone to do an unnatural act considered a means of breaking down a thread?

Craziness.

Is there a website that discusses things old white men are frightened of?

Cody has a very awkward relationship with race and racism. After all, he's not really one of us and it bothers him.

As someone said above, 98% of what cody says is filtered through his own racial fears. He obviously has major problems with who he is and we should give him a break.

The problem started several years ago when I went backpacking with some friends into the Australian bush. Everything was going fine until a pack of wild dingos ate my friend, Todd. I became a racist on that day.

>144 geneg:

I dunno.

Psychoanalyzing over the internet, however seductive it may sometime seem, has too many echoes of when Oral Roberts used to say, "Put your hand on the radio."

>145 codyed: On the other hand, even imaginary dingos can have real consequences.

We are a strange and troubling species.

I'm not going to look for it, but cody's racial issues were pretty well laid out by himself in his own words. Look at some of the threads that discuss race from a couple of years ago.

144> "Is there a website that discusses things old white men are frightened of?"

http://www.rnc.org/splashpage/index.aspx

Oh, no Cody. I was saying that bibliophobic calling you racist was the thread breaking down. Your "Go F*ck yourself" was obviously genteel.

Any useful portion of this thread has ended.
Next topic please.

"I think people are guilty of that kind of personal attack against Obama, have been influenced to a major degree by a belief that he should not be president because he happened to be African American," Carter said during a town hall meeting in Atlanta.

"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American," Carter said. "I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way and I've seen the rest of the country that shared the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time ... and I think it's bubbled up to the surface, because of a belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country."

"I think it's based on racism," Carter said in response to an audience question. "There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president."

Is this enough fuel to start another thread?

>136 hamartophobic:. No harm, no foul. No offense taken.

>141 Madcow299:. Oh well. LOL.

Reminds me of sitting in the bar at work on election night and listening to the jokes....

Q-If you drop Obama and an apple from a tree, which will hit the ground first?
A-The apple. The rope will break Obama's fall.

Did you hear that they’ve decided that McCain’s won the election? It seems that all of the African-Americans have decided to switch their votes to McCain. They found out that Obama had promised them work.

or...

Washington D.C. has to upgrade their K-9 units. They used to have German Shepherds, but their aren’t any Germans in the city any more. Now they’re using coon hounds.

And my personal favorite...

Hallmark’s come out with a new Obama ornament just in time for Christmas. Now, every American can hang a nigger from a tree.

Of course, there's also the Obama Bucks that were floating around the bar...

152/153
Oh, but those are just jokes, don't you see? The only real racists are all those tormented white folks who voted for Obama just because he's black.

And, by the way, the moon is made of cheese....

Stilton. Scientists at CalTech just confirmed it.

It's green cheese. There's no evidence, despite the splashing of the surface, that it is not.

Robert

>151 OldSarge:
Each of those quotes, even out of context, is qualified.

I.e., Carter referes to certain kinds of personal attacks or intense demonstrations of animosity or a feeling of "many" in regard to an unspecified question.

Your claim in >131 OldSarge: about Carter's sentiments is different.

I.e., "Any and all criticism of the POTUS is racist."

I'm not trying to be excessively fussy here. This kind of misunderstanding is a factor in making people more pissed off and at cross purposes, even more than they would ordinarily be, when trying to talk across the political fence.

To get back to the thread beginning: why did the US president get the prize? My answer is that the Norwegian Nobel committee is chosen by the Norwegian parliament and consists solely of political has-beens. If they could, they would always give the Peace Price to the US president, as this would give them more feeling of power than they could obtain by giving it to anybody else.

I can report that nearly all of us Norwegians dreads the announcement of the Peace Prize recipient, where we every year become the laughing stock of the world. And the Norwegian papers received the news this year as well with a huge groan, as nonplussed as many posters here about where Obama's accomplishments in peace bringing might lie.

jahn

Interesting to hear about it from your view, thank you.

I'm not trying to be excessively fussy here. This kind of misunderstanding is a factor in making people more pissed off and at cross purposes, even more than they would ordinarily be, when trying to talk across the political fence.

This is standard relationship stuff too. You ALWAYS leave the tube off the toothpaste, etc.

I know you're just leaving the toilet seat up to piss me off, Spalding.

Right. Two common phenomena in both politics and life:

1. Exaggerating the truthfulness or frequency of a statement to bring it in line by how mad it makes you.

You always leave the milk out.
Obama always panders to the left.

2. Inventing motives to validate your feelings.

You leave the toilet seat just to piss me off.
Anti-abortion people want to hurt poor people.

Of course, the answer in both is to try to separate out your feelings, and to try to see it from the other party's (perhaps literally) side.

Somewhat related is the Fundamental Attribution Error, where we assume that other people do things because they're fundamentally shitty people, whereas we have situational exemptions every time we do something that may be not so great.

>164 oakes:

You are, I think, quite right about the effect of Jimmy Carter's statement. Racism is a particular sort of charge. Everyone decent wants to avoid being racist, but more they want to avoid being close to it--to avoid any possibility of being called racist. You want to "build a wall around the law" when it comes to racism. That's why it's such a powerful tool against people. You don't need to call someone racist to discredit them. Just get close enough, to raise the notion and put it somewhere near them—and—blam—they're dead. Is Joe Wilson racist? That's not the question. I hear a whiff of "You lie—BOY!" Kaboom.

On the prissiness of that idea, we will have to differ. A lot of conversation among true-believers is basically about working out their inability to fairly understand others and their opinions. As I see it, I think you regard refusing to understand others as something of a feature, not a bug.

Why would he seek to understand anyone else's position when he's so right and they're so very, very wrong?

Now I see why I always lose the ladies to someone like oakes.

Sure, they just love it when a guy uses words like "prissiness" ad infinitum. Definitely one of your more, uh - manly? - words.

They find it far more interesting than the caveman like grunts that come out of my Noo Yawk, high school drop-out, infantry NCO mouth.

I don't know. That's kind of the antithesis of "prissiness", no? Broads and chicks dig men that aren't prissy.

without citing evidence

For instance, by making note of the fact that the said party was a) wearing a hood and b) holding a burning cross when he made vociferous objection to the President's speech.

