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President Barack Obama was surprisingly given the Nobel Peace Prize "primarily for his work on and commitment to nuclear disarmament," according to Agot Valle, a Norwegian politician who served on the award committee. Valle told the Wall Street Journal that the stewards of the prize wanted to "support" Obama's goal, as expressed recently at the U.N., "of a world without nuclear weapons...
...they are, nukes have been instrumental in reversing the long, seemingly inexorable trend in modernity toward deadlier and deadlier conflicts. If the Nobel Committee ever wants to honor the force that has done the most over the past 60 years to end industrial-scale war, its members will award a Peace Prize to the bomb...
...Although President Obama's Mideast envoy, former Sen. George Mitchell, was in the region on Friday when the Peace Prize award was announced, it didn't help him cajole the parties back to the negotiating table. Far from anticipating an outbreak of peace, right now, in fact, the Middle East is bracing for the possibility that the escalation of tensions between Israelis and Palestinians - and the perceived failure of those Palestinian leaders aligned with U.S. peacemaking efforts - could ignite a new Palestinian intifada. And if a new confrontation does occur, it's a safe bet that there'll be voices...
...Nobel award has been universally acknowledged, not least by Obama himself, as premature. Some have argued - and the Committee's own statement suggested as much - that its purpose is to enhance the President's authority to press forward on his peace quest in the Middle East and beyond. In truth, however, the Nobel confers no recognized authority on the laureate, only attention - one gift President Obama most certainly does not need. But even if the award does nothing for Obama's ability to achieve his goals, some observers hope it will reinforce the President's will to press for peace...
President Barack Obama made time for a brief statement about his Nobel Peace Prize award on Friday, before heading in to a more pressing engagement - a high-powered White House strategy session on the next phase of his war in Afghanistan. That was just one indication that this year's peace prize was, as Obama himself put it, honoring aspiration rather than achievement...