BrianGarst.com

They’re not surprised by the criticism, say the Nobel Peace Prize Committee members which have taken questions about their decision to award Barack Obama the prize.  Yet for people who saw the questions coming, their explanations are incredibly silly.

“We simply disagree that he has done nothing,’’ committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said yesterday. “He got the prize for what he has done.’’

Jagland singled out Obama’s efforts to heal the divide between the West and the Muslim world and scale down a Bush-era proposal for an antimissile shield in Europe.

“All these things have contributed to – I wouldn’t say a safer world – but a world with less tension,’’ Jagland said by phone from the French city of Strasbourg, where he was attending meetings in his other role as secretary general of the Council of Europe.

…

“Alfred Nobel wrote that the prize should go to the person who has contributed most to the development of peace in the previous year,’’ Jagland said. “Who has done more for that than Barack Obama?’’

Who has done more than nothing? A lot of people, I’d imagine.

Some brush all the criticism off by noting that the award is really just an understandable rebuke of the crazy Bush years, where a psychopath cowboy went around scaring the beejesus out of dictators world leaders.  Although that explanation gets close to their motivation, it is not entirely satisfactory.  It doesn’t explain the laundry list of past winners that have done little to nothing to promote peace (Al Gore), are falsely given credit for the work of others (Mikhail Gorbachev), or in some cases flat out opposed peace (Yasser Arafat).

It is clear that this prize is not about peace, per se, but correct adherence to left-wing orthodoxy.  Members of the committee may rationalize this on the basis that they believe adherence to this ideology will ultimately promote peace, but ought such assumptions be tested with empirical evidence before handing out a world renowned award? Shouldn’t someone produce a single place where people have been made more peaceful thanks to an Obama policy before his stances are declared as having promoted peace?

Of course, if they used any empirical analysis at all – as opposed to a straight ideological checklist – you might find among the list of winners some people that actually deserved it, like Winston Churchill or Ronald Reagan. No global leftist worth his salt could ever let that happen.

Barack Obama