What’s going on in Oslo. The Nobel Peace Prize is becoming a bad joke.
Since 2007, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee is 3 for 6. Not bad ….if your trying to hit a baseball….but terrible if you want to be taken seriously by the rest of the world. Three spectacularly odd decisions in 6 years.
First it was Al Gore and the IPCC for their work on climate change in 2007. I have always struggled with the notion that an intergovernmental political division of the UN presumably aligned with global climate prediction has anything to do with world peace.
Then came the Barak Obama award in 2009. What did Mr. Obama do to get the prize……get elected to office. I’m sure the folks in Oslo liked the outcome of the election, but come on….he hadn’t done anything. Mr. Obama’s resume coming into office was extraordinarily thin…so as a minimum the award was premature.
And now we have the EU, the 2012 choice. I suppose the EU does a bit to keep Germany and France from shooting at each other, but not really. The world has changed a lot since 1935. I think Harry Truman’s Marshall Plan, the UN and NATO all deserve more credit than the EU. I’m not sure I can get behind the notion that Europe deserves an award for not starting WWIII. Is this the best example the committee could find? Pickings must have been thin this year.
The ongoing crisis that is the EU and the Euro has been a work in progress for about 3 years now and the end is not near. I’d guess the Brits and the Swedes are glad they decided skip the Euro and watch for the sidelines. The EU is old news and 2012 was not a particularly good year for EU fans.
Three odd choices in 6 years.
