Barack Obama and the Political Incorrectness of the Nobel Peace Prize

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama was a serious misjudgement. So was its acceptance, compounded by an acceptance speech that required considerable semantic redefinition and conceptual conjuring. This masterclass in rhetorical agility sets unhelpful precedents in a world where truth and language are already too vulnerable to the distorting pressures of political market forces.

The award of the Nobel Peace prize to one whose political and personal contribution to date is by his own embarrassed admission "slight", put Obama in an impossible political and moral position. In the space of nine days Presdient Obama committed another 30,000 troops to "the war against terror" and received the Nobel Peace Prize. The incongruity of being a Peace Prize recipient and a Commander in Chief of tens of thousands of troops on foreign soil and sand, is so bizarre that it required an acceptance speech defending just war, and insisting, as most protagonists do, that their war is indeed just, and is an essential prerequisite for peace.

Which raises for me the most significant moral consequence of Obama's acceptance speech. Obama claims to stand in the succession of Martin Luther King not only as recipient of the Nobel Peace prize, but as one whose appointment was made possible by MLK and the non-violent stance of the leader of the Civil Rights Movement. But says Obama, armed and violent conflict will not be eradicated in our lifetime, and as a Head of State he must not be guided only by the example of Luther King and Ghandi. I agree. But in that case the wise and morally defensible position would be to decline the Nobel Peace Prize as that which cannot be reconciled with his duties as Head of State, and which he has sworn on oath to make his priority. But of course how could a US President do that?

Nevertheless, to accept it is to want the best of both worlds, the prestige and power of a Commander in Chief of a nation at war, and the moral authority of one whose life work is seen as a major contribution to peace in our time and in our world. It is not possible to be both, at one and the same time; not in any way that makes moral sense. It is dangerous to melt down key concepts in a debate and remint them in the more flexible plastic currency that enables political leaders to purchase the truth that suits already agreed agendas.

I admire Obama, but not uncritically. He is I believe a man of moral stature, but who lives in a world that requires ethical fluidity and political expediency. That is the price of power, and the personal cost is felt at the level of the moral. Whatever the political pressures on him to engage in this piece of theatre, his collusion cannot but diminish his own moral authority and the credibility of a Peace Prize that seems to have become fatally politicised.

And that is a shame. For we need more than ever a globally recognised prize for those like Martin Luther King, and in our time Shirin Ebadi of Iran, (pictured here) Recently she and her family have been further victimised by the Iranian regime - including the nonsense of announcing the confiscation of her Peace prize!. As if!

People like Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King and Shirin Ebadi represent achievements not only in a different league from Obama, but in a different moral category. They have risked personal safety and borne real hardship for the sake of peace, and they represent a way of being that is in direct contradiction to state sponsored military inytervention. And as for the Nobel nominating committee, it would surely have been a more ethically secure nomination to award the Peace Prize some years later, and for evidence of real achievements in peacemaking, than to celebrate the recipient of a premature prize based on (as yet) unrealised expectations, and while that candidate commands an army engaged with other countries, including the UK, in armed conflict abroad.

Comments

[Jason Goroncy]

Amen. Amen. Amen. Another good (and very Baptist) post Jim. I suggested, via Chomsky, that another worthy candidate might have been Malalai Joya (see http://cruciality.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/a-more-eligible-nobel-prize-candidate).

[Catriona]

As Jason says.... Amen.

[craig]

Funny amen was my thought too but it is not just a matter of if president Obama should have accepted it, it raises concerns as to the basis on which it was offered to him.