Reminds me of the yahoos with their "Obama Witch Doctor" posters claiming to be affronted when anyone suggests that such images might be racist.

BTW, you can't imagine how many times I've gotten lucky using the word "vociferous".

There's also the pussy factor. Sure, oppose and contest Obama on whatever issue of choice, healthcare or taxes or you name it. Make an argument. FINE.

But I've had it up to my eyebrows with aggrieved conservatives of various stripes playing the victim card. Too lazy to discuss, but too ready to parade the chip on their shoulder. Or distort perceived rivals. Little pussy tweedy-birds.

Ooooh, Dat mean old Jimmy Cawter. He call me wacist. Feel sowwy for me. I no wonger haf to argue.

Boo fucking hoo.

I'm sorry, post #171 should read "Bitches and tricks dig men that aren't prissy."

173
Hell hath no fury like an angry white man* watching his hegemony slipping away...
.
.
.

*Evidence: Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Wilson, et al.....

>177 oakes:

Hey. No I didn't mean you said that the racism thing was prissy. I was shifting topics to the end of your post, which used the term. So, "that idea" wasn't referring to the paragraph before, which, I admit, was confusing. I was actually agreeing with you, and expanding on why what you said was true.

Re #164, #165

Tim, Oakes, I don't want to disturb your preconceived notions of Jimmy Carter's motives, but unless you have lived in the rural South, you have no idea what you are talking about with regard to his knowledge on this topic.

Don't you have to mak PEACE to win the Nobel Peace Prize? He didn't do anything at the time he was nominated (or now even!!!) 14 days into his presidency.
Oh puh-lease! There are so many prize worthy people out there!!!
If that's the criteria, my dog could run!

179
Exactly true. Those with certain racial notions in the South have learned to be oblique about their racism, in ways that may not always be apparent to the outsider (a lesson I learned early on while employed by the state of Texas, in conversation with those who mistakenly took me for a "good ol' boy"). I've heard enough to know that for some Southerners at least, the "boy!" was clearly implicit in Wilson's outburst.

Having said that, I also believe that most of those in high elected positions and their camp followers do try to steer clear of any whiff of real or implied racism. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist in droves at the grassroots level, and that certain higher-ups don't know the proper buzz-words and implications to give the troglodytes a little verbal wink. After all, troglodytes vote.

180
And conservatives are familiar enough with charges of racism for them to get too concerned about the latest iteration.

Presuming a "not" between "them...to", doesn't this beg the question of why they are so familiar with these charges?

181
No, you don't have to "mak(e) PEACE" to get the Nobel Peace Prize. I've lost count of the folks who have received the prize for work in the Middle East over the decades, but last I checked, the conflict is as hot as ever. Neither do I recall Mother Theresa or the Dalai Lama having "made peace" with anyone per se. As I noted somewhere above, the prize is chosen by a group of folks in Stockholm who have no collective moral authority at all - the prize is symbolic. If these people have seen something in Obama that they wish to acknowledge or encourage, it's their right to do so. If you buy into their moral authority, then I suppose you have a right to be upset. Accordingly, if you think your dog has done some work to advance the cause of peace, you could start working on his/her nomination now.

183: The comparison to the Dalai Lama or Mother Theresa is ridiculous, and gets more and more so each time it is trotted out. There is a substantial difference between a sitting President of the United States and an elderly nun and a religious exile. The difference is power. The Dalai Lama and Mother Theresa can be recognized for their moral stances and their aspirations. A sitting President, on the other hand, has actual power, and should be expected to actually use that power to do something before his contributions are recognized in this manner.

And seriously, what has he done that is substantially different from the last four or five sitting Presidents, either in word or deed? Not much, and what little he has done that is different is trivial. So, I guess the real answer here is that the Nobel Prize is handed out for trivial accomplishments.

The committee may have any number of reasons for giving out the prize, but I doubt "power" is high on the list. As a concept, that's just about as nebulous as "moral authority".

...what has he done that is substantially different from the last four or five sitting Presidents, either in word or deed?

Where exactly have you been for the last nine years? Maybe it's off topic, but what amazes me is that George W. had 8 years to royally f#ck things up, not the least America's reputation in the world, and everyone expects that Obama ought to have been able to set things right in 9 months.

185: The thing is, Obama hasn't been substantially different from Bush in anything but the most trivial ways. Yes, he has talked prettier, but he's said pretty much the same things, and pursued almost exactly the same policies Bush was pursuing the last couple years.

He has tried to "engage Europe" but has done so with the primary goal of getting more troops committed to Afghanistan and potential sanctions against Iran. He's tried to bring Iran around to negotiating and threatened sanctions if it doesn't and refused to take any option "off the table", which is exactly the policy Bush pursued for the last four years. He's said he will close Guantanamo, but hasn't, and isn't going to release most of the prisoners held there regardless. He's adopted a policy of "no torture", which is exactly the policy the Bush administration held for the last couple years.

How has Obama been substantially different from Clinton? From George H. Bush? From Reagan?

As to the question of power, the issue is this: Obama has the power to translate his nice sounding rhetoric into actual policies to implement such rhetoric. He has not done so. There should be a different standard for world leaders, who can translate their rhetoric into action, than there is for, say the Dalai Lama, who has no ability to take any action other than rhetoric.

...the same policies Bush was pursuing the last couple years.

I like the qualifier "the last couple of years" (so do you, apparently, since you used it twice). Basically, it points to some sense of realization in the Bush Administration that they had gotten it so terribly wrong. You chose to see Obama continuing Bush policies, but one can just as easily see Bush slowly trying to maneuver to more open, less unilateral policies - policies that Obama articulated over and over on the campaign trail. But of course, by then Bush's credibility was in tatters.

If one sees the U.S. government as a big machine, you can't just magically throw a switch - change takes time, and despite your Machiavellian notion of "power", the President doesn't affect change alone, there is an entire bureaucracy that has to change with him. Considering the climate Obama's working in, where he can't even take a breath without the great contrarian NO machine kicking into gear, he has wisely chosen to act somewhat cautiously and incrementally.

