Israel Matzav: Bolton on the Norwegians: 'Why can't America be more like us?'

Bolton on the Norwegians: 'Why can't America be more like us?'

John Bolton talks about some of the crooked thinking behind Europe's Norway's awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama (Hat Tip: NY Nana).

There is, of course, nothing wrong with encouraging hope and the possibility of future success. But it is otherworldly and in fact dangerous in national security matters to confuse emotions with reality. In fact, however, these vacuous aspirational justifications for giving the Nobel to Obama simply obscure the real ideological motivation behind the award: the Norwegian committee is promoting a cause, its cause. They seek to promote and encourage a particular kind of American, one who finds favor with European Leftists, who constantly ask, paraphrasing Rex Harrison’s musical query in "My Fair Lady": "why can’t Americans . . . be more like us?"

In 2002, for example, in selecting Jimmy Carter, the then-chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize committee said the award was intended as "a kick in the leg" to President Bush, which should hardly be a qualification, let alone a public justification. Then, in 2007, former Vice President Al Gore’s selection for his global-warming work was widely seen as criticism of Bush administration environmental policy. Over the last several decades, moreover, the Nobel has repeatedly honored UN agencies or personnel, rewards increasing in inverse proportion to the organization’s effectiveness.

This year, one Nobel Committee member, Aagot Valle, of Norway’s Socialist Left party, said we should view the selection as "support and a commitment for Obama." Indeed. Unable to vote in America’s 2008 presidential election, the Nobel Committee apparently decided to vote this year, making their ideological perspective unmistakable. Valle and the committee chairman, a failed former Norwegian prime minister, both referred to Obama’s hopes for nuclear disarmament. But they are just that: hopes. Ronald Reagan also aspired to a world without nuclear weapons. Where is his Nobel Peace Prize? Obviously, Reagan was not the right kind of American, not one appealing to the Norwegian and broader European Left.

Their message really is quite straightforward: "Jimmy Carter in 2002, Al Gore in 2007 and now Barack Obama. Do you Americans get the point yet?" It is precisely the preachiness and attitude of moral superiority inherent in these awards that many Americans find offensive, and which may, ironically, leave President Obama in a more difficult position here and abroad than before the award.

Read it all.

And for your entertainment pleasure, here's the song to which Bolton was referring.

Let's go to the videotape.



Israel Matzav: Bolton on the Norwegians: 'Why can't America be more like us?'