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We can only hope that she will not behave like the previous career politicians that got the Nobel Peace Prize in recent years.

Abiy Ahmed (2019), from Ethiopia, ended the cold war with Eritrea. Then he launched a war against the region of Tigray, with mass rapes and mass civilian killings. He harassed the free press, and turned the country into an autocracy.

Juan Manuel Santos (2016) from Colombia and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (2011) from Liberia later appeared in Paradise Papers because they had secret offshore companies in Panama and Barbades. Their political activity was more tame after the prize than before. Both ended their presidential tenures with plummeting approval rates, especially because of corruption allegations.

Barack Obama (2009) received the Prize for his generous discourses on foreign policy, just after being elected. Then he lead the USA to more war in Afghanistan, and a new war in Libya. He helped Saudi Arabia invade Yemen (UN states this war killed 300,000 people). He helped the Egyptian army with its coup, that killed thousands of opponents and sent 60,000 in jails (including the elected president who died there).

In my opinion, this prize is, most of the time, a dark and heavily political joke.



Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but people are awarded the prize based on what they've done, not based on what they might do in the future.

I'm not sure you could claim the award is a joke because of people did after being awarded it, especially when most people awarded didn't launch new wars or helped coups.


Obamas was explicitly given as a hope for the future

  The committee "thought it would strengthen Obama and it didn't have this
  effect", Lundestad told the Associated Press, though he fell short of calling
  the award a mistake.[145] "In hindsight, we could say that the argument of
  giving Obama a helping hand was only partially correct", Lundestad wrote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies#2009...


Ideally, we would accept the recipients as being of “certified good character”. But the stability of this pattern shows chronic lack of basic insight into the awardees, IMO.


No, ideally you'd understand under what basis the prize is handed out, and then draw your conclusions from that (or avoid thinking something specific will happen in the future based on the prize itself).

Nothing in the criteria for the handing out the prize has anything about the reception having any sort of specific character, good or bad. This is all of the conditions for the award:

> Fraternity between nations; abolition or reduction of standing armies; and the holding and promotion of peace congresses

So every year they look at candidates and what they've done within those things, then make an judgement.


Obama didn’t actually do anything but get elected and said nice things. When he got the Peace Prize, people all over the world were confused and thought it was a joke.


He then went on to become the longest-serving war president [1]:

> On May 6, with eight months left before he vacates the White House, Mr. Obama passed a somber, little-noticed milestone: He has now been at war longer than Mr. Bush, or any other American president.

It wasn't all inherited conflicts. He also oversaw the 2011 intervention in Libya, the 2014 involvement in Syria, and the 2014 re-intervention in Iraq after having withdrawn troops in 2011.

[1]: NYT: https://archive.is/diXo5


Seems pretty minimal if you subtract the steamy piles Cheney left him.


The point is what peace did he participate in before he won the Nobel peace prize? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34277960


He mananged to convince the most powerful country on earth to vote for international cooperation rather than a guy who sang a parody song with the lyrics "bomb Iran". Obama notably worked out a denuclearization deal with them so there's that.

It's okay if a non-voting member of the Nobel org 'regrets' other peoples' decision because Obama didn't immediately withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan and pardon Bin Laden. Maybe he can take some solace in the fact that he let Putin take Crimea and shoot down MH17, trading peace in 2014 for war in 2022.


At least they had fun with it, remember "Terror Tuesday's"? And once he even apologized when they accidentally bombed a hospital full of white people. Cheney's situation room was probably like Dr.Evils lair. Obama and Hillary Clinton was more like https://youtu.be/dDJa1_fLVeA vibes.


The Obama prize decision kind of made the Nobel prize a joke.


Obama was kind of given the prize as soon as he was first elected, which was odd.

Of course it’s now led to Trump having a Peace Prize obsession, which sis not a bad thing.


Baraka Obama won the prize for not being George W Bush and for being the first black President of a country with a terrible history of enslaving and mistreating black people.

Side note: Democracy will not work in Egypt until the Muslim Brotherhood loses popularity and/or Islam in the region becomes more moderate. Until then, you're just going to end up with the same situation as Ethiopia and Tigray with a Brotherhood-dominated government and the Copts.


> of a country with a terrible history of enslaving and mistreating black people.

You should really learn about the history of the 19th century and the history of other countries wrt slavery.


Does it make my statement somehow untrue?

Also, save the snarky condescension for Facebook and Reddit.


It makes your statement apply more to almost every other country on the planet more than the US. Its like complaining to Luxembourg about poverty. And I will mock ignorance (especially about history) wherever I find it.


So, it doesn’t. Got it.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aung_San_Suu_Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi, 1991 prize winner, resided over the genocide of the Rohingya people.


Yip, when reading his post I thought this would be the most obvious example. She was given the award for protesting a government that was cracking down hard on protest. She then took power and, at the minimum, was complicit in a literal genocide. In many ways I think this award should not be granted to 'resistance' types because they have a recurring habit of becoming even worse than that what they were resisting. And it obviously should not be given to political leaders based on words instead of actions. Actually maybe this prize shouldn't even exist - it's quite a joke, especially relative to the prize for the sciences.


It really would be better as a posthumous award.


The Rohingyas were busy killing and raping non-Rohingyas. She put a stop to that.




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