Anyway, since my kids are ready for bedtime reading, I will cite only one change that has only occurred in the past couple of weeks - the radical change in missile defense that got so many of Obama's critics hot and bothered.

187: Well, the Bush adminsitration may not have gotten things "terribly wrong". Conditions do change. Responses appropriate in the political situation of 2002 may not be appropiate in 2006. Of course, this still doesn't change the fact that Obama's policies are the same one's that Bush pursued for several years, using the same methods and seeking the same goals. Exactly how does this make him different and more "peaceful"?

Obama could have closed Camp X-Ray immediately. He didn't. This doesn't require him to follow the "change takes time" rule. Executive Orders are the Presiden't tool for giving orders. He hasn't done this. Obama could have done any number of things on his own, without needing legislation (which is where the "big no machine" you think is out there would impact him). Of course, it is hard to find the assertion that there is a "big no machine" credible, since his party has a substantial majority in both houses of Congress. How ineffective is he if he cannot implement policies of his choosing in this environment? How deserving is a person of that much incompetence of an international peace prize?

The "radical change in missile defense" is trivial, and it was somewhat foollish. The missile defense proposed was to be a handful of anti-missiles, which would have been effective only against some sort of rogue threat. Any nuclear nation with more than a handful of weapons would have no trouble dealing with it. But the foolish part is that the whole system was symbolic, and now the symbolism is that the U.S. will abandon you if it is convenient - it left the Eastern European governments who went out on a limb to accomodate the U.S. and accept the bases out on a limb. It also pulled the rug out from under them in that they now feel it is less likely that the U.S. would act to defend them against external threats. The alleged Russian response of deactivating some of their missiles is almost a joke - they couldn't afford to keep them in repair, and there is doubt they would have actually worked anyway given the shambles of maintenance in Russia.

Of course, Obama didn't actually decide to abandon missile defense either. He's just moving it somewhere else. Offshore specifically. So his grand gesture has actually no real impact other than to give a big "screw you" to the eastern Eurpoeans. Yay!

I also wonder how it is "peaceful" to have a situation in which the balance of power is maintained by an all-offense military policy, and somehow everyone thinks this is good. "We all agree that we'll blow you up if you blow us up" seems to me to be the exact opposite of a peace, and yet we accept this as the only natural way to run the world. Let's hear it for holding every citizen hostage to an all offense strategy.

Clearly Obama has departed from Cheney-Bush enough so that Dick and Liz Cheney frequently and persistently offer criticisms to the effect that the USA is "less safe." In any case, most of the depth hermeneutics employed here concerning the original intent of the Nobel Prize committee is exceedingly superficial and classifiable by unarticulated political biases for or against Obama. In the end, the main result on the American domestic front is to further rile already riled conservatives and to drive them into an even small tent. This consequence, the increasing irrelevance of the conservative milieu apart from talk radio and gun shows, might be enough to stand as a gain for world peace.

188

"We all agree that we'll blow you up if you blow us up"

Is this what's known as reductio ad absurdum? Is this really what it all boils down to for you? Honestly, I don't know whether to laugh or sigh. I do admire your capacity for insistence in the face of contrary reality.

Maybe you can convince your friends over in PolyCons that Obama is carrying on the glorious Bush policies. Might help them sleep better at night.

>180 oakes:
No, I wasn't saying that all conservatives were pussies. I was saying a pussy factor exists. And there's no vendetta, silly or otherwise. I'm much too lazy for that.

>191 krolik: - You are what you eat, I say.

I had always understood the Martin Luther King pick to be the point when it changed from being directly about "peace" in the most obvious sense—and went mostly to diplomats and people in peace movements—and broadened to something like "human rights." But looking at the list, you have people like Bishop Soderblum, "leader in the ecumenical movement" and four years before King, Albert Lutuli, president of the A.N.C. I'd be interested to know what the change-points are. In retrospect, this was a good move, particularly as diplomacy is a lot less "personal" now, and there just isn't a superstar diplomat every year.

The choice itself aside, I rather hope Obama doesn't represent another change. The committee itself expressed its reasons in prospective, hopeful terms, rather than with the usual list of accomplishments. (Whether Obama's accomplishments are worthy is beside the point; the committee chose to highlight potential.) This strikes me as a really bad idea for the future. Somebody gets the prize every year, and if they're basing it on hope, they're going to make some picks that look really bad in retrospect. (I think hope was also a factor in Arafat's prize, although he did do something, so it was a mixture of praise for deeds and spur to future deeds—deeds which didn't pan out.)

The press release is mostly in present tense:

"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."

I think what this prize comes down to is that as five intelligent people sitting in Norway look around them, they view themselves as living in a safer and more peaceful world, where there is more progress toward enduring peace, than they lived in a year earlier. And the big reason is that the world's only superpower is now led by someone with international credibility who is listening and engaging in the world in a constructive way. There has been no change more significant in the past year than that one.

Regardless, I have a crazy dream for the future. I dream that my kids will one day live in a world where the United States and its President can be admired by the world without being attacked from within by bitter partisans, where the world's greatest award can be bestowed on the President and the Country will, with one proud and patriotic voice, celebrate that honor, on behalf of us all. I know it's a crazy dream. And it's not possible in my lifetime. But, perhaps, someday, my children can live in such a world!

192

With regard to the Dalai Lama, no one is "smirking" (although you are free, as usual, to misrepresent the characterizations of others), and no one has suggested that he hasn't done anything*. Further, no one has suggested that the D.L. didn't deserve the prize. The point is that the prize has at times been given as acknowledgement of works and aspirations which, in the real world, have yielded no tangible results. The D.L. is a nice, humble man by all accounts, a somewhat tragic figure in my estimation, who has raised awareness of the sorrowful plight of his people. Still, for all his travels and the accolades he has received, I'm not aware that he has succeeded in pressuring the Chinese to remove one Red Army soldier from Tibet. Noting this is not the same as labelling him a failure.

