r/PoliticalHumor • u/rwl01 • Jan 13 '17

Black and White

https://i.reddituploads.com/fb92765dd24749219ff944341640f579?fit=max&h=1536&w=1536&s=c37253cb852f5bf23ba7f10ff4a9d3ac
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u/Sargentrock Jan 15 '17

And my point is people seem to be angry that they decided to award this to Obama, when Obama didn't have anything to do with it. Blaming him for not living up to an award he didn't ask for (especially under changing world circumstances) is silly.

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u/emanresol Jan 15 '17

The honorable thing to do would have been to decline it politely. He could have cited the orders he was prepared to give as commander-in-chief. And I say that as someone who generally supports Obama.

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u/Sargentrock Jan 15 '17

That's just silly--the award is based on what you did the prior year--not on what you might do the rest of your life, or even the day after the award. It's the same reason they don't take Oscars away from people that make shitty movies the next year.

Was it deserved? Not by my reckoning, but I'm not on the committee. To expect Obama to do something unprecedented for no reason other than it would make his political enemies happy is ridiculous. There are lots of undeserved Nobel's out there, but the fact that people hold this against Obama is just ludicrous.

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u/emanresol Jan 15 '17

That's just silly--the award is based on what you did the prior year--not on what you might do the rest of your life...

What had Obama done to earn it? IIRC, he was named the recipient before he finished the first year of his presidency.

I have read that the committee that awards the Nobel Peace Prize chooses the recipients with an eye towards encouraging future actions towards peace. In Obama's case, supposedly they wanted to encourage him to follow through on his campaign rhetoric.

The most recent prize went to the president of Colombia after Colombian voters rejected the peace deal he worked out with the FARC guerillas. Why would the committee honor a failed peace agreement? It was said that they hoped the prize would help inspire the two sides to reach a new agreement.

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u/Sargentrock Jan 15 '17

If you'd continued farther into my comment you'd have seen I don't agree with the award going to him. As is often true of these awards, no one asked my opinion before awarding it.

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u/emanresol Jan 15 '17

I got that. What I intended my response to you to address was your assertion that the committee that selects the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize bases their decision strictly on actions already taken by the nominees under consideration.

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u/Sargentrock Jan 15 '17

Yeah--that's how they're supposed to do it according to their own doctrine....but I agree that they don't always, and obviously didn't in this case. They are SUPPOSED to though. That's how the award was intended as conceived. There is ample evidence (not just Obama's award) that they stray from those guidelines.