Quote of the Day: On Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize and GOP Reaction

The downside has been entirely manufactured by the right wing noise machine. The award was undoubtedly premature, but if Obama tries to negotiate peace in the ME, a Nobel certainly can't hurt, as, it is indicative of the high opinion that the rest of the world has for him which gives him and the US more prestige.

Is it better to be considered a war criminal by the International community???

Personally this issue doesn't mean that much to me, and so the mocking on the right as well as the vigorous defense of the left both don't do much for me. Obama has already admitted he doesn't deserve it, so I don't see the big controversy.

But the first paragraph of this quote is complete wrong by all accounts. The criticism is not that Obama has done something but the right won't recognize it. Almost everyone (including Obama) acknowledges that he has not done enough to justify the prize. When Obama end's world hunger, ends global warming, and/or brings about Middle East peace and wins a prize for it, but the right still mocks him, then you might be justified in saying that right is "against America". Until then, this comment is just as off-base as the right-wing rhetoric at which it is targeted.

Robinson connects conservatives to the Taliban twice in his article and that's worthy of a Quote of the Day? What happened to all the lefties strutting around maintaining they were above that stuff and would criticize it within their own party?

Beating a Dead Horse Department. Sorry, but an interesting editorial page comment from NYT, 10/12/'09:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/opinion/12dou...

Da Goat
"Robinson connects conservatives to the Taliban twice in his article and that's worthy of a Quote of the Day?"

It really is a problem when left wing ideologues employ the same tactics as the right wing ideologues. "You're either with us or against us" was a spurious, over simplified, political barb thrust at anyone who disagreed. If it seems an unfair tactic, remove the beam from your own eye before you fret over the mote in the next guy's eye.

This whole debate is manufactured, and it's purpose is purely political. Why waste time listening to the professional rock throwers?

"The only reasonable response is [Arizona Senator John] McCain’s: Congratulations. Nothing, not even the Nobel Peace Prize, can set the bar any higher for President Obama than he’s already set it for himself."
*********
[Wow, the chief editor of this site is a "professional rock-thrower?". Careful biting the hand that feeds you oh professional bloggers..lol..]

Does anyone remember the slacker Bush who when our world was crumbling around us was jaunting off to his ranch in Texas, or going on pleasure trips here and abroad? Towards the end of his eight years he pretty much was sticking to his youthful MO which was playing hookie. Obama looks like a workaholic on the verge of collapsing compared to the last "President".

At least some liberals like Glenn Greenwald are consistent in criticizing other liberals for resorting to the 'siding with the terrorists' meme. Too bad others can't see that you can't spend eight years complaining about your opponents trying to silence dissenters this way and then use the exact same tactic right back at them (at least if you do, you lose all credibility.)

As for Robinson questioning the line of thinking about the expectations that are raised- he either deliberately or ignorantly misses most of the point. Yes, there is some political downside to having general high expectations (we see this all the time, the managing of expectations, during campaigns and other political events, where it is often beneficial to have lower expectations which might then be exceeded rather than the other way around.)

But this is only a small part of what is meant about the message sent by the Norwegian Nobel committee. The bigger point is that they clearly see it as a signal that they, and many Western Europeans, approve of the pacificism and multilateralism that Obama has (somewhat) embraced and they want it to continue. After all, it's rather awkward now for Obama to go all in on a troop surge in Afghanistan or commit to military options being on the table in other conflicts, as he prepares to go to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. Clearly the committee wants him to take the more dovish route, and the more multilateral one, and in this sense they insert themselves squarely into the American domestic political debate.

It may well be true that GWB's foreign policy became excessively unilateral, but excessive multilateralism can be just as much of a problem. It shouldn't be a question of ceding all US interests to the international community's desires in order to prove goodwill to them- and this is the expectation that conservatives and others in the US are concerned about with regard to Obama's future direction in foreign policy.

Eh..both conservative and the Taliban use religion to oppress minorities...soooo, while off in degree, the principle still holds.

shannonlee, that's one of the most ridiculously offensive comments I've seen. "While off in degree" doesn't even begin to cover the scope of difference between any perceived 'oppression' by religious conservatives in the US and a group like the Taliban. Sometimes when comparisons are so vastly different in scope, you have to recognize that it is absurd (and gratuitous) to even raise the comparison.

