This is perhaps one of the funniest things I have ever seen. My last article was about polls showing that only 20% of the American people believed that President Obama was deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize. Little did I know that the funniest part of this story was yet to come. It seems that some controversy that does not involve the President has settled out of the Oslo ceremony. It seems that some people are upset about a comment by Toby Keith, a country music singer, being asked to perform at the Nobel Peace Prize concert. The anger seems to be directed at some of his songs, and the following statement he made.
“If President Obama has to send (more) troops into Afghanistan to fight evil, I’ll pull for our guys to win, and I won’t apologize for it. I’m an American, and I do pull for our team to fight evil.”
So let me see if I have this straight. People are angry with a performer at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony for supporting the efforts of the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. People are upset that the committee would invite a person to sing who supports President Obama's troop surge, but they are not upset that the same committee gave the award to the man who authored the troop surge that the singer praised.
This is a bit like the global warming Nazis getting in their private jets to fly out to Copenhagen to fight wasteful carbon emissions. One has to wonder how someone could be in the middle of such an activity without realizing what an idiot they are and just quitting and going home. For my part, I have no problem with Toby Keith singing at the concert. I furthermore have no problem with President Obama getting the award. The Nobel Peace Prize is a joke anyway. President Obama is certainly more deserving of the award than was Yasser Arafat. At least he hasn't done anything to... well, no need to elaborate. He hasn't done much of anything. President Obama acknowledged this himself in his acceptance speech.
And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated. In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage. Compared to some of the giants of history who have received this prize – Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela – my accomplishments are slight.
And then there are the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice; those who toil in humanitarian organizations to relieve suffering; the unrecognized millions whose quiet acts of courage and compassion inspire even the most hardened of cynics. I cannot argue with those who find these men and women – some known, some obscure to all but those they help – to be far more deserving of this honor than I.
But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I....
...am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by forty three other countries – including Norway – in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.
Still, we are at war, and I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill. Some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the cost of armed conflict – filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other.
So why is it that this man would be chosen for such a high honor? Quite simply, he won it for the same reasons that former Vice President Al Gore won it. The award has turned into little more than a popularity contest. Receiving the award was once a great honor. Now, it is somewhere along the lines of winning class president at your local high school. So while it is unclear if the committee had hoped to influence Obama in his decision to send more troops into Afghanistan, or if they simply wanted to get on the bandwagon of hype that surrounded the President when he was nominated, it is clear that they failed miserably. Simply put, President Obama has authorized the troop surge, and is now losing popularity quicker than a boy band in their twenties. And all of this has left the moonbats out there to criticize a man who supported the man they came out to honor. Nobel Prize, rest in peace. This is one piece of metal that has become little more than a punch line to a bad liberal joke.
