| | Robert Tracinski, TIA Daily:
This is an attempt by the Nobel committee to play on Obama's vanity in order to influence his decisions on Iran and Afghanistan. The message is: how could you possibly let Israel attack Iran's nuclear facilities, or how could you send an additional 40,000 troops to "escalate" the war in Afghanistan—after we've just given you the Nobel Peace Prize?
In appealing to Obama's moral vanity, they know their man well—and it will probably work.
In this respect, Obama is the perfect successor to the last American president to win the Nobel: Jimmy Carter. Consider the legacy of Carter's term in office.
Carter withdrew American support for the shah in Iran, then failed to mount any effectual response to the seizure of the US embassy and its staff—all of which allowed the Ayatollah Khomeini to establish a brutal Islamist regime which has been the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, a supporter of Palestinian terrorism, civil war in Lebanon, and insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a regime that has repeatedly murdered and tortured its own citizens.
By allowing a Communist takeover in Nicaragua, Carter encouraged a legacy of socialist strongmen that is still riling Latin America to this day.
Carter's weakness in Latin America and Iran also emboldened the Soviets to invade Afghanistan, inaugurating three decades of bloody civil war and providing the proving ground for the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
So Carter's legacy is three decades of chaos and killing—and the growth of three of today's biggest threats to world peace. Yet Carter is infamous for his haughty, priggish sense of moral superiority.
This is what the Nobel Peace Prize really stands for: irresponsible moral posturing in the service of the leftist delusion that appeasement will bring peace, when all it really brings is more war.
Come to think of it, that makes Barack Obama the perfect recipient.
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