Let me second Jack’s outrage with some of my own (his point about the neocons’ outrage is well-taken, though):

Obama is far from the first undeserving recipient.  In fact he joins an elite group of American mass murderers that includes Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Henry Kissinger.  However, in each of these cases there was some kind of concrete accomplishment, transitory or foolish though they may have been, that justified the award.  T.R. negotiated a peace in the Russo-Japanese War; Wilson founded the League of Nations; Kissinger negotiated the Paris agreement to end the Vietnam War (his Vietnamese counterpart Le Duc Tho was equally murderous but at least had the common decency to refuse the prize).

There have also been plenty of overtly political Nobel Peace Prizes over the years–the most recent of which was the one Al Gore won along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 for their work on climate change.  But still, Gore made a movie; he did something.

What exactly has Obama accomplished aside from being elected?  Even by liberal values, Obama’s presidency so far is lackluster at best.  He has passed no substantial legislation aside from bailouts and stimulus bills that largely follow in the footsteps of his predecessor and are much bewailed by left-wingers like Michael Moore.  Some of this is due to Congressional resistance, but there are numerous things he could do on his authority alone–meeting with the Dalai Lama and ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell spring to mind.

The committee awarded Obama the prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”  Such as?  He’s made a lot of speeches and gestures towards being less unilateral than Bush, but has he actually done much of anything to that end?

And while there are basically no reasons to give Obama the prize, there are a host of reasons to deny him, including but not limited to the following:

1) Still waging two wars abroad with more troops likely on the way to Afghanistan.

2) Still waging the domestic war on drugs, which imprisons hundreds of thousands of non-violent people and has turned this country into a police state.

3) Has not ended the practice of rendition where terror suspects are taken abroad to be tortured.

4) Has not renounced the authority to hold terror suspects indefinitely–even after they are found innocent.

5) Oh, and in case you missed it, he has started bombing the fucking moon!!!

The idea that any president less than a year into his term could deserve the Nobel Peace Prize is absurd enough on its own, but it is doubly absurd when you consider how ineffectual Obama’s presidency has actually been, and how much it is actually a continuation of business as usual in Washington.

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