Hacker News Reader

Comment by mixmax | Hacker News Reader

the irony of a whistleblower trying to escape from the nobel-prize winning president of the United States being nominated for the nobel prize is, well pricelss.

View on HN

Obama was awarded the Peace Prize prematurely. I've yet to see something he's done to deserve it, despite voting for him the first time.

besides ending the Iraq war, he's done a lot of stuff that is somewhat subtle. off the top of my head: a concerted and sustained nuclear arms reduction effort[1], and the specific way he handled the Libya situation[2].

still it remains that Obama is fundamentally pragmatic, for better or worse in any given issue.

[1] good report here: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rachel-maddow/46790266#46790266

[2] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-obamas-war-...

(I wish people wouldn't downvote things just because they disagree with a statement. Downvoting because you disagree with someone is like putting your fingers in your ears and going blah blah blah I can't hear you and I don't want anyone else to hear you either. I wish people would save votes for comments that add nothing to a conversation. Like this one.)

He still murders people with flying robots. That's not very peaceful.

Obama's calculus there probably involves the fact that drones can accomplish things without putting our soldiers at risk. not that i'm taking sides here. i don't like drones either.

here is a recent speech the president gave regarding drones and "the war on terror" in general: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEnUbwXAof0

You're not representing him fairly, those aren't robots, there are trained killers on the other end of the drones.

A robot with an operator is still a robot.

The drones with missiles on them are almost entirely controlled by the human. It's just a plane that's flown from the ground. We don't call planes robots, even when they are on autopilot.

That may be so, but let's keep in mind that there is no reason to criticize the President for being undeserving of the prize. It's not like he awarded it to himself.

It's not his fault, but a man of integrity would have called them out for trying to give it to him when he hadn't even done anything to deserve it.

The Nobel peace prize is pretty much a joke, former recipients include a pedophile and a direct supporter of terrorism. If I were Snowden, I wouldn't want one.

Perhaps he was criticizing the Nobel committee, not the president?

It was awarded upon the rhetoric of hope he espoused, but failed to follow up with in action. But your statement is factually correct.

Many who voted for him bought into the rhetoric of change and even some "hope". He has brought things in Iraq to a close, a plus. However, domestically, he has been Bush++ and even amplified the crackdown on whistleblowers. Eric Holder, in some ways, makes John Ashcroft look quaint.

I see nothing wrong with criticizing him for being undeserving of the prize, because he is.

I don't really understand the nobel peace prize, or specifically why Obama was awarded it. I understand being the first black president of the United States is a big deal, but did he personally do anything to promote peace? Or does being black in the white house somehow lower racism, hence promoting world peace?

I believe many people (including Obama himself) were surprised by his winning the prize. I don't think race was the primary reason (official or otherwise) behind his being awarded the prize. Among the main reasons for his nomination were "Obama's promotion of nuclear nonproliferation and a 'new climate' in international relations fostered by Obama" [1]. One pessimistic view of this statement is that Obama was essentially awarded this prize for not being Bush, who was perceived by many in the international community as damaging the state of dialog between nations. Arguably, this could promote peace. The view was not without criticisms :)

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Nobel_Peace_Prize

Wasn't so much about him being the first black President as much as him not being Bush/Cheney et. al. Still pretty premature of them since Obama ended up adopting and ramping up many of the foreign policies that made Bush/Cheney so despised by the world in the first place.

But everyone should have known that he was Bush, and he was Cheney. Maybe five of the several hundred major politicians in our country are not carbon copies of one another.

He was awarded the prize in the hope of influencing him to actually promote peace in the future.

The idea was that accepting the peace prize would have led Obama to see himself as a Nobel peace prize winner, and thus as someone promoting peace, and that he thus would subconsciously actually try to promote peace to avoid the cognitive dissonance.

It didn't work as well as it could, but maybe it worked to some extent.

No. It actually didn't work at all. The war in Iraq ended for Americans, but it's still a hell hole for the people who live there. Afghanistan will be the same.

He has brought international relations to a new low.

Quite a bit of it isn't directly his fault, but he has done little to improve the situation.

He was made a Nobel Laureate for not being George W. Bush.

It was awarded, in part, I believe upon campaign rhetoric that was not followed though on. There is something to be said for the crowds that turned out for his first speech in Germany and his most recent. Actions matter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com