President Obama’s ‘surrealpolitik’
The consensus in 2009 was that the Norwegian Nobel Committee had
done something bizarre and stupid by awarding the Peace Prize to
President Obama, who clearly had done nothing to merit it.
“So far, the Right, Left and media all seem to agree that the Nobel Peace Prize committee just beclowned itself,” wrote political strategist Jon Henke at the time.
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On issues like Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, and nuclear weapons, Obama has jettisoned realpolitik and embraced something we might call surrealpolitik: a foreign policy built on unfounded hopes for peace and callow faith in negotiations and the good intentions of some very bad men.
And so it’s fair to ask, to what extent is U.S. foreign policy being run by Norway?
The Nobel Prize for peace is not exactly a prize: it’s an instrument of the left-leaning former Norwegian politicians who make up the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Sometimes they grant the prize because someone has advanced the cause of peace. And sometimes they give it because they want to advance their own causes – liberal politics and appeasement through negotiations.
And so in 2007, Oslo gave its blessing to predictions of global warming-induced catastrophe by handing the award to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Jimmy Carter, who consistently interferes in U.S. foreign policy by practicing his own negotiations in places that think he must represent the United States, received the award in 2002. The United Nations – the Cathedral of the Cult of Negotiation - won in 2001 for being the United Nations. Last year the prize went to the bureaucratic behemoth know as the European Union for keeping the peace in Europe, instead of to NATO, which has actually kept the peace.
Believers in peace through strength like George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan of course were never given the award. Mikhail Gorbachev was, in 1990.
So when Obama got the award for nothing, it was clear the Norwegians hoped it would induce him to do something they like. It was a naked attempt to influence U.S. foreign policy, and for that reason should not have been accepted.
It can’t be proven that the thought of failing to live up to Peace Prize expectations has influenced Obama’s decisions. His outlook certainly has always been closer to that of Chamberlain than Churchill.
But Obama’s stubborn unwillingness to grow in office and abandon his peace at all costs approach suggests he may have the Prize indelibly on the brain.
Obama unwisely withdrew all U.S. combat forces from Iraq, diminishing our ability to influence events there.
“So far, the Right, Left and media all seem to agree that the Nobel Peace Prize committee just beclowned itself,” wrote political strategist Jon Henke at the time.
Continue Reading
But it turns out the joke was on us.
Obama’s recent advances on several fronts in his war against foreign
policy common sense can probably be explained at least in part by the
actions of the Nobel Committee. It seems that, in his determination to
live up to the prize he didn’t deserve, Obama has summoned every ounce
of peacenik naïveté bred into him during bull sessions in his dorm rooms
at Occidental and Columbia.On issues like Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, and nuclear weapons, Obama has jettisoned realpolitik and embraced something we might call surrealpolitik: a foreign policy built on unfounded hopes for peace and callow faith in negotiations and the good intentions of some very bad men.
And so it’s fair to ask, to what extent is U.S. foreign policy being run by Norway?
The Nobel Prize for peace is not exactly a prize: it’s an instrument of the left-leaning former Norwegian politicians who make up the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Sometimes they grant the prize because someone has advanced the cause of peace. And sometimes they give it because they want to advance their own causes – liberal politics and appeasement through negotiations.
And so in 2007, Oslo gave its blessing to predictions of global warming-induced catastrophe by handing the award to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Jimmy Carter, who consistently interferes in U.S. foreign policy by practicing his own negotiations in places that think he must represent the United States, received the award in 2002. The United Nations – the Cathedral of the Cult of Negotiation - won in 2001 for being the United Nations. Last year the prize went to the bureaucratic behemoth know as the European Union for keeping the peace in Europe, instead of to NATO, which has actually kept the peace.
Believers in peace through strength like George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan of course were never given the award. Mikhail Gorbachev was, in 1990.
So when Obama got the award for nothing, it was clear the Norwegians hoped it would induce him to do something they like. It was a naked attempt to influence U.S. foreign policy, and for that reason should not have been accepted.
It can’t be proven that the thought of failing to live up to Peace Prize expectations has influenced Obama’s decisions. His outlook certainly has always been closer to that of Chamberlain than Churchill.
But Obama’s stubborn unwillingness to grow in office and abandon his peace at all costs approach suggests he may have the Prize indelibly on the brain.
Obama unwisely withdrew all U.S. combat forces from Iraq, diminishing our ability to influence events there.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/obamas-surrealpolitik-93224.html#ixzz2XFHbtiNF
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