Obama's Nobel Peace Prize a Retroactive Rebuke for the George W. Bush Administration

Middle East Report Online: Norse Code, From the Editors

"It is difficult not to see the farm boy’s icy barb in the Nobel Peace Prize awarded on October 9 to President Barack Obama. So insufferable was George W. Bush, so plain his patrician arrogance under the back-slapping Texan veneer, that his successor gets the ultimate stamp of world approval just nine months into the presidency. So destructive was Bush to global peace and security, so sharp his elbows in the scrum of international affairs, that the Norwegians place their treasured laurels on the crown of the first guy to walk into the White House after the Yale frat boy’s exit. How else to interpret the Nobel committee’s encomium? “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.” The initial clause is a statement of fact, but the second is readily translated Norse code for “the last eight years have been a nightmare.” It is a garland frosted with spite."