The Europeans recognized the potential promise of an Obama Administration, long before the Americans. This will not be a long or involved column, as I know there will be many other well-known writers with on-going comments, both pro & con, on the surprise award of the Nobel Prize for Peace to President Barack Obama. 

I will agree that it is already becoming well understood that most intellectuals believe that the Nobel award was given to President Obama due to the changes that the President is bringing as to how America will treat and see the rest of the world in the future.  But to be honest, the award must first be put into what is probably the real and “appropriate perspective”.   

 As expected, a well-known political cartoonists has already documented one of the key reasons for the final decision that was made for President Obama to be awarded this Nobel Peace Prize.  And the cartoonist has put it into the “visual language” that we can all see and understand in one single cartoon. The single panel cartoon shows a caricature of a smiling president Obama with a large medal hanging on a ribbon around his neck.  However, the large medal does not say; “NOBEL PEACE PRIZE”.  Instead the medal says; “NOT GEORGE W. BUSH”. 

I agree that this was probably the most important of the reasons for the award than we would probably want to admit, but so be it. We have all been hearing and seeing for months, well before last year’s national election, how taken the populations of the Western European countries were with “Candidate Obama”. 

This was mainly due to his attitude toward negotiation for peace and prosperity instead of the “Cowboy Bush”; “Our way or the highway” approach.   With the US now being the final military “Super-Power”, the Europeans had previously been exposed to the US leadership using its strength in a more diplomatic manner versus the Bush/Cheney strong-arm approach, especially since the 9/11 attacks.   After those attacks on the Twin-Towers, the Pentagon and the crash of Flight 93 in a Pennsylvania field, there were many European leaders that expressed the feeling that after 9/11, the Bush Administration changed their attitude toward the normally friendly European countries. 

Those European countries then began to feel that the US was being more confrontational than one would normally expect them to be of long-time allies.  Many psychologists have since stated that the 9/11 surprise attacks must have seriously scared the leaders of the Bush Administration.  (This was particularly true of Vice President Cheney.)  Under these circumstances, the Bush administration was responding to the world in more of an attitude of “American fear” than one of a mutual “free world’s national defense”. With President Obama’s attitude being 180º’s from that of the Bush years, that has made him particularly well accepted when being compared by the Europeans to George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.  And already this week, virtually all of the heads-of-state of the European Union have sent their congratulations to President Obama, including the President of the overall European Commission, Jose Barroso.   There were some surprising congratulations as well, such as positive messages from Iran’s President Ahmadinejad; the head of Syrian’s Parliament; the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe;  Afghanistan’s President Karzai; and all of the members of Global Zero.  This is a group of 200 political and military world leaders that, as with President Obama, also believe in eliminating massive stock-piles of nuclear weapons.  Even the Prime Minister of Hamas in Palestine stated that this will hopefully help in having the rights of the Palestinians in Israel to eventually become recognized. On the other side of the aisle, the Afghani Taliban spokesman; Zabihullah Mujahid, was very predictable when he stated; "We have seen no change in his strategy for peace. He has done nothing for peace in Afghanistan. He has not taken a single step for peace in Afghanistan or to make this country stable.  We condemn the award of the Noble Peace Prize for Obama.  We condemn the institute's awarding him the peace prize. We condemn this year's peace prize as unjust." (This was all stated to the press by telephone from an undisclosed location.)As expected, the GOP and the conservatives “scoffed” at President Obama receiving the Nobel Peace award. 

RNC Chairman Michael Steel, apparently blurted out, “For what?”, when he heard about the award.   Some conservatives even said that the president should turn the award down.  Bill Kristol, a FOX News commentator and editor of the Weekly Standard, (what some people call “a conservative rag” news magazine)  wrote; “If they wanted to give the Nobel Peace Prize to an American, it would have been better to give it to Senator John McCain for having the guts to push through the surge in Iraq, which has brought relative peace to that country.”  This is very interesting because Senator McCain was immediately very congratulatory to the president as were the Democratic leaders of both the Senate and the House of Representatives who acknowledged that Europe was recognizing the renewed world leadership of the United States. Even former Vice President, Al Gore, also a Nobel recipient, weighed in and congratulated the president for his positive changes to the administration’s policies, even being such a short time in office. It was also very much fun to watch and listen to the rightie-talker, Rush Limbaugh, “foaming at the mouth” when he stated that the reason that the Europeans were so very pleased with Obama was because he was ruining the United States as a Super-Power, and they were applauding Obama’s efforts on this endeavor.  Yes, Limbaugh’s an entertainer.  A gross one, but he does entertain…..kinda. As to President Obama’s immediate response to the award, it was very appropriate, especially that the $1.4 Million award will be given to the appropriate charities. Here is the president’s actual response: “I am both surprised and deeply humbled by the decision of the Nobel Committee.Let me be clear, I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize, men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.But I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women and all Americans want to build, a world that gives life to the promise of our founding documents.And I know that throughout history the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes.And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.” 

I am personally looking forward to many concrete examples that will support the president’s Nobel award which was obviously given for the change in direction of America’s current and future policies.  It will be very rewarding if the president is successful in bringing the United States back to what it was so highly respected for in the past.  Little by little, America is once again becoming the “shining beacon on the hill”.  

Copyright G.Ater  2009