WSJ: Who should have won Nobel prize

To my readers, I hope you’ll bear with me as I gear back up after a week of vacation. Upon returning home last week, I woke up Thursday morning to the news that President Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Still in vacation mode, dragging my feet, I stared at my Twitter stream where I first saw the news, convinced that this was some kind of joke, perhaps to see how many would RT (for you non-Twitterers, re-post) such an absurd, fabricated story.

Of course, I quickly realized that this wasn’t a joke. And to my surprise, the response of most people I spoke to wasn’t based on politics. People on the left and right questioned the Nobel committee’s decision and wondered what they had up their sleeve, nominating a President only 11 days into his Presidency.

As the news continued to break, the stories of the runners-up started coming out. And today, the WSJ published a short but powerful piece, suggesting the ridiculousness of giving this award to President Obama. In terms of making strides towards peace in the world, the President does not have any accomplishments to point to. Some would argue his apology tour earlier this year set the stage for a new kind of engagement with other countries. This still doesn’t explain the conferral of this prize, given that the nomination came just 11 days into his Presidency.

The WSJ focuses on what might have been had the prize gone to an individual or group of people, fighting for peace, who don’t have a voice on the international stage. The writer wonders whether this award could have brought attention to the plight of those who marched for freedom in Iran, and now face Iranian courts who have zero tolerance for dissent.

“Suppose this year’s Nobel Peace Prize had gone to the scores of Iranians now on trial for having protested the fraudulent re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last June. For the three defendants who were sentenced to death over the weekend, a Nobel might have made all the difference in the nick of time. At a minimum, it could have validated their struggle.

Our friends in Oslo had a different idea, which means that the fate of the three defendants—known officially by their initials M.Z., A.P. and N.A.—are at the mercy of Iran’s appellate and supreme courts. It’s a slender hope in a country that is the leading executioner of juveniles, and whose leaders have only become more truculent toward dissenters since the election.

Hope is also slender because the Obama Administration has downplayed human rights in Iran as it pursues a negotiated nuclear settlement with the Ahmadinejad government. Without explanation, the State Department this month pulled funding for the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, a New Haven, Connecticut outfit that has been investigating the plight of those Iranians now in the dock, including Iranian-American scholar Kian Tajbakhsh and Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari.

In his Rose Garden remarks about the Nobel, President Obama spoke about “the young woman who marches silently in the streets on behalf of her right to be heard even in the face of beatings and bullets.” The elliptical reference is almost certainly to 27-year old Neda Agha-Sultan, whose murder last June by one of Ahmadinejad’s goon squads was captured on a video seen around the world. We hope the President keeps in mind that the same people whose good faith he now seeks in negotiations were her killers.”

With just a week to go before talks with Iran continue regarding its nuclear enrichment plans, this reminder for the President and for his entire administration is relevant and poignant. So far, President Obama has not taken any hard stances against Iran — issuing lukewarm statements when protesters took to the streets after what they believed was a fraudulent election and doing the same just a couple weeks ago when it was brought to light that Iran had a second nuclear enrichment facility.

As the article suggests, President Obama referenced Neda, the young Iranian girl the world saw shot in cold blood while standing by watching the protests. Let’s hope he honors her memory by remembering who is fighting for peace in Iran, and who stands against them.

Tags: Iran Neda, Iran protests, Nobel peace prize