Regarding the Peace Prize for President Obama

gmjambear and I got to talking about President Obama's award of the Nobel Peace Prize. Gary suggested he received it, in part, because of his address to the Muslim world some months ago. I said he's got a gift for diplomatic public speaking, now let's see him get the opportunity to use it.

Gary reminded me that just as poverty was not wiped out in India when Mother Teresa received her prize, nor was civil rights a done deal in the US when Martin Luther King was awarded his, nor was the eternal conflict over Israel and Palestine settled when Yassir Arafat and Shimon Peres received theirs, so too is there much work yet to be done on the issues for which President Obama spoke so eloquently and thereby made himself a candidate for the prize.

And yes, it certainly helps that Obama is not Bush, as much as he might wish to hold on to the power that Bush left him during his eight disastrous years.

But in a field of endeavour in which progress comes, when it does at all, in painfully small increments over an excruciatingly long time, these awards are not so much for achievement but to promote whatever progress can be made. In other words, these are not laurels to be rested upon.