Nobel Prize

Some people have commented that awarding a Nobel Peace prize to Barack Obama is a bit premature or reflects a liberal bias. This may be the case. However, I think that a more important criticism is that in selecting world leaders for this prize, they haven't always exercised the best judgement.

Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt also received this prize. Woodrow Wilson got our country involved in WWI. Theodore Roosevelt was the author of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which called for increased military intervention in Latin America. Can we really seriously suggest that these two presidents have contributed the most to peace. Barack Obama is likely to be an improvement in this respect over those two. When we consider that they awarded this prize to Yasser Arafat and Henry Kissinger, the decision to pick Barack Obama this year hardly stands out as a particularly bad one.

In fairness to the organization most of their decisions are far more defensible. They have awarded the prize to 120 different individuals.