Scrap the Nobel Peace Prize

From Bronwen Maddox at the Times Online:

Scrap the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s an embarrassment and even an impediment to peace. President Obama, in letting the committee award it to him, has made himself look vain, a fool and dangerously lost in his own mystique.

Where do you start, in the daftness of it? Anointing a leader whose character the panel admires, but who is only a fifth of the way through his term of office and has not yet clinched any peace? The fey, fanciful lack of criteria, which does no favours to the rigorous awards in science that, unfortunately, share the same brand name?

No, start with two hard-edged points. The Peace Prize has begun to distort and damage crucial negotiations. And Obama’s acceptance of the supposed honour is a misjudgment that will give power to his critics. [Read More]