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.
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.
(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.)
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.
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.
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 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 :)
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.
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.
I fail to see how what Snowden has done has promoted world peace. The Nobel Peace prize is not (recent awardees notwithstanding) a we-like-you prize. It's supposed to be about world peace, and I just don't see how Snowden has advanced that particular goal. Or am I just dense?
Anyone who gets in the way of government abuses is promoting peace in my opinion. In Snowden's case, he's released information about programs that are specifically abusing the privacy of the world's population. One hopes that such a release serves as an impetus to curb or prevent it in the future. I think that at least fits my criteria.
How about the fact that a young clever men with top salary, beautiful girlfriend and comfortable life in one of the (supposedly) most developed country in entire world couldn't stand his own government's abuse, and decided to break the silence, knowing (Bradley M?) that his life is over.
Is that good enough reason for you? How about this: he promoted the truth, because otherwise had he not done it, we could have ended in a North Korea type dictatorship.
Well, I think government abuses falls under the umbrella of things that aren't peace. Thus, action against government abuses would be implicitly promoting peace.
Well. The definition for the awards it definitively arguable. It states "done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.".
Which is the basis of why Obama got the award. Apparently he help improve the American image of their foreign polices (without actually improving it). Snowden has done the opposite regardless of what he did the right thing or now (I applaud him). So far the actions of Snowden has resulted in a further divide between countries (US and others). So yeah he does not reserve the Nobel Peace Price. He does deserve freedom and some prize though (not sure which one).
Imagine that cyberwar really is a new kind of warfare that is about to emerge. This may or may not be a useful way of viewing the situation, but governments do seem willing to attack each others' infrastructure, causing great damage to civilians in the process. They have also begun using the kind of surveillance that is usually only justifiable during wartime.
If the Internet is being militarized, Snowden has pointed that out. He's shown that the NSA is actually one of the "standing armies" that the Peace Prize rules mention. Now we can talk about reducing it.
I still think it would be a stretch to award him the Peace Prize, but anything that keeps the Internet from becoming a war zone promotes world peace.
"Castro, on the other hand, was convinced that an invasion of Cuba was soon at hand, and on October 26, he sent a telegram to Khrushchev that appeared to call for a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the USA." - Wikipedia, on the Cuban Missile Crisis
In the sense that, if they can give it to Henry Kissinger, the prize is therefore meaningless, and they might as well give it to Mugabe, or Castro, or Ríos Montt, or Reagan.
Is there any distinction more meaningless than "nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize"? Nominating a person for the Nobel Peace Prize is like introducing a bill in Congress -- all it takes is one person out of several hundred to think it's worth doing for some reason, and boom! It officially happened.
"Moreover, despite the national and international outcry that has resulted from the PRISM leak, it is too soon to tell what the real consequences of Snowden's actions will be. This is the same logic that governs the claim that Obama's award was prematurely given. "
No it isn't. Snowden is being nominated for actions rather than just for potential actions. Consequences can take decades.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Peace_Prize#Nomination
If I'm reading that correctly, any recognized professor could write a letter nominating anybody.