Actual Thoughts About Obama's Peace Prize.

I'm not going to linger too long on the conservative reaction.  That's being handled quite nicely all around the blogosphere.  Heck even the DNC is calling it out.

So, instead of taking this opportunity to point and laugh at rightboogers and wingnutso whackaloons, I'm going to look at the Prize itself.  The Nobel Institute weblinks are gummed up like trying to shove race-horses down a series of tubes right now, so here's a TPM link with text from Oslo.

The citation mentions "a new climate in international politics".  There's some other stuff about nuclear disarmament, climate change and human rights - but that's just window dressing.  Those are things that the Nobel Institute has been flogging for quite some time.  If they could have squeezed in something about refugees they would have.

No, the real reason Obama is getting this thing is for turning the BushCo ship around.  John Miller's Op-Ed I cited in the last Sunday Audition notwithstanding, Bush's America was seen by the world as a rogue nation.  One that invaded other countries seemingly at random, kidnapped people from all around the world and disappeared them into torture camps, and accused anyone upset with that sort of behaviour as being terrorist sympathizers.

Ha-ha jokes the Twitterer formerly known as Wonkette, Obama's getting the award for not being George W. Bush.  Yup, that's right.  He's getting the award for deposing the regime of a power-mad authoritarian cult leader.  For replacing a psychopathically deluded egomaniacal idiot at the seat with the BIG RED BUTTON.

So laugh all you want about how "pre-mature" it is to award the prize to him, about how he "hasn't achieved anything yet".  But those of us living in places "not-yet-bombed-to-the-stone-age-for-Democracy" know that Obama's biggest and most important achievement is in keeping the office of the Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military in the world as far as possible away from Bill Kristol et al.