As I said before, the award is symbolic, and the actions it acknowledges are often just as intangible.

*My own tongue-in-cheek characterization (#123) was that he "hasn't really done much more that travel around in a sheet and tell people to be thoughtful and nice." On the world stage, that isn't negligible, and my comparison of him to Jesus was meant to be favorable. Apologies to the humor-impaired.

190: That is exactly what MAD is. The name is, after all, "Mutual Assured Destruction". And apparently, it is the only strategy allowed for a nation to pursue and be "peaceful".

195: The only problem with the press release is that it isn't really that connected to reality. Multilateral diplomacy has accomplished, thus far, exactly nothing. And has been noted, many of the European diplomats who were ecstatic with Obama early are less enthused now, since he isn't giving them what they want. But let's look at the other claims:

A world free of nuclear arms: Iran is on its way to building a bomb, and doesn't seem like it wants to stop. North Korea says it will come back to the negotiating table, but only after various conditions are met, and we've heard that song before. Myanmar is reportedly trying to acquire a bomb. Yeah, that vision is doing wonders.

Climate changes. Well, maybe. Thus far Obama has managed to accomplish exactly nothing concrete, and his varius green proposals can't even get through a Congress dominated by his own party. He got the G20 to agree in principle to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, but that is likely to be a mixed blessing at best.

Democracy and human rights? That's laughable. Snubbing figures like the Dalai Lama and cozying up to authoritarian regimes and turning his back on people working against them. In point of fact, Obama's actual record thus far is decidedly the opposite of promoting democracy and human rights, consisting of a kind of craven opportunism that would have gotten Bush excoriated.

The simple fact is that Obama appears to have gotten the prize for nothing other than being liked by left-leaning Europeans. There is very little that he has done of substance that points towards "peace", even as defined in the press release that accompanied the announcement of the award. When a president who has actually done something or taken a stand that matches what the award committee says he has done, then Americans will cheer. Until then, we will be puzzled and disappointed that an actual worthy nominee wasn't recognized in his stead.

180
And conservatives are familiar enough with charges of racism for them to get too concerned about the latest iteration.

Well, this ought to put those nasty charges to rest:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/10/13/with-a-few-stumbles-out-of-the-g...

From the story:

The new version of GOP.com, which prominently features images of women and ethnic and racial minorities, plugs the party's involvement in social networking sites.

It also hosts eight new blogs, including a blog written by Steele, entitled "What up?"

"What up?" indeed!

I'm curious to see how many of those "ethnic and racial minorities" are dressed as witch doctors....

Sigh. It really will be a long time before the world can honor an American President and ideals without a bunch of partisan sniping and back-biting.

201: Why should one expect, or even desire universal praise? Heck, people criticized the selection of figures such as Mother Theresa for the prize. If she can withstand criticism, I'm sure Obama can too. And the criticism here isn't of Obama, but rather with the thinking of the selection committee, and how their statements don't match the reality.

>202 StormRaven: Obama will more than survive the criticism, he will thrive on it. The Nobel is simply a sign that people elsewhere in the world recognize that we are all much better off than we were a year ago; the backbiting is a domestic reminder of just why we are better off.

It's a nice little prize that Obama can use to buttress our position internationally; it indicates to the Taliban and Iran especially that they are isolated and Europe is going to be open to working with us. Is there some way in which this prize can hurt us that I haven't seen?

No, it's just another opportunity for a display of vitriol and complaining from the right.

Sigh. It really will be a long time before the world can honor an American President and ideals without a bunch of partisan sniping and back-biting.

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."

It's been a long time. Thomas Jefferson was very good at trying to undermine his own boss. George Washington.

203: I'm pretty certain the Taliban and Iran don't give a rat's ass what the Nobel selection committee thinks. What evidence do we have that Europe is going to be open to working with the U.S.? Thus far Obama hasn't convinced them to do much of anything in support of his goals. European and U.S. representatives have been sniping at each other with increasing nastiness for the last couple months as the Obama-glow fades. The national interests of the U.S. and the various European nations have not changed in any notable way, and they remain at cross purposes. All the soft talk in the world won't change that.

I have a feeling that ten years from now, people will be looking back on this selection and wondering what the selection committee was smoking.

The truly interesting thing here (to me) is the incredible defensiveness of those advocating for Obama on this thread. No one has been saying Obama has done a bad job, or that he's somehow incompetent. The only criticism has been that he hasn't done anything in particular that would suggest he's a good choice for the Peace Prize. His policies, if anything, have been so similar to those of his predecessors that one has to wonder why they didn't get prizes too. But his partisans seem to be unable to see any difference between calling Obama incompetent and suggesting that maybe he wasn't the best choice for a worldwide prize for peace.

the incredible defensiveness of those advocating for Obama on this thread

I don't know. I sort of see the subtext as being whether the United States, with the President as its symbol (pace, lunar), can accept the honor graciously. I don't believe I every advocated in this thread that he deserved the honor, but rather pointed out that, historically, the prize has been awarded as much on the basis of perception as on actual works. Take whatever meaning you want from that.

The first American awarded the Nobel Prize.

http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/life/nobelportsmouth.htm

More bemusement; there's no need to advocate for Obama, who is doing nothing but accepting the accolades. This is not an honor he sought.

And I hope "dissent" means something more than a few snide comments about the President being praised abroad.

And, of course, having scrapped missile defense in Eastern Europe in order to get Russian help on Iran, the Russian foreign minister has announced they are... not going to help. Further sanctions on Iran would be "counterproductive."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/world/europe/14diplo.html?hpw

For a while there I wondered if Obama really had done it. Getting solid Russian support on Iran would have been useful. But no, the US made a unilateral concession to an unfriendly nation, strengthened the resolve a very unfriendly nation, and abandoned allies. Bravo.

210: I will be very interested to hear A_musing and Makifat explain how this is all Bush's fault when this blows up in Obama's face.

Apart from the Iran situation, the missile defense shield was a bad idea (practically and diplomatically) on its own "merits." Clearing out this piece of dead wood from the prior administration is a good idea in itself. Alas, Poles and Czechs are bummed out, but they'll get over it.

