“President Barrack Obama awarded The Nobel Peace Prize.”
Topic “A” this week is the above headline that gave the world pause. President Obama himself said that he was surprised and humbled. The world was surprised. The question of the week is “Why Obama?”
President Obama has only been in office ten months, how could he earn such a coveted acknowledgement? He is prosecuting two American led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These were not wars that he imposed, but the war in Iraq is being wound down in so far as American troop involvement is concerned, however America will always have a presence there to avoid the country erupting into all-out civil war. Next-door in Afghanistan, that war with the Taliban must be won. There are 42 nations participating against the enemy, so there can be no simple matter of just packing up and going home. The Taliban and Al Quaida must be defeated as their ideologies are as insidious as the Nazis.
President Obama is being encouraged to flood the country with American troops in an effort to overrun the enemy, but the enemy are already setting up shop in Somalia. These conflicts will carry on long after the President has left office.
Meanwhile, the situation between the Israelis and the Palestinians continues. Animosity and tit-for-tat killings are as much a part of the very fabric of their lives, so there is no possibility of peace in that region anytime soon. The president may indeed have the best of intentions but it simply is not going to happen.
While I don’t know exactly what Alfred Nobel intended as the criteria for being considered a recipient of the Noble Peace Prize, I can safely assume that bringing about, or promoting peace is in the mix. Given that, what has the president actually done to promote peace?
Under George W. Bush America had become a despised nation in the view of the world. Under his administration he talked about an axis of evil, meaning Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. However, a great many people saw the axis as being Bush himself, his vice-president Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defence. President Obama recognised this and he has set about putting a human face on the United States again. He has reached out to Europe, to South America, including Cuba, to Russia, and especially he has reached out to the Islamic nation. I therefore believe that this award is as much about encouragement as anything else.
Clearly President Obama is not about winning awards. The surprise of which he speaks will be genuine, and he will no doubt continue his efforts at promoting the peace. However, he will not be a pushover for any hostile nation. Anyone who wishes to attack the United States on his watch will be in for a very nasty response, Peace Prize or not. As America’s first Afro-American president he does have a lot to prove. Simply getting elected was his first test. His second test was to take broken America and to fix it.
We all said that his job was impossible; America had been left in such a bad condition. Most people would have given up in despair, but not Barack Obama. His credo of “Yes We Can!” has never been tested to such a degree, but he has turned the ship of state away from the rocks and it is headed toward calmer waters, at least for now.
President Obama’s strength lies in the fact that he is an honest broker. He is a man of great integrity and he is true to his word Above all else he can be trusted. In America politics is everything. Rarely can you get a completely straight answer; there are only Democratic or Republican answers. However, President Obama could be the only sitting president in the history of the United States to gain a second term, unopposed if he is given enough cooperation to implement his policies that benefit both Republicans and Democrats alike.
Time will tell!
Copyright © 2009 Eugene Carmichael
