COMMENTARY: Obama's peace prize

Last Friday's announcement of US President Barack Obama as the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize has turned heads around the world. There's been an outcry, from the right, the left, and the centre, that Obama - a president barely nine months into his term - doesn't deserve this international honour. And they are right. Obama is the Commander-in-Chief of the largest military in the world, which is currently engaged in not one, but two full-scale wars. That alone should take him out of consideration for the Nobel Peace Prize. But the argument goes further than that. Three US presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize since its inception in 1901: Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, Woodrow Wilson in 1919, and Jimmy Carter in 2002. Both Roosevelt and Wilson won the prize while in office for helping to end a major international war... [read full story]                    

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