By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
The surprise announcement that President Barack Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize has taken everyone, including the President, by surprise, with most wondering at the rationale behind the choice.
Speaking from the White House Rose Garden this morning, the president said he wasn’t sure what he’d done to earn the award and to be in the company of the “transformative figures” who had won before him.
“I will accept this award as a call to action,” he said, “a call for all nations to confront the challenges of the 21st century.”
The Norwegian Nobel Committee cited the president’s creation of a “new climate in international politics” and his work on nuclear disarmament as the reason behind granting him the award. However, the decision for this year’s recipient was made on Feb. 1, less than a month after Obama took office, prompting many to say the award was more of a “political endorsement” than an acknowledgement of actual achievement.
If so, it wouldn’t be the first time the Committee was criticized for political bias. Awarding the Prize to Jimmy Carter in 2002 and Al Gore in 2007 was seen as rebukes to then president George W. Bush.
As a result, this year’s announcement is being met with criticism and even outrage across the globe.
The London Times called the award “absurd” and “a mockery of the Nobel Peace prize.”
The Wall Street Journal reports that when former Polish President Lech Walesa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 heard the news, he asked “So soon? Too early. He has no contribution so far. He is still at an early stage.”
Even in Norway, where the president is hugely popular, the decision was not received well by many. “It is just too soon,” said Siv Jensen, leader of Norway’s main opposition party, the Progress Party. “It is wrong to give him the peace prize for his ambition. You should receive it for results.”
News of the award came as a slap in the face to pro-life leaders such as Judie Brown, president of the American Life League.
“Bestowing the Nobel Prize on the most rabid pro-abortion president in history is a direct slap in the face to past recipient, Mother Teresa of Calcutta who said, upon receiving her Nobel Peace Prize: “the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing – direct murder by the mother herself.
“In awarding the prize to Obama, the Nobel Committee is announcing that abortion is the cornerstone of a hellish ‘peace’ – the damning silence of 51 million aborted children in the United States alone,” she said. “The Nobel Committee has bestowed the ‘Peace Prize’ on a man dedicated to war in the womb.”
© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace® http://www.womenofgrace.com
