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Kasz216 on 09 October 2009
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famousringo said:

I'm gonna perch on a fence and not decide for now. I do think that Obama has done enough for peace to deserve consideration, but he could do much, much more.

I will say that I find it strangely appropriate that he wasn't awarded the prize for what he has done so much as what it is hoped he will do.

I think right now Obama is taking US foreign policy in exactly the direction Europe and the global community wants: Leadership without unilateralism. This award has a lot to do with that change of tone. The world community likes having the US take a leadership role on problems—because frankly it's hard to get anything done without US support—but us non-superpowers also like to feel that our voices are being heard. This prize is a stamp of approval for the rebranding of the United States in the eyes of the world.

For whatever it's worth, here's what the President of Israel thinks of this:

“Very few leaders if at all were able to change the mood of the entire world in such a short while with such a profound impact. You provided the entire humanity with fresh hope, with intellectual determination, and a feeling that there is a lord in heaven and believers on earth.” Mr. Peres, who won the peace prize with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat in 1994 following the Oslo Accords, added: “Under your leadership, peace became a real and original agenda. And from Jerusalem, I am sure all the bells of engagement and understanding will ring again. You gave us a license to dream and act in a noble direction.”

Does a change in the mood and new hope for the future justify a peace prize? I'm really not sure.

Here's the thing.  I think Hilary Clinton would of did that as well.

Pretty much anybody not George W Bush or seen as him would of did that.

It feels like George W Bush was such a disaster that the next guy gets an award just for not being him.

Since nothing he's done has reached a level of other Presidents not named George W Bush or like... James Buchanon or something.