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Congratulations
Dear Editor,
Nebraskans for Peace is pleased that President Barack Obama has received this year's Nobel Prize. The Nobel Committee appears to have awarded the prize for Mr. Obama's work to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons around the world; his efforts to reduce the greenhouse gases that create climate change and threaten global security, forcing mass movements of refugees to escape climate change; and his stance of relying on negotiation, regional alliances and the United Nations instead of unilateral American actions to solve global problems.
We applaud the efforts that won President Obama the prize, particularly if he continues them forcefully throughout his administration. We also applaud his pullback of STRATCOM missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic, from close to the Russian border, because the missiles clearly made Russia feel threatened and did not deal creatively with the strategic threat they were supposed to handle, that is, the possible use of Iranian missiles and nuclear weapons to threaten Israel and other Middle Eastern and Southern European countries. Finally, we are encouraged by President Obama's Cairo speech indicating that the U.S. and he himself have no quarrel with mainstream Islamic believers but rather with the resort to violent means fostered by al-Qaeda and other splinter groups within Islam.
The Prize is given not for what Obama has completed but for what he has begun. Several other world leaders have received the Nobel Peace Prize early in their work at reducing global tensions, including Mr. Gorbachev of Russia. The Prize need not go to old white septuagenarians. It is designed to recognize good work and encourage more of it. So we do not feel that the granting of the prize is necessarily premature.
At the same time, we are concerned that President Obama use his power as president and Nobel laureate to return Iraq to the Iraqi people as quickly as possible, to push forcefully for peace between Israel and Palestine -- including embargoing the sale of munitions to either side and the granting of aid to them so long as they are belligerents -- and that he place the issues of Afghanistan and West Pakistan as quickly as possible in the hands of international peacekeeping agencies such as the United Nations.
Peace,
Paul Olson,
President Nebraskans for Peace
Lincoln