Hoping for audacity

George Bernard Shaw is reported to have once said "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize." I don't know if he said this before or after he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Regardless of this, however, he makes a valid point in relation to the hype that surrounds the variousNobel Pprizes, above all the Peace Prize.


It's funny that it's the controversial choices that stick in the memory. Looking back over the list of Laureates, in fact, no-one could quibble with most of them (incidentally, we in WWF are morning the loss this week of one Laureate, Wangara Maathai). A few of the choices were questionable, however, and a very small number were downright bad choices. When Henry Kissinger shared the prize in 1973, he was already partly responsible for the wreckage of Cambodia and was engaged in fomenting a bloodbath in Chile (Le Duc Tho, who shared the award, for negotiation of the Vietnam Peace Accord, had the decency to decline it - perhaps because his Government never intended honouring the accord anyway, and who could blame them?). After sharing the prize with Anwar Sadat in 1978, Menachem Begin went on to undertake a costly and futile invasion of Lebanon, which reached its obscene nadir when Phalangist allies of the Israelis carried out the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

Eyebrows were raised when Barack Obama was awarded the prize so soon after his election. Of course, the Republican Right were predictably incensed and I have no sympathy for them. However, many people - including me - who welcomed his election said "Hang on, he hasn't actually done anything yet". To me, it was like the cliché that, when a newly wed couple are featured in Hello magazine, their marriage won't last. I was worried that awarding the prize to him at that juncture was tempting fate. Nearly three years on, I can only say that my fears have been realised.

With one or two exceptions (like healthcare) he has been wary of any major change of course, especially on foreign policy and he has bought into the morrally bankrupt framework created by his predecssor. There are still American Forces in Afghanistan (and Iraq), America is still toeing Israel's line (rather than the other way around), the country still has its collective head in the sand on global warming, Guantanamo Bar remains open and his predecessor's blatantly clientalist tax breaks for the wealthy remain in place.

To be fair, he arrived in office at the worst possible time. He could have been forgiven for saying "Yes I'd love to be President but not now - I'm not going to take responsibility for cleaning up the massive mess left by my predecssor." No matter what he did, it was almost inevitable that the economy would not improve in within the two years which were all he had before the mid-term Congressional elections. And the resurgence in Republican power in those elections (the monster raving looney wing of the Republican Party at that) has massively compunded his headaches.

However, it is the gap between his early record and his actual achievements that make the disappointment so bitter. Take Palestine, for example. He won massive applause early on in the UN General Assembly when he looked forward to the day when Palestine would join the Assembly as an independent nation. Now, having allowed himself to be bullied by an irredentist Israeli régime on the settlement-building issue, he is blocking Palestine's bid for UN membership and thus undermining a moderate Palestinian leader.

It is not surprising, therefore, that he was cold-shouldered yesterday by the Hollywood celebrities who contributed so much to his election in 2008. Rober Redford, Matt Damon and others openly expressed their disillusion.

One thing that Damon said sums it up best: "A friend of mine said to me, and I thought it was a great line, 'I no longer hope for audacity'."