There's a separate thread on this topic methinks. http://www.librarything.com/topic/73335

212: I will point out that Obama hasn't scrapped the missile defense shield idea. He's just moved it. Essentially, this accomplishes nothing expect signaling to the Poles and the Czechs that they are easily abandoned.

Adopting and abandoning allies is a trademark of superpower politics and the pursuit of American "interests". Such an event is nothing new and is nothing devastating in the longue duree of US international relations.

To adapt Keynes by way of Braudel, "In the longue durée we are all dead."

214: Okay, explain what moving the proposed defense shield accomplished other than hanging the Polish and Czech governments out to dry?

I'll try to emulate the mentality of a US-centric, "realist" analyst here: who cares about Poland and the Czech Republic? Russia is a bigger and more important player. The MDS heightened tension with Russia, making noise about abandoning it will reduce the level of tension. This is low hanging fruit (the damned thing was far from being operational anyway), pick it as part of resetting the US-Russia relationship. And if the Poles and Czechs are super upset, they'll get over it; we can throw them a bone of "respect" (which is what Lech Walesa saw in the MDS) in some other area.

217: That would be nice, but the evidence we have thus far doesn't support the idea that the Russians are going to be any friendlier (or even less hostile) as a result. Some believe it may embolden them to act even more agressively.

And, of course, the question is not whether we care about the Poles and Czechs per se (although I believe we should), it is whether the U.S. will not turn its back on governments that go out of their way to accomodate us. How eager do you think nations will be to assist the U.S. in the future if we develop a track record of changing our minds at the drop of a hat to in a unilateral (and apparently unsuccessful) attempt appease nearby dictators.

And since all that is being done is moving the proposed system, it would be almost ludicrous to assume the Russians would see this as a conciliatory gesture. If the system was a threat to Russian interests when it was to be in Poland and the Czech Republic, how would it be less so if the system is based in the Baltic and Black Sea? So, once again, other than hanging the Poles and Czechs out to dry, what does moving the system accomplish?

I'm all over the place on this one. I generally agree with Tim's description in >210 timspalding: but for its assumption that the thing would actually perform. Which is, well, crucial, isn't it? Empirically, if I can believe what I read, the shield is probably dead wood, as Theoria says.

But Obama's team was very clumsy with the Poles and Czechs in the way they handled it, the timing and protocol, etc. StormRaven, concretely speaking, isn't this more a diplomatic botch than a long-term security botch? Because, just how far would the Bush version of dollar diplomacy have taken us in that region, throwing money at a hypothetical techno-fix, when there are other immediate and down and dirty things going on (energy, the Gazprom pipeline, etc.).

That's the kind of question that will really test the Obama team's mettle, and I hope they're up to it. Won't be easy.

218>

We disagree on what it (i.e., the new administration's move) accomplishes. I can't say much more than that (I made a few comments on the other thread supporting the substance of "new" position).

In brief, in my view (as an amateur observer of international relations):

1. the MDS was bad policy
2. Hence, the continuation of bad policy simply because it exists and might upset certain nations is not a good idea.

I tend towards "realism" in US foreign policy (insofar as it is not multilateral); the MDS was a product of the sort of IR thought coming from the New American Century folks, whose main premise was the that USA had to assert itself as the sole superpower and seek to create "democracy" everywhere. I view this latter perspective as "idealist" and unwise. For those reasons, I'm not intellectually wedded to the idea of a MDS based in Poland and the Czech Republic.

219: Oh, I agree this is a diplomatic botch. One thing that completely removes the "security botch" question is that Obama isn't crapping the missile shield project, merely the missile shield location. Therefore, any technological objections to the Bush policy apply equally directly to the Obama policy, as do any objections on the grounds that having such a missile defense would annoy the Russians.

As a result, the only concrete outcome here is that Obama has managed to specifically undermine the Polish and Czech governments that had accomodated U.S. objectives (at some risk to themselves too), and to generally undermine the idea that the U.S. stands by its friends. So much for Obama's vaunted diplomatic panache.

Even if it was a bad idea, the way it was presented was as an unofficial trade. We'd scrap it. The Russians would help more on Iran. This was just spin, apparently, designed to make the action look savvy, not weak. Now we look weak.

220: But the stupid thing here is that even if the MDS is bad policy, Obama hasn't scrapped it. So the argument that making the change that was made was somehow a good idea just falls apart. The policy is being continued. Those who are offended by it will likely be just as offended that it is in the Black and Baltic Sea as they would be that it was in Poland and the Czech Republic. So what did making this move accomplish? You still haven't answered that, since your entire argument is based on the false premise that the MDS is being scrapped, when in fact it is merely being moved.

I don't believe it was ever presented as a quid pro quo with Russia, but perhaps you have evidence of this I haven't seen.

The missile defense shield doesn't work. It is and has been a sink hole for saber rattling and expenditures to the buddies of the defense industry. We have yet to shoot down a single mssile with it (oh, we may have hit one, but that would be only after having programmed its trajectory into the guidance system well in advance of it being fired. I don't believe we have hit any). At present this thing is a major bust and installing it on the hope we never actually have to use it, because it doesn't work, not because of its deterrent power, is plain stupid and dangerous.

If we absolutely have to have one of these things somewhere why don't we put it up in Israel? Maybe because the Israeli's would rather rely on tried and true systems rather than the irrational pipe dreams of America. Remember how many SCUDs we shot down in the first Gulf War? Yes, technology has advanced since then, just not as much as necessary to make this work. Besides, money, not national defense, is the point of the American Defense Establishment. Just another opportunity for massive corruption and fraud. We've been building these things since the seventies. Where are they? How much have we thrown down that rat hole? This is just another nozzle on the vacuum cleaner, that's all.

The idea of sanctions on Iran are ludicrous anyway. If we sanction petroleum products who will suffer? The leadership? No! The people of Iran, you know, those who look to US for help. Those people. If Iran was smart they would build more refineries dedicated to refining petroleum products in Iran for domestic consumption. Boy, talk about pissing off the Russians. That would do it.