Not mention the context of the article has nothing to do with religious oppression - conservatives and the Taliban are being lumped together on the basis of both being critical of the Nobel decision.

Right on.

When logic fails pull out the Bush word.

Could be.

Just as it was wrong for the Cheney-Bush team to call those who did support their invasion of Iraq, their "enhanced interrogation techniques," their "warrantless eavesdropping," etc., etc. as unpatriotic, siding with the terrorists, etc., etc. it is equally wrong for Democrats to resort to such tactics.

Could be those lumps we see are road apples, because they sure do stink.

I couldn't help myself.....it was just too easy.

"most ridiculously offensive comments I've seen"...now who is being absurd? :)

The Nobel Committee made its PC Prize more of a joke this year than it has been before. Even (sane) leftists were embarrassed (when not upset) by this stunt. The worst of the lot predictably has defended the Prize award irrationally as well as attacked critics viciously. They're just being a sick joke again, themselves. Normal people quickly went on, even that very day of the award, back to the important issues such as health care and Afghanistan. The kiddies insist still on defending the award and attacking the critics, even now. Are they going to waste months, or the rest of this year, or an entire year, doing this?

I think the reason this story has legs, at least in this little "moderate" universe, is that issues like the economy, health care reform, Afghanistan, Yemen/Somalia, are really complex, harder to understand and to make rational arguments. It was always more fun to watch the cartoons than the newsreels in the old movie days.
(Now the first 10 minutes are commercials, @#*&>.)

According to Liz Cheney, it is.

When Obama end's world hunger, ends global warming, and/or brings about Middle East peace and wins a prize for it, but the right still mocks him, then you might be justified in saying that right is "against America". Until then, this comment is just as off-base as the right-wing rhetoric at which it is targeted.

No Nobel Peace Prize winner in the history of the award has done that, or anything close to that.

Many have, including Glenn Greenwald and including me and including many others, but your blindered vision doesn't allow you to see that.

Too bad others can't see that you can't spend eight years complaining about your opponents trying to silence dissenters this way and then use the exact same tactic right back at them (at least if you do, you lose all credibility.)

Can I assume from the above that you agree the GOP has also lost all credibility?

But this is only a small part of what is meant about the message sent by the Norwegian Nobel committee. The bigger point is that they clearly see it as a signal that they, and many Western Europeans, approve of the pacificism and multilateralism that Obama has (somewhat) embraced and they want it to continue.

I agree that the NNC was signaling approval of Obama's moves toward multilateralism -- indeed, they said so, explicitly. I don't agree that they were signaling approval of his "pacifism" because he has not said or done anything that would indicate he's a pacifist -- I mean, unless you equate a belief in multilateralism with being a pacifist, and that would be an incorrect equation.

Gandhi was a pacifist. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a pacifist. Obama is not a pacifist. He has never ruled out war, or the use of the military, as a general principle. He simply believes that peaceful resolutions of conflict are better than violent ones, and cooperation among nations is better than imperialist aggression.

After all, it's rather awkward now for Obama to go all in on a troop surge in Afghanistan or commit to military options being on the table in other conflicts, as he prepares to go to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

It probably does feel awkward, in that way and others, but Obama explicitly stated in his remarks on the day he won the award that it's not going to prevent him from choosing the war option, or from continuing the war option chosen by the previous administration, if he thinks it's necessary, And there are plenty of examples in the history of this award of recipients who got the award after an adult lifetime of hawkish belief and action (Kissinger, for one), so I really don't think that's a realistic concern.

Clearly the committee wants him to take the more dovish route, and the more multilateral one,

Well, yeah. It IS the Nobel Peace Prize after all.

and in this sense they insert themselves squarely into the American domestic political debate.

Just as the NNC has done with almost every other recipient of the Peace Prize. How do you exist as an international body giving out an international award for achievements intended to make a more peaceful world without inserting yourself into the domestic politics of the recipient's country? The Peace Prize is inherently political, and can't really be any other way, because issues of peace, war, and conflicts among nations are political by definition.

It may well be true that GWB's foreign policy became excessively unilateral, but excessive multilateralism can be just as much of a problem.

I'm reminded of the line from the move Biko in which Biko responds to a white detractor who tells Biko that if South Africa's blacks succeed in overthrowing apartheid, they will just end up abusing their powers like every other revolution does. I can't quote Biko's exact response -- it's too long ago that I saw the film -- but it's something along the lines of, "Well, my friend, it might be interesting to see that." Meaning, of course, that there's never been such a scenario in the history of white rule in South Africa, so maybe for a week or two it would be entertaining to see it.

