Barack Obama Nobel Peace Prize

willem, I agree with you, people are very quick to poo poo the American's but like you have stated they aren't as power hungry as some in the past.

It also annoys me when people get on the anti war band wagon, do people forget that with the minority extremist's in these comunitys that they make life for the sane hell, women being bashed to death for an acident like there head dress coming off and showing there face and that is just the start. If you are ok with this than you are selfish. War is not popular but it is also better faught over there then on home soil.

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Originally Posted by lambrover

It also annoys me when people get on the anti war band wagon, do people forget that with the minority extremist's in these comunitys that they make life for the sane hell, women being bashed to death for an acident like there head dress coming off and showing there face and that is just the start. If you are ok with this than you are selfish. War is not popular but it is also better faught over there then on home soil.

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You making it sound like America is actually fighting for freedom. As if.

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Originally Posted by subasurf

You making it sound like America is actually fighting for freedom. As if.

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All superpowers - like all nations - look after their own interests. The Yanks are no different. But they have been the gentlest in their handling of their power of all the superpowers of history. It doesn't make them paragons of virtue, but you have to give credit where credit is due.

With the enormous power they have - and they are still the industrial behemoth of the world, with an economy more than ten times larger than China - they have not gone and conquered everybody and built an empire, like the Poms did. Remember 'The sun never sets on the British Empire'? All superpowers have done that or tried to. The Yanks never have.

And in spite the 'Pax Romana', as good as it was, in a rough and ready sort of way, the Marshall Plan is still unprecedented in world history. And enormously successful. The greatest supporters the Americans have had since WW2 are Germany and Japan, the countries they rebuilt after WW2 with the Marshall Plan. Two powerful economies that have been peaceful ever since.

Compare that to the Treaty of Versailles, which ended WW1, and ripped any remaining wealth out of the defeated countries in reparations. It impoverished much of Europe. That's what the Poms did and the world was again at war thirty years later.

Willem

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Originally Posted by subasurf

You making it sound like America is actually fighting for freedom. As if.

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:D I agree a mere front for other agenders...if they were that concerned about freedom why haven't they outed Mugabe? I guess the country doesn't have enough to offer.....:p

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Originally Posted by willem

With the enormous power they have - and they are still the industrial behemoth of the world, with an economy more than ten times larger than China

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Hmmm, I dunno.

I think China is todays superpower - they own the USA and are the benchmark economy.

Re Obama and the NPP. I also think that his style is something to be modelled from. That in itself is something special for the world.

"Be peaceful or die"

Gee is that his policy? He just went up in my estimation if it is.

The simple stark truth is the less the country you're in resembles the US the greater the chance that you're sick hungry and up to your eyebrows in a pile of do-do. And don't the lefties just hate it.

As Condolesa Rice said, they invaded Europe and saved it from Nazism and asked for what empire in return? Just enough land to bury their dead.

The talkers love to talk down the US, but the walkers seem to be going the other way. Where are the boats leaving Australia and going to Vietnam, the boats leaving Florida and heading to Cuba? Where are the hundreds of people trying to get out of the US and head to South America? Talk is cheap, fleeing fascism is expensive, I know who the best judges are.

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Originally Posted by willem

Actually the US is easily the least aggressive superpower in history.

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I didn't say that it was the most aggressive nation ever now did I did I?

But now that you mention it, there are a number of countries whose displaced and refugee citizens would disagree with you, e.g. Panama, Vietnam, Iraq, Korea, ... the survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasake.

Anyway. There will always be an aggressor because that is a human failing. It is just galling when the leader of the current prime example of an aggressor state is also held up as being worthy of receiving an award for past actions when they haven't even done anything.

Alan

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Originally Posted by Hymie

what have the Romans ever done for us?

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Heaps and heaps and heaps and heaps. Of course it was mostly others, such as the Greeks, Assyrians, Egyptians, etc. who actually invented most of what the Romans spread throughout their empire.

But in relation to the current discussion, Pax Romanum.

Alan

I wonder if George W thinks "Wheres mine! I took care of the main VILLAN and get no prize?" :D :p

According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize should be awarded "to the person who shall have 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."


Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which recognize completed scientific or literary accomplishment, the Nobel Peace Prize may be awarded to persons or organizations that are in the process of resolving a conflict or creating peace.


It seems to me that given the above quotes from Wikipedia, most of the criticism of this decision is unjustified. Obama's declared intention to seek a world free of nuclear weapons would appear to be sufficient alone to justify the award given the actual criteria, which are very different from the criteria for the other Nobel Prizes.

I am not an Obama fan, and obviously have no idea who the other nominees were, but I do note that past awards of (and failures to award) peace prizes have often been controversial.

It is also worth noting that the award is to Obama as a person, not to him as President of the United States or to America itself, so comments about US history or past US foreign policy are simply irrelevant. It is also worth noting that the actual power of the President of the US is in reality less than it seems - for a start, there is far less guarantee of getting a piece of legislation he wants through Congress than would be the case for an Australian Prime Minister, even where the President's party has a majority in both houses. And he is also constrained more than in Australia by the constitution and courts, and like any elected leader, by political reality.

John