Total (unscourced) speculation on my part, but my immediate reaction to Obama's claim that they're simply changing the location of the project, and not the project itself, was that it was a rhetorical bone to throw to the opposition. Meanwhile, he's got other things on his plate.

It wouldn't surprise me if, in the not-too-distant future, the "shield" will have gone the way of bomb shelters, which were, back in the day, taken seriously by many. Now they look pretty silly. If only our solutions were so simple.

"Conventional moral norms" between nation states?

Who are the allies in this instance, Oakes? The governments of Poland and Czechoslovakia, who want these sites, or the people of Poland and Czechoslovakia who don't?

Or, as I said above, is this whole thing a boondoggle for the defense industry. Personally, I go with the boondoggle thing.

If the fear is the Rooskies a few abm's in eastern Europe aren't going to do much. If the fear is Iran, as I said, place them closer to the putative target. Oh, that's right, I don't hear Israel clamoring for these things.

When these things can be shown to actually, you know, like, shoot down another missile, and they have a real raison d'etre then let's discuss what to do and where to put them, otherwise, at this point even as the phantom weapon system they are, they are more trouble than they are worth, hence this discussion. What are we talking about here? Some imaginary weapons system with an imaginary capability of countering some imaginary threat.

Carny, I guess you are right after all. We seem to live in some mashup of reality and Science Fiction.

This is pure politics of the scummiest sort.

Be Afraid! Be Very Afraid!

229: Here's a question - how much research do you think will be done on making such a proposed system work if there isn't a project proposed that would depend upon such technology? Should we abandon all projects that stretch the bounds of technological possibility?

When the goal of landing on the Moon was proposed by Kennedy, the U.S. hadn't even gotten a man into orbit. Using your logic, that project should have been scrapped on the grounds that we couldn't do it.

Of course, this is a moot point, since the MDS isn't being abandoned.

228: Here's the thing - for a President who was supposed to be conducting himself in a morally superior way, as opposed to that nasty way his predecessor was supposed to be handling foreign affairs, Obama's track record seems pretty morally questionable at this point.

211, etc.
That's so sweet! I wish I could say I care as much about what the guy in the pirate hat thinks. ;)

I'm late to this portion of the discussion, and have little to add, other than:

1) Spending more money relocating a Potemkinesque missle defense system from one spot to another doesn't make sense to me, whether it's Obama doing it or not.

2) Moving it, I suppose, only illustrates that from a security perspective we view (or wish others to perceive that we view) Iran et al. as more of a threat than we do Putin's Russia. Moving the pieces on the board is simply a way of signalling the shift.

3) The thing about leaving Poland and the Czech Republic "hanging out to dry" is silly, and it's kind of weird to hear conservatives boohooing about those degenerate Europeans. Nations pursue their own interests, and any nation that needs a "security blanket" ought to start taking charge of their own defensive alliances.

4) It's way too late in the game to bring the question of morality into politics and international relations. A good time to have done that would have been in the glorious days of extraordinary rendition and enhanced interrogation techniques. (Funny to see how folks who used to defend Bush policies as matters of humph! LAW rather than MORALITY are now so concerned with morality.) It's goofy to say that we are immoral because we have hurt the Poles feelings. Jerky, maybe, for not calling first, but not immoral.

If they want to put those things somewhere after there is a high confidence of success with their essential mission, I say go for it. But, hanging any kind of diplomatic strategy on the system as it stands now is bad policy.

Make it work. Show me it works regularly and give them a mission and then let's discuss it as a part of America's military and diplomatic arsenal. Until then, all this talk is just so much hooey and a smoke screen for the usual robbery.

I am all for developing such a thing If it can be developed. We are at the testing stage and so far nothing has worked.

I would love nothing more than to have a battery of these things in the South China Sea protecting Asia from the N. Koreans, a country with both a demonstrated nuclear capacity as well as short and medium range delivery systems. That doesn't seem to be who an abm site in eastern Europe is designed to protect us from.

231>
I've never assumed (but perhaps others do) that as commander-in-chief Obama would depart from the behavior of all previous US P(p)residents, who put the national, strategic interest first. This is the logic of nation state (Realpolitik). If "morality" coincides with strategic interests, all the better. I also don't think Obama has represented himself in any other terms. It is an error of judgment (based on ill-founded projections) to view Obama as being above or outside Realpolitik; if he is "different", it may be in the way he pursues Realpolitik (e.g., the "open hand" metaphor) compared to the prior administration. The only way to find this to be "morally questionable" would be to challenge the basic functioning of nation states at least since the Peace of Westphalia. One could do this; but that would require a more thoroughgoing assessment of US foreign policy over the long term (not just specific to any particular presidency). I've referred to this essay before ( https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/rohloff/www/war%20making%20and%20state%20making.pdf ): while it does not express the "whole truth" concerning states as actors, it does capture something essential about the operation and functioning of states. Neither Bush nor Obama exist outside this framework. They "may" operate differently within it.

Nb. To avoid misinterpretation, I'm being descriptive and analytical in this assessment, not prescriptive.

Stormraven, you need to understand, Obama got elected because we had eight years of continual screw ups from Bush and Cheney. Thus, anything bad Obama does is Bush's fault.

I hope I've satisfied your request.

As per #217, the USA has now thrown Poland a "bone of respect" to make up for the hurt feelings and damaged Stolz that came from the MDS decision. All's well that ends well.

"Poland, smarting after President Obama announced last month that he would scrap Bush-era plans to deploy an antiballistic missile system in Eastern Europe, will accept an offer to host parts of a new, more mobile missile defense system, Polish officials said Tuesday.

The plan for so-called SM-3 missiles, first proposed in Washington last month, will be spelled out in more detail on Wednesday when Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. holds talks with leaders in Warsaw.

“The elements of this new missile defense system will be based in Poland,” said Mariusz Handzlik, the chief foreign policy adviser to the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, whom Mr. Biden is to meet Wednesday ...