In other words, "too much" multilateralism is not a problem this country has ever had to deal with -- although obviously we haven't been quite as abysmal at the multilateral thing in administrations prior to the immediately preceding one.

It shouldn't be a question of ceding all US interests to the international community's desires in order to prove goodwill to them- and this is the expectation that conservatives and others in the US are concerned about with regard to Obama's future direction in foreign policy.

Yes, but without justification and in the absence of any evidence that such would be the case. Who has asked the U.S. to cede all its national interests "to the international community's desires"? No one, that's who. And then there is your implied assumption that U.S. interests and the international community's desires are mutually exclusive. I don't know where you get that idea from. The truth is rather more the opposite -- that U.S. national security and self-interest has been extremely badly served by the previous administration's unilateralism, boastful arrogance, and insistence on an "our way or the highway you're either with us or against us" mentality.

I think there's a profound misunderstanding of what "multilateralism" means on the part of U.S. conservatives. It doesn't mean Europeans or the rest of the world gets their way on everything and the U.S. has to kowtow to the rest of the world's wishes. That's unilateralism, not multilateralism. Multilateralism means that many parties work together to achieve a common goal. Since different parties don't usually have identical self-interest, multilateralism says that you find your common interests, the places you can agree, and work cooperatively to achieve those interests.

Here is MSN Encarta's definition of multilateralism: "the principle or belief that several nations should be cooperatively involved in the process of achieving a goal, especially nuclear disarmament."

And here is another explanation of multilateralism, from Answers.com:

An approach to international trade, the monetary system, international disarmament and security, or the environment, based on the idea that if international cooperative regimes for the management of conflicts of interest are to be effective, they must represent a broad and sustainable consensus among the states of the international system. Multilateralism therefore lends itself to issues where clear common interests in the international community are identifiable. It should be thought of in contrast to strictly unilateral or bilateral initiatives.

I wonder how it's even possible to have "too much" of multilateralism, given what it actually means.

More road apples.

Many have, including Glenn Greenwald and including me and including many others, but your blindered vision doesn't allow you to see that.

If I missed you and Greenwald denouncing Eugene Robinson's editorial then I apologize. My comments were directed at the people who felt this was the Quote of the Day.

"No Nobel Peace Prize winner in the history of the award has done that, or anything close to that"

My language was echoing Eugene Robinson's. I did not imply that one must do those things in order to receive the prize, any more than he implied that. My point is that saying that those who point out that Obama doesn't deserve the prize, a position that Obama himself has agreed with, are with the Taliban against America is at least as absurd as the rhetoric coming from some on the right on this non-issue.

Denouncing Eugene Robinson's editorial? I didn't read Eugene Robinson's editorial. I thought you were talking about people on the left who failed to denounce the comment by the DNC's Brad Woodhouse that Republicans who criticized Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize were aligning themselves with the Taliban.

As I told DaGoat, I didn't read Robinson's editorial. I don't know what he said. If he said or suggested that Republicans who say Obama didn't deserve the award are with the Taliban against America, then I disagree with him, and deplore his having said that, as I already did when the DNC spokesperson said it.

Of course its absurd when we compare our own to terrorists--- but it seemed to work pretty well against Obama as I recall during the '08 campaign. Many of the conservatives on this board had no problem jumping on the bandwagon when Palin was accusing the nominee of guilt by former association with William Ayers, even though Obama was a child of 8 when Ayers crimes took place. I must have missed all of the condemnation of that tactic by our conservative commenters.

You can see from Shannonlee's comment that she realizes how absurd these comparisons are --- yet amazingly they ARE effective. Even now many far right commentators continue to use Obama's middle name--- did we even know what McCain's was???

I think these tactics are beyond despicable, but Democratic candidates continue to fall victim to them. How well do you think Saxby Chambliss sleeps at night knowing how he unseated a real patriot, Max Clelland?

I wonder how it's even possible to have "too much" of multilateralism, given what it actually means.

It's very analogous to collectivism vs. individualism within a culture/community. One system promotes each individual vying for his/her own interests, while the other always insists that the collective interests of the society must always come first (of course in reality, no culture is completely individualistic nor completely collectivist- but each lies somewhere along the spectrum.)

