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| Mac Deford: Well, Who Else Did You Have in Mind? | | 10/15/2009 9:37:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | | Note: | Mac Deford is traveling in the Middle East for the next several weeks. He may send a column or two, or may not, but rest assured, he will be back when he gets back.
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by Thomas McAdams Deford
What are those Norwegians up to?
Even supporters of President Obama professed befuddlement. And Obama himself admitted he was "surprised."
The default reasoning, that the Nobel Committee - liberals all, it is assumed - chose Obama as a back-handed slap at his predecessor, has some validity. Bush, after all, is the anti-peace prize winner par excellence: he's left the world with two unfinished wars, and his own country with a rating on the world's "most admired" list somewhere south of Burma or Zimbabwe.
But this seems a woefully inadequate explanation. So I checked with the midcoast's expert on all things Norwegian - their oil, their sense of humor, their women - to see if I could gain an insight. Swedes think they are "potato-heads," I was told. So do Republicans now.
Good insight to neighborhood politics, but not fully germane. So, again, what exactly was the Nobel Peace Prize Committee thinking?
Whatever it was, it drove the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan into paroxysms of paranoia. Noonan, usually the most rational of the Journal's columnists - some would say the only rational one - was floundering for adjectives: "It is absurd and it is embarrassing ... such a declaration of emptiness," was the first sentence in her weekend column. And the last sentence ended: "this wicked and ignorant award, this mischievous honor."
Such passion for such a dubious award. After all, it was won last year by Martti Ahtisaari; and in 2004, by Wangari Maathai. Who and who? (And I've checked both spellings twice - the Sunday Times wouldn't dare put either in their weekly crossword puzzle.)
Perhaps, then, it's nothing more nefarious than the process of elimination. Let's review the bidding.
We'll start with secular leaders: Sarkozy - nice wife; Berlusconi - nice girlfriends. Better go north: Angela Merkel - wasn't she the one George Bush gave the back-rub to? Or Gordon Brown - despite being the prime minister of our oldest ally, he's about as well and favorably known here, or anywhere else, as Messrs. Ahtisaari and Maathai (or is only one a Messr.?). The Russians: Putin? Not hardly. And his puppet, Medvedev? Chinese, Japanese?
Oh well, how about spiritual leaders. The Dalai Lama would be a cinch, but unfortunately he got his 20 years ago. There's always the pope? But this pope - he couldn't win even if the committee were stuffed with cardinals. The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church - for their inclusive approach to what the pope still believes are sexual deviants and sinners? Nice idea, but these days there are more Muslims in America than Episcopalians.
Speaking of Muslims, how about the supreme leader of the majority Sunnis? Yeah, that has legs - there're over a billion Sunnis after all; unfortunately, they don't have a supreme leader. The Shia? Indeed, they've got the supreme leader, hanging out in Tehran, but I think we can give him a pass.
Or maybe celebrity do-gooders: Bono? Not perfect. But at least they didn't pick Michael Jackson.
Many of the befuddled speculate that since Obama hasn't accomplished anything yet, it should be seen as a downpayment on future results. They may be on to something. In 2005, the International Atomic Energy Agency won - just before, I believe, the North Koreans tested their first nuke. Nice idea, though not great results. And not very original either: 10 years earlier, they had tried the same approach. Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences got it for their efforts "to eliminate" nuclear arms. And the year before that, it had gone to Arafat, Peres, and Rabin - 15 years on and we're still (see below) seeking that elusive two-state solution.
Yes, even if it never seems to work, that must be the rationale: we'll give him the award now and that'll spur him on to accomplish, on the peace front, what needs to be done.
And what exactly needs to be done? Just about everything. Give George Bush credit - the target of problems facing the US, for which our president might indeed earn a Nobel Peace Prize, is much larger now than the meagre one Bush inherited.
Iraq. There are still 125,000 US troops there. Elections in a few months, despite optimists' claims, may well exacerbate the Sunni-Shia tensions, since the political rewards that were anticipated by the Sunnis for joining US forces, and thus making the "surge" possible, have not been forthcoming. More ominously, the Kurds seems more intent than ever on autonomy, which would be fine in the abstract, but toss in oil and the problem is increasingly intractable.
Afghanistan. We can't win short of a long-term, full-scale occupation involving additional hundreds of thousands of troops, not the paltry 40,000 on request. Obama would be wise to lower expectations; sometimes, just not losing, unsatisfactory as that might be emotionally (or politically), can be considerably more cost-effective than that elusive all-out victory. Regardless, as we prepare to celebrate our eighth anniversary fighting in Afghanistan, we might as well accept that we'll still be there eight years hence. Obama is not going to win a peace award for Afghanistan.
Iran. Whether the Iranians actually produce a bomb, or merely produce the ability to do so quickly, is hair-splitting. The Israelis have their nuclear capability and, short of a nuclear-free Middle East, the Iranians will have theirs.
Palestinians and Israelis. George Mitchell has the most thankless, and perhaps most useless, diplomatic job in the world. Traveling monthly to Jerusalem and Ramallah to talk to Netanyahu and Abbas about a viable Palestinian state? Say one thing - it'd be lifetime employment even if he were half his age. In the 19th century, the Israelis could have taken a page from our history and packed off the Palestinians to reservations. But that won't fly this century. Nor will a two-state solution. And before there's a binational, Jewish-Palestinian state, there'll be a lot more bloodshed. No peace prize on this horizon.
So congratulations, President Obama. You've got your work cut out for you.
But no, the prize is not to goad you on to Herculean feats. It's rather an acknowledgment that if you're not given the prize now, before you get totally bogged down cleaning out the Stygian stables the Bush administration left behind, you'll never get it.
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Reader Comments
Posted: Saturday, October 17, 2009
Article comment by:
Keith Lorenz
Well, at least the prize was not awarded to the Council on Foreign Relations, N.Y., that according to former diplomat, Winston Lord, is the real arbiter of American overseas policy. Of course, it could have gone to the secretive Bilderberg Group that meets annually to plot world strategies. They need some new gold-rimmed wine goblets.
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