Sunday, October 11, 2009

What for?

For all those asking this question with regard to Obama's designation as Nobel Peace Prize recipient in this year, I would first like simply to quote in its entirety the statement by the Norwegian Nobel Commitee that made the decision.

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2009
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.
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.
Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.
For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that "Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges."
Oslo, October 9, 2009
And if that doesn't satisfy you, try adding these reasons as well:
Obama is set on closing Guantánamo, an infringement of justice and great jeopardization of world peace as its mere existence feeds the flames of fanaticism and terrorism.
He has bridged the violent chasm of racial antagonism in the United States to attain by peaceful means the highest office of the land.
He is pulling down the troops in Iraq, from a war which never should have been started and now must be ended cautiously.
He refuses simply to throw masses of troops and weapons into Afghanistan, insisting on the necessity of nation-building, security measures, infrastructure, and rights and education in that country as a means of countering the threat of terrorism.
He recognizes the essentiality of multilateral discourse and international institutions to solve the problems facing the world today, from the United Nations to the World Bank to the G20, and participates as an equal partner rather than "master".
He has begun dialogue with North Korea and with Iran, without relinquishing any means of pressure the U.S. may have.
He has cancelled the starwars project that had so riled Russia as to provoke military tensions where none need any longer be. This is in itself a move for world peace.
And he has put an end to torture by governmental agencies, which was not only a threat in itself to any efforts for world peace but was a most violent attack on any principles of democracy and justice able to uphold peace.
Indeed, he is aware and a promoter of the correct idea that THINKING is the way humans should proceed in dealing with all questions and differences that may arise among them and that SPEAKING with each other is the wisest way to attempt to preserve and protect the world we all share.
Finally, he has put an end to one of the most dangerous organizations that threatened world peace, simply by becoming president: he has closed down the playpen!

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