I'm saying the same is true of international relations- at one extreme each country's leaders promote and argue for the interests of his/her nation within the world community, while the other extreme has each country always putting the collective international interests first (if the two are in conflict.) So, what I mean by 'too much multilateralism' would be a situation where the US or another individual country isn't empowered to act unilaterally (or is harshly criticized for doing so) even if, after consulting the international community, the other nations don't see a common interest in agreeing with the US position.

I don't expect you to agree with me on the point of the spectrum where we should be because our ideological viewpoints are much different. Currently, most liberals do embrace foreign policy that is much toward the multilateral end while most conservatives are the opposite, although these views aren't necessarily assigned to a right vs left scale.

The thing is, when applying this to the Bush administration, I think the blame placed on GWB specifically for unilateralism is overstated. I do think he became a unilateralist, but only after attempts to build consensus were rebuffed (much like, I imagine, you'd argue that Obama and the Democratic party have become partisan only after it became clear that the GOP will rebuff their efforts since the opposition sees no common ground with them.)

This essay elaborates on how I view Europe's stance on the US and internationalism. Basically they went along with US interests during the Cold War, but now they see their interests much differently and want to assert their own interests. In that sense, they're not any more enlightened about multilateralism than we are (but they do wish to pretend to be, and chose to caricaturize GWB as a cowboy that they simply could not work with.)

Of course now that that excuse is gone, we'll have to see how things play out to see if I am correct. My hunch is that they'll 'work' with Obama and claim that they can do so because he's not a unilateralist, up until such time as he asserts some US position that they disagree with and then suddenly they won't be so interested in multilateralism anymore either.

Just as the NNC has done with almost every other recipient of the Peace Prize. How do you exist as an international body giving out an international award for achievements intended to make a more peaceful world without inserting yourself into the domestic politics of the recipient's country? The Peace Prize is inherently political, and can't really be any other way, because issues of peace, war, and conflicts among nations are political by definition.

Yes, that's fine as it goes. However, that then explains why our entire country shouldn't be expected to 'take pride' in our president receiving the award, or to see no 'downside' to it. Just as the entire country surely wasn't proud when Henry Kissinger received it. If you don't agree with the political views that are being rewarded by this political prize, then you aren't going to rejoice or take pride in it.

"I must have missed all of the condemnation of that tactic by our conservative commenters."

Many sides say many extreme things for political gain. Fringe rhetoric usually isn't worth responding to. The issue here isn't that some on the extreme left believe that the right is comparable to the Taliban, but that such a quote was made the "Quote of the Day", presumably implying that the editors felt that the quote contributed to the debate by representing a valid point by one side or the other. Unless the point of the "Quote of the Day" series is to point out some extreme rhetoric that was dug up that day. If that's the point then it seems out of place.

I don't recall if I've ever commented publicly about the Ayers controversy, but I have denounced some right-wing rhetoric that I felt was over-the-top:

http://themoderatevoice.com/48459/idiots-deligh...

http://themoderatevoice.com/47765/dont-buy-heal...

Adeline'sdad,
It may not be worth responding to, but many people do-- which is why its
put out there in the first place. Just look at how many people believe that
Obama is secretly a Muslim or that he isn't a US citizen. Unfortunately,
fringe elements like Rush Limbaugh are moving into the mainstream-- and we
as a society have stopped rejecting that movement.

When Saxby Chambliss put Max Clelland in a picture with Osama -- it helped
him win a Senate seat. When the Swift Boaters questioned John Kerry's
patriotism, it helped George W. Bush win a second term--and one that he
certainly didn't earn by performance alone. Bush also was able to knock out
McCain in the South Carolina primary in 2000 by starting a whisper campaign
about an illegitemate black child--which of course turned out to be totally
untrue.

Political kingmakers only use tactics that work and maybe we should all be
smart enough to ignore them, but as a whole we are not smart enough.

All I'm saying, is that its human nature to respond-- which is why Ward
Churchill is still used by the
right to drum up outrage.

That's why we have to respond to it. Every time.

One person cannot possibly respond to every bit of extreme rhetoric, of course. Which is why me not saying anything about Ayers is irrelevant to whether I can say something about this quote, especially when I have criticized the right on other issues.

If your point is that we, as a society, ought to respond negatively to this sort of rhetoric, I agree. That view supports the view that this particular quote ought to be criticized also.