But What Has He Actually Done?

OK, Europe, we get it already: you love Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. But what has Barack Obama has done to justify the award of a Nobel Peace Prize?

I hope President Obama is sensible enough to be embarrassed by this. I see no reason to believe — and hope that I never will — that President Obama campaigned for this. As such, the award says nothing about Obama himself, something perhaps about a segment of his supporters who will be moved by this, and volumes about the shallowness and vacuity of post-war, post-modern Europe, or at least of the class of intellectuals that represents it. And it raises so many more questions:

How can Europe’s intellectual class be simultaneously this stupid and this condescending in its apparent belief that this will be effective in manipulating our political system?

Is this redeemable for 20,000 properly equipped troops for Afghanistan?

Does the Nobel Committee believe that this award will create a sense of obligation on the part of our president? And if so, to what end?

Granted, the Olympics are often a mixed blessing anyway, but was this meant as some sort of consolation prize?

Is the purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize still to promote peace, or is it all about guilty European liberals asking a God in whom they do not believe to expunge the original sin of their grandfathers for flocking to the Milice, the Falange, the Blackshirts, the Ustashe, and the Waffen SS?

Finally, what consideration was given to Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, Meir Hossein Mousavi, Rebiya Kadeer, or Kang Chol Hwan, all of whom have actually risked or sacrificed so that others could live freely and in peace? Why did the Nobel Committee miss the chance to award the prize to the people of Tehran, or to Neda as their surrogate, thereby missing such an extraordinary opportunity to promote peace and rebuke fascism?

Is this another example of the intellectual price Europe has paid for so many many generations of repressing and exterminating original thought?