Thorbjørn Jagland and hero

They’ve got to be kidding! On Thrsday, December 10 Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway. The five-person Nobel committee’s selection of a U.S. President with a tissue paper thin résumé, in office less than a year, nominated for the prize two weeks after being inaugurated and who just committed 30,000 more American troops to Afghanistan is bizarre if not stunningly naive. Alfred Nobel’s will states the Peace Prize should be awarded to the person who:

…during the preceding year […] shall have done the most or best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.

That does not describe our Commander-in-Chief. Brian Becker, national coordinator of Act Now To Stop The War and End Racism said in October, “Unfortunately, Obama is continuing many of the same policies of Bush and is, in fact, expanding the war in Afghanistan rather than ending it.”

Why, then, did Obama get the Peace Prize? 

It’s clear that this generation of Norwegian lefty culture vulture politicos loathes America’s pre-eminent rôle in the world and, more to the point, America’s Republicans. They may have also been caught up in who they think Obama is (the most liberal voting record in the Senate) and bought into his campaign promises. America phobia is an historical departure for a country with extremely close cultural ties to the United States from a common heritage encompassing the Enlightenment, through the years of Norwegian emigration and especially throughout the German occupation. Norwegians once held America in awe. Nobel literature prize winner Knut Hamsun (1858-1952), who spent time as a street car conductor in Minneapolis, opined “The sky is bigger over there.” Jens Bjørneboe’s 1966 essay “Vi som elsket Amerika” (We who loved America) explained “I belong to those who had a genuine love relationship with the United States, and I know what it feels like. Like most other Norwegians, I have relatives there…America was the country of dreams, liberty and opportunities; a true fairy tale.”

But in the same essay Bjørneboe described a personal epiphany. “I cannot say exactly when it was,” he continued, “but one day I realized I no longer loved the United States…America had become dangerous, frightening, scary. It represented conformity, corruption, violence, the world’s strongest military, and it aspired to become a world leader.” This reflects the overriding sentiment of today’s Norwegian Socialists. Professor of American Studies Øyvind Gulliksen writes, “Cultural critics on the left warned Norwegians against a leisurely adaption of American materialism. For instance, Sonja Henie’s art museum just outside of Oslo was to Bjørneboe a symbol of the worst possible kind of American influence in Norway: art bought from American entertainment culture he and others could do without.” Bjørneboe also wrote “Frygten for Amerika I oss” (The Fear of America in us) making his flip-flop complete. Gulliksen continues, “The experience of Bjørneboe and others is that it was, above all, American involvement in the Viet Nam war which caused their change of opinion is illustrated by the statement that Viet Nam made us ‘lose our illusions of American ideals.’” The upshot is a Nobel Peace Prize Committee which might consider any prominent American who isn’t George W. Bush.

But not all Norwegians are whining leftists . Norwegian grad students are well represented at Harvard Business School and have, on recent occasion, been its largest foreign contingent. Gulliksen concludes on a high note, “Probably for the first time in Norway’s history its conservative forces are to American politics, if not as a model, at least as a prime example of a free enterprise with smaller taxes, cheaper cars and profitable investments in the oil industry. Up to and including the Roosevelt years of the 1930s, the United States was admired by many a Norwegian social democrat and liberal. Now it is more a haven for market-oriented conservatives.”

All signs point to Peace Prize Committee Chairman, Thorbjørn Jagland, as prime mover in the Obama opera buffa. The 59-year-old ex-Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Norway sports serious leftist credentials. He joined the “Workers Youth League” at age 16 and became its leader at 23. He pushed the nationalization of the oil industry, permission to conduct petroleum test boring outside Northern Norway, and that the state use income from the petroleum industry to nationalize domestic industry. From 1999 through 2008, Jagland was Vice President of Socialist International (which means exactly what it says). In addition to his Peace Prize Committee chairmanship, he heads the Council of Europe which promotes “human rights” on the continent. Some call that double –dipping. Opposition Progress Party leader Siv Jensen has called on Jagland to relinquish his Nobel chair, stating it is a conflict of interest for him to run the Council of Europe and also choose the Peace Prize winner. “If a human-rights advocate from a given country came up for the prize, he might not want to choose that person because it would endanger the Council’s dealings with that country.” she said, adding, “It was his decision…Jagland was seeking publicity for himself.” 

What we have here is a self-serving publicity hound who rammed an undeserving individual through a committee to claim what is now a political prize. Clearly pleased with himself, Jagland gushed in a post-award interview, “It was exciting to meet world press…one of the most exciting things I’ve done.”

In a previous display of astoundingly poor judgment, Foreign Minister Jagland in 2001 referred to the President of Gabon as “Bongo from the Congo.” Journalist Lene Johansen reports on October 13 2009, “The Norwegian version of the Onion, Opplysningskontoret, ran a story stating the Nobel Prize was awarded to ‘Bongo from Brooklyn.’ There were 100 versions of this joke on Twitter on (the following) Friday.”

Obama is neither the first shocking peace prize nominee nor first dubious winner. Committee deliberations are held in secret and The Nobel Foundation does not permit information about nominations, negotiations or investigations about the actual award to be made public for 50 years. When the nominations from 1901 to 1955 were disclosed, the name Adolph Hitler surfaced as a 1939 nominee. (Swedish Parliament member Erik Brandt soon retracted his blunder). But Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini were also nominated in that period. In fairness, nominations may be put forward by only one qualified committee member and don’t necessarily reflect the official conclave opinion.

To many, the Nobel Peace Prize lost all legitimacy years ago. The Rogues’ Gallery of actual winners has included accused terrorists Yasser Arafat and Menachem Begin, Bully Boy President Theodore Roosevelt, World War II “Ship of Fools” safe haven denier Secretary of State Cordell Hull and the arch villain of international peace activists, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Rigoberta Menchú won in 1992 by fudging facts in an autobiography of her life in Guatemala to accommodate her leftist sympathies. Her defenders maintain that the truth doesn’t matter; it’s the “importance of her message.” Climate alarmist Al Gore won the 2007 prize on the increasingly contentious issue of Global Warming and saving energy. In August 2006 he consumed 22,619 kilowatts of electricity – more than twice that of the average American family in a year. 2004 winner Wangari Maathai  recklessly claimed that AIDS was originally developed by Western scientists to depopulate Africa and 1993 laureate Nelson Mandela never formally rejected terrorism.

Yet Mahatma Ghandi, although nominated five times, never won.

An online poll by MSNBC asked whether Obama deserved the honor. Circa 62% of more than 94,000 answers said no. Even 57% of Norwegians think Obama doesn’t deserve the award.

The Nobel Peace Prize has precious little cachet left. The President may merit the award after all.