Hicham Maged's blog Acquiring knowledge lead to the acquisition of power

High Hopes

On Friday, October 9^th, 2009, ‘The Norwegian Nobel Committee’ has decided to award the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people”. Reactions for such nomination have varied between welcoming and fury among people not only inside the U.S.A. but also worldwide. I am concerned by going behind the nomination in this post.

War and Peace

I believe people every where are looking for avoiding War and achieving Peace that is accompanied by Justice; something that we are lacking for since World War II. This was the main reason for establishing the U.N. in 1945 however it has not been achieved for many reasons that can be summed-up into the vision of people towards the future and how it is reflected on the ground in terms of strategies and action plans.

Rise and Fall

During the past decade(s), many nations rendered a negative political image of the United Stats which went dramatically to the bottom rock in the past 8 years due to the impact of the strategy implemented by successive administration(s) that affected other nations worldwide in the different fields of ‘Politics’, ‘Geopolitics’, ‘Economy’, ‘Climatic Change’, ‘Nuclear Disarmament’, ‘Arms Conduct’, ‘Terrorism’, ‘Democracy’ and ‘Human Rights’.

Nevertheless since he ran for presidential elections, Obama caught the attention of the globe by a ‘new language’ as a politician that aims to change this beside the main issues that are important to any American citizen at home who are not concerned about global-politics.

The implementation of such ‘new language’ that Obama is speaking before and after running for presidency has straight impact on the previously mentioned issues which became vital in the 21^st century, and simply this is -in my opinion- why the nomination literally came after 11 days of his residence in the While House as President and before 4 months of his speech in Cairo to the Muslim World in June 4^th, 2009 which shaped many aspects of his strategy.

But ...

On the ground, we still have 2 open wars in ‘Iraq’ and ‘Afghanistan’ that has no meaning from the beginning. I may understand that they are the legacy of Bush Administration but this means more death tolls for nothing particular. On the other hand, talking about Middle East Conflict, maybe it can not be solved that simple after more than 60 years however the very basic thing is not to ignore the way Israel is dealing there; I may understand that there are problems among the Palestinians but any human being can not ignore that there is no particular reason for the Israeli actions especially during Lebanon War (2006), Gaza War (2008/2009) & same goes for other occupied land so it is important to see the situation clearly.

People not Icons

Humans are always looking for good people who guide them for achieving noble things and this is rooted in the subconscious of people regardless the culture via literature in case it is not achieved on ground.

So despite understanding the enthusiasm of the noble committee to urge Obama on following up with his strategy, I am afraid that this can be nothing more than making an ‘icon’ unless every body -especially leaders- stand up for their responsibility to achieve a better situation after many decades of downfall on the human level.

Responsibilities

Maybe it is not that clear for many people however I see Obama -as personnel- has already been placed as a remark in the human history. However I am aware that ruling USA is not a ‘one man show’ but rather is a constitutional framework that has many branches which means more responsibilities and pressure to be placed on the administration’s shoulder after this prize. Nevertheless I think this responsibility is distributed among all of the leaders not only Obama because he is only the 44^th president of the United States not of every single nation.

Consequently, to achieve what this prize aims to support, there are thousand miles everybody has to go before they sleep. This simply means more cooperation between people which we have not seen yet in the past decades by any means in terms of politics and its impact on the ground in the issues mentioned up. Such cooperation can not be done unless people are aware about understanding each other, as I wrote 3 years ago in I-MAG Magazine.

In a nutshell, this is what I believe as the real message behind such nomination or else we shall discover that we are just reading another good novel. Future shall tell us and hopefully not!

“The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.” ~ [Emile Zola]

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