Peace Prize Punditry

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Subscription Drive Update!

The 2009 Subs Drive is going very well. Interestingly, the subscription drive has been going on exactly as long as the Obama Administration was going on when he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Eleven days.

If I don't win a Pulitzer, I'm going to be very disappointed.

On the off chance I don't, please take a second and subscribe.

Thank you.

Let me clarify my position on the Nobel Peace Prize committee awarding the Prize to Barack Obama: He didn't twist any arms, he didn't campaign, he didn't mount an e-mail write-in campaign. or a gigantic meet-up in Oslo.

If you think - as I do - that this award is, at best premature, then the fault lies with the committee, not with the President.

CBS's Bob Schieffer said in his Sunday morning commentary that the

"Nobel Committee did [President Obama] no favors by giving him the award before he had anything to show for his efforts. What the Nobel Committee has managed to change - and I am sorry to say it - is the way we look on the prize."

The best serious response to the whole thing was the NY Times' resident genius, Tom Friedman. Friedman's Sunday column was titled "The Peace (Keepers) Prize" in which he wrote the speech the President should give in Oslo in December.

Obama, according to Friedman, should say he hasn't done anything yet to merit the Prize but,

"I will accept it on behalf of the most important peacekeepers in the world for the last century - the men and women of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps."

He then goes on to list the kinds of things American peacekeepers have done over the past 60 years including:

Normandy and the European campaign, and the island-by-island fighting of the Pacific campaign in World War II.

The Berlin Airlift preventing the Soviet Union from starving Berliners into submission.

The thousands of U.S. service members who continued to protect Europe for the next 50 years during the Cold War.

The American men and women who are stationed today in Afghanistan and Iraq, in South Korea, in the Sinai Desert, and who keep the sea lanes open for world shipping and trade.

And finally, all the American men and women service members who race to offer aid and comfort on "humanitarian rescue missions after earthquakes and floods" anywhere on the planet to friend or foe.

Then Friedman said the President should remind the Nobel Committee:

"I accept this award on behalf of all these American men and women soldiers, past and present, because I know - and I want you to know - that there is no peace without peacekeepers."

Pretty good stuff. No wonder he's won three Pulitzer Prizes.

As for me, a reporter for the NY Daily News called Friday afternoon and asked me what effect the announcement might have. I said it wouldn't have any effect. The President will decide what to do about Afghanistan based upon what he believes to be the best course for America and the world; not because he thinks he has to live up to - or can use political cover from - the Peace Prize committee.

It is like asking what the lasting effects of being Time Magazine's Person of the Year. I'm pretty sure for most of us we are likely to remember a higher percentage of Super Bowl champions over the past five years than Peace Prize OR Person of the Year selections.

I have it on good authority that the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences has decided to present President Obama with an honorary Oscar at their ceremony in February for "Lifetime Achievement."

I am nominating Obama for the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics for having helped his daughters with their science projects this year.

And that's why I'm not likely to win a Pulitzer Prize in this or any other year.

Please scroll back up and subscribe!

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A link to the Friedman column, a Mullfoto of my cat which I may have blown up to the size of my house for Halloween, and a Catchy Caption of the Day.