Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

It seems a shame to call President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize a joke, but how seriously can you take a prize that has yet to be earned?
More than anything else, the timing of this award suggests it's actually the Thank God You're Not George W. Bush Nobel Prize, Given So That You Won't Send More Troops to Afghanistan. We understand the impulse, not having been impressed by Bush's leadership. But where has peace broken out since, and because of, Obama's election? Or is it because he dropped plans for a missile defense system in eastern Europe, or simply because he hasn't invaded any countries since his inauguration just nine months ago?
Less cynically, Obama may have won the prize because he inspires hope in so many people in so many places. That's a real gift, and something that may pay many dividends for Americans and others. But hope for peace is different from peace. If Obama won in part because of his undeniable oratorical gifts, his speechwriters should share in the honor.

This is not the first time the Nobel Peace Prize caused a good deal of head-scratching. Today, the political right is howling about Obama's prize, but the left was apoplectic in 1973 when, during the Vietnam War, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger won the Peace Prize, along with North Vietnamese Politburo Member Le Duc Tho, for arranging a cease fire that didn't last. Kissinger was seen by many as one of the architects of an immoral war.
Obama, himself, seemed to recognize the preposterousness of the award. Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Friday, he said he wasn't sure he had done enough to earn the award, or even deserved to be in the company of the others who had won it before him, including just two other sitting American presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Instead, Obama wisely spun it forward, saying he would accept it "as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the challenges of the 21st century."
In that statement, Obama showed again that he is a supremely intelligent and capable president, one who possesses the talents and inclinations that might someday lead him to truly deserve this award. But he doesn't yet. Not this year. In awarding it to Obama, the Nobel Committee has once again shown that this prize is more about politics than it is about peace.