Musing on the Nobel Award for Obama

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Ghanadot

I am left with sadness after reading reactions to the Nobel Prize award for President Obama. I am afraid the award reflects what the Nobel Peace committee wants American leaders to be and this is sad indeed.

Peace Prize for Obama at this early stage? Consider this early warning for historians:

Peter Beaumont of the Guardian, UK, a fairly liberal paper, wrote “The reality is that the prize appears to have been awarded to Barack Obama for what he is not. For not being George W Bush. Or rather being less like the last president. “

He went on to say that “The question now is whether having being anointed perhaps too early by the committee, a Nobel Prize earned so cheaply and at so little cost will help him in his efforts on the international stage or rather be an albatross around his neck. Something against which all his future efforts will be judged – and perhaps found wanting.”

The last paragraph was Beaumont’s conclusion, and I have to agree with him.

This issue of the peace prize brings up a notion of the tragic - tragedy in the sense that it conjures up the image of a leader in a possible conflict with himself because of his status as the president of the United States of America; or a leader whose future initiatives and achievements would now be owned as credits to this early accolade.

On another level, there is also tragedy in the sense that some of us Africans have pinned our hopes on Obama being a trail blazer in world politics - the first most credible Black person to arrive at the American presidency. We have hoped that his administration would be a spectacular statement about the Blackman not being a failure. To look like he is now led by a committee is another tragedy in the works for our image.

In granting the prize, the Nobel Committee said it chose Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" and for creating "a new international climate".

"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.."

The committee continued that "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."

Very lofty ideal for leadership of a one world, however, Obama is the leader of America. Many in his constituency would like to see him as an American president first, who then made his mark on the world stage.

But he was barely in office when the nomination for the prize closed in January 2009; soon after George W. Bush left office.

Obviously, the committee does not like George Bush and does not share his belief in America’s “exceptionalism. ” In truth, with the selection of Obama, the committee has poked its middle finger at this concept of “exceptionalism.”

The problem for Obama is it is too early to know the impact of Bush policies. So what happens to the legacy of Obama if it should turn out in history that Bush was right?

Still, what was it about George Bush’s policies that were so much against peace? He went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan? Would dialogue alone on Iraq and Afghanistan have bought peace? The last time I checked NATO was in charge of Afghanistan during the years of George Bush. They had ample opportunity to engage the Taliban and al-Qaida in dialogue, so what happened?

America, for all its faults, has done more for the world than any single nation on earth. It has its faults and a lot of it, but so has Europe. Countries in Europe, for instance, have either collectively or individually their own sense of “exceptionalism.”

Europe, for her part, has inflicted her share of “exceptionalism” on the world – slavery, two world wars, colonialism, the Middle East and exploitation of riches from third world countries. So this notion of peace through future actions of Obama, based on this premature prize award, is at best manipulative as well as condescending. It is chutzpah at its worse. Chutzpah, by the way, is the ability to hold yourself up without sweat for something you are not.

Today, the award has caused even supporters of Obama to question his sincerity in security decisions he took or did not take in the run up to the announcement of the prize.

Historians, for instance, would want to understand the delay on the troop surge for American forces in Afghanistan (after all Obama said that place was where to fight al-Qaida). His failure to use the UN General Assembly to call attention to Iran’s second nuclear facility will also come into contention. Could early pronouncements on these issues, seen as too bellicose, have jeopardized his peace award?

The second Iran nuclear facility is fascinating in itself because it conjures up Bush’s experience with Iraq’s WMDs. Why has this facility escaped the world’s attention until the announcement by Iran herself?

Is it by coincidence that Mohamed ElBaradei, the UN atomic agency chief who couldn't find WMDs in Iraq in 2005 also didn't know about Iran's second nuclear facility in 2009?  ElBaradei, by the way, was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 2007.

The second nuclear facility is a fixed one. The WMDs that “Bush lied and people died” was a mobile one that could have been dismantled and moved within a week’s notice. Well, it wouldn’t matter now. Bush was a “liar” and he is gone.

And by the way, does peace in Africa matter? Could any of George Bush’s policies have helped move things more towards a peaceful Africa – the MCA, the PEPFAR and his spectacular generosity on AIDS funding? What about his calling the situation in Darfur genocide?

By all means, the peace prize can be used as a reward, not as a prod for directives. Secretary General Kofi Annan had solid achievements in 2001, which resulted in his share of the Peace Prize awarded to him in tandem with the UN.

Bush, of course, never made it and would never make it for the peace committee. But good or bad, he was not seen as being pushed around by European notions of how a superpower like America should behave. This obvious patronage of the first Black president of a super power nation is troubling. The prize could have waited for another year rather than using it now as a contrivance to push our Obama around.
 

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