The SM-3 missile plan is seen by many analysts as a bid by the Obama administration to convince several East European governments, including the Czech Republic, which also was affected when Washington dropped the old missile defense plan, that it is not turning its back on the region as it tries to improve relations with Russia. The offer could go a long way toward repairing relations with Warsaw and Prague, whose governments have been among America’s strongest allies in Europe but have increasingly felt snubbed by the administration.

“This is about the U.S. sweetening the bitter experience Eastern European leaders had when President Obama scrapped the missile defense plan,” said Petr Drulak, director of the Institute of International Relations in Prague." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/world/europe/21biden.html?hp

So, he cancelled the proposed missile defense system so he could announce a new one? How does this make any sense at all?

I wondered that too. The only thing I could think of was that there are subtleties like those we read of in Remembrance of Things Past. The order was to satisfy Russia, our co-bully, and keep Poland with us around the Christmas tree.

Robert

238: There's also the fact that cancelling the MDS has been cited as one of the reasons for Obama deserving the Peace Prize (ostensibly the subject of this thread). I guess that's not such a good argument any more. Sorry apologists.

236>
"So called SM-3's" as the NYT article puts it, are already is service aboard certain US Navy ships. They're highly effective against anti-ship missiles which have greater maneuverability than ICBMs. I'm sure they would be just as effective from a land based platform. Unfortunately the whole thing is smoke and mirrors. There is no effective defense against multiple MIRV equipped missiles launched from a mobile sub-surface platform. Submarines will always have the last word in a nuclear exchange.

240: Given that the defense shield in question is ostensibly to defend against threats from potential rogue actors like Iran, I'd have to say that the danger of having to deal with multiple MIRV equipped missiled launched from a mobile sub-surface platform seems slight.

241>
Almost as slight Iran launching missile against Poland.

Yeah, no muslim would ever target cities in Europe like London or Madrid or anything like that.

Iran is a nation state, not a "muslim". But I could be wrong.

224: Well, an explicitly Islamic republic. I'm sure I can't remember the religious affiliation of the political movers and shakers there though.

I think what #242 implies is the absence of a plausible scenario in which Iran would launch against Poland. By "plausible scenario" I mean one in which the normal Realpolitik calculations set the boundary conditions of possible actions. A MDS would do nothing against attacks similar to London or Madrid.

A MDS would do nothing against attacks similar to London or Madrid.

Certainly not, but for rhetorical purposes it makes a nice emotional mallet.

247: And I simply disagree in a larger sense. Iran may not launch a strike against Poland per se, but the area to be covered by the proposed MDS is much larger than that. Further, Iran hasn't got a track record of being an entirely rational actor, and even if it did, one has to seriously question the efficacy of controls placed upon any weapons they might have (assuming they acquire some) given the somewhat chaotic nature of politics in that country and resulting spotty oversight.

Iran hasn't got a track record of being an entirely rational actor

That is a matter of perspective. There are some who might argue that given their unique placement and audience, they are quite shrewd.

People thought Saddam Hussein was crazy. After the war, it became known that one of the main reasons he let the world believe he had WMD's was because he saw it as an effective deterrent towards Iran*. What seems bizarre from the outside may make complete sense from another perspective.

Of course, now the Shia are in charge of Iraq as well, so.....mission accomplished!

#248:

Iran's irrationality is often assumed, but what has it done that is irrational? If we ascribe it the usual motivations (maintaining domestic stability, defending itself against foreign aggression, exploiting its natural resources) then it doesn't seem to have acted counter to those.

Well, we can go back to 1979 and take a look at the hostage situation. And then the ill-advised war against Iraq. More recently, we have a holocaust denier as president, and seizing British sailors. Sure, they can be explained from a particular perspective, but that perspective includes lashing out against its perceived enemies in often nasty ways. I don't see how this means that a nuclear armed Iran would amount to no plausible threat.

Further, given what seems to be a reasonable possibility that Iran could temporarily lose control of one of its weapons to one or more groups that holds views even more extreme than the norm for Iran, then the potential threat seems something well worth preparing for.

Not long ago, a nation had a president who was an evolution denier, launched a pre-emptive war against another nation based on faulty information, and arrested and/or detained hundreds of people who never saw the inside of a court house. Would you trust such a nation with nukes? Shouldn't Mexico seek a MDS?

Shouldn't Mexico seek a MDS?

Ah! I can almost see the Strangelovian markings on the side:
MOCTEZUMA'S REVENGE!!

As an aside, apropos to some of the "how could they?!" comments upthread, I was recently reminded of Kissinger's quote:
We have no friends, American only has interests.

253>

Based on correct assumptions, Kissinger is right.

#251: The ill-advised war against Iraq? Didn't Iraq attack, i.e. start the war?

248>
Iran simply can't launch long range ballistic missiles that wouldn't be detected and likely intercepted. I'm guessing here, but I don't think Iran has the sheer number of missiles needed to start an effective nuclear offensive. Even if, against really long odds, they happened to successfully detonate a nuclear warhead over London or Madrid etc... I can't envision any response scenario that doesn't include the near complete obliteration of their homeland by western powers. Even if their leadership is irrational I don't believe they're suicidal. I tend to think these missile defense systems are the result of fear peddling on the part of the US; "boondoggles" as geneg put it, for politicians and their defense industry cohorts.

256: Without an MDS, how do you propose that the missile would be intercepted?

The real problem is not that Iran's leaders would put a missile to use. The real problem is that Iran is a politically chaotic nation and might plausibly lose control (even temporarily) or one of their weapons to an extremist faction that simply doesn't care if there is retliation, so long as they can start their apocalyptic war between Islam and the world.

Now that I think about this claim, I don't know that Iran is an especially "politically chaotic nation." Since 1979 there seems to be a coherent ruling group, there seem to be regular and orderly elections (although the legitimacy of the last election is contested, I didn't observe any significant policy differences between the candidates with respect to the nuclear program), and an Iranian civil society exists in a fairly robust way. Moreover, if one were to "think like a state," there would be no rational reason for Iran to hand over a weapon to a non-state actor (i.e., a terrorist group).

