Nobel prize for Peace..

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

While it may be true that the Committee does have every right to choose who the recipient of the peace prize is going to be, they do need to adduce an acceptable level of credibility to the whole process. It should not under any circumstances lower to the level of a flight of fantasy.

As Siddharth Varadarajan puts it in his blog

The reason for this is not because the world dislikes or distrusts Mr. Obama. Many may or do, but global sentiment towards the new president of the United States still runs largely positive. What is upsetting, however, is the intellectual laziness and political timidity with which the Nobel committee appears to have gone about its exertions.

They should simply have avoided the sweep of negative comments that are being showered the world over (see here here or here and several others).