From a realist perspective, I would surmise that the problem of Iran's nuclear program is that it could incite a nuclear arms race among other Gulf states or could quite well bring on an attack on Iran from Israel (which would create real chaos in that regioin). The other scenarios presented, from the possibility of an Iranian attack on the heart of Europe to an as yet to be seen "extremist faction" undertaking a coup in Iran, seem a bit far fetched. But I'm open to being persuaded otherwise by facts.

257: There is already a system in place to detect and intercept missiles, aircraft, etc... that might originate from Irani airspace. Next time you're in Gaeta, Italy visit the USS Mt. Whitney and see if they'll give you a tour of their C4I suite(doubtful) and you'll get an idea of what I mean. Surveillance systems are in place at sea, on land, and in space. They're not perfect but they'll easily spot something with the flight pattern, speed, and size of a long range ballistic missile.
Anyway, I tend to agree with theoria that you may be overstating the actual threat Iran poses.

StormRaven, #257: "The real problem is that Iran is a politically chaotic nation and might plausibly lose control (even temporarily) or one of their weapons to an extremist faction that simply doesn't care if there is retliation, so long as they can start their apocalyptic war between Islam and the world."

You should have written Pakistan instead of Iran, that would be closer to reality. And *they* already have "The Bomb".

It's possible that Iran has other uses in mind for its nuclear material than bombs.

Republicans would force Iran to develop a bomb for its own defense. Anyone remember "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran"?

Obama wants to help Iran solve a domestic problem. Go figure.

And then there's this.

Hahaha, Gene.

>57 codyed: - Is the "idea" of Obama so powerful that people are incapable of seeing past the surface shine to the rotten core?

>262 geneg: Are people who criticize Obama from the Left racist? Help me out; I'm trying to stay in step with the bien-pensant.

I have an idea for a clever experiment. It involves me browsing around the lefty-sphere and collecting all the substantial criticisms of Obama. Once I have collected enough criticisms, I would then come back to LibraryThing and present them on this forum as my own. My prediction is that the lefties on here would oppose every one of my criticisms with the same vigor and furious indignation as they would the more unsubstantial criticisms coming from the right.

While you are doing that you might want to track Democratic support for Obama with his overall agree/disagree on policy. My guess is you will find his approval ratings are way more affected by shifts in the Democratic Party and among independents than by Republicans. And not necessarily because he's too far left. The Party of No will only have a minuscule impact on his support. Many Democrats are to the left of Obama on several issues. When asked about his handling of the war in Afghanistan, most of his opposition will be from his left. When asked about his handling of the economy most of his opposition will come from the Democrats who, like me, want to see a few heads on pikes, and independents. How the Party of No feels is, in the end, of no consequence. They have no real political power outside the south and are losing that. Obama tried to rehabilitate them as a partner to governance, but the more he reached out, the faster they ran over the cliff.

They have no real political power outside the south and are losing that. Obama tried to rehabilitate them as a partner to governance, but the more he reached out, the faster they ran over the cliff.

Just keep thinking that. Complacency is always funny to see.

Oh, believe me there is no complacency in my comment about the demise of the Republican Party. I won't be complacent until that sucker has been completely drained. Which of course will never happen, but the GOP in ten years will be totally unrecognizable as the same party they were 10 years ago. They already are.

They lost every national level election Tuesday, but one, the equality initiative in Maine. The two governorships they won were won by a guy in Virginia who weirdly ran to the left of the Democratic candidate who shunned help from Obama. Deeds ran away from Obama. Jon Corzine could not have been elected dog catcher, even as a Republican. Both those gubernatorial elections were based on local issues which are more related to competency and honesty than party politics. The Republicans have more to worry about with this election than the Democrats do. The Democrats (or liberals) won:

"Everything but marriage" in Washington
Congressional seats in New York (surprisingly handily) and California
Marijuana dispensaries in Maine
They nearly won the marriage equality initiative in Maine
In the NYC Mayoral race the Dems, who ran a crappy, disorganized campaign nearly defeated the Independent incumbent.

No, I think given the circumstances, the liberal mind did better than the conservative.

The Tea Baggers are not Republican, they are populist. The Republican Party, in the next ten years will be replaced by radical populism. They may call themselves Republicans, but if you are looking for a theory of conservative politics and governance, you'll have to look elsewhere.

268: The Democrats have spent a lot of time explaining why they lost the governorship of a state that Obama won last year and has had two successive Democratic governors, and currently has two Democratic senators. They've also spent a lot of time explaining why they lost a state in which no Republican has won statewide office in sixteen years. Somehow these explanations all ring hollow.

I like how you count "nearly won" as a Democratic victory. Its not. Its a loss. Close doesn't count in politics.

Why I love Republicans! They are soooo patriotic!

Cynical bastards!

Oh, wait! Maybe we are no longer indivisible.

270
*sniff*
As I look out upon those pasty white faces with really bad hairdos, it brings a misty tear to my eye.

What the tape doesn't show was the follow up sing-along:

This land is our land,
This land ain't YOUR land...

Well, he's right about one thing...
Every time I go to my kid's school and hear the pledge of allegiance, I start foaming at the mouth and writhing on the floor.

These people are really living in their own private Idaho.

Another loss for the teabaggers and their handlers. If you want to live in a dysfunctional state that resorts to tyranny to survive as a governmental entity, like California, then this madness is for you.

Now that the wealthy in this country have everything set up the way they want it, they want to dismantle our ability to change it.

On a lighter note.

Well, I think the Republicans have every right to savor each hard won victory, even if Mr. Steele is almost intoxicated by giddiness as he makes the rounds:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/04/AR2009110403118....

Let them enjoy their moment of, uh, transcendence.

More hijinks from the Patriot Party.

I guess they are reaching out to the stoopids in their desire to link themselves with the FFs. Or is he multitasking? Holding up the constitution while reading the Declaration is some stunt.

I guess they stopped teaching civics in Ohio a long time ago.

The money from Obama's Peace Prize has been allocated. Here's the charities it's going to.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2010/03/obama-gives-14-mill...

No money for SarahPac.com? What was he thinking?

It appears that those who insisted Obama could not accept the money attached to the Nobel Prize were wrong.