I kid you not:
One judge noted with surprise that President Barack Obama “didn’t look particularly happy” at being named the Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Another marveled at how critics could be so patronizing.
In a rare public defense of a process normally shrouded in secrecy, four of the Nobel jury’s five judges spoke out this week about a selection they said was both merited and unanimous.
To those who say a Nobel is too much too soon in Obama’s young presidency, “We simply disagree … He got the prize for what he has done,” committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland told The Associated Press by telephone from Strasbourg, France, where he was attending meetings of the Council of Europe.
Jagland singled out Obama’s efforts to heal the divide between the West and the Muslim world and scale down a Bush-era proposal for an anti-missile shield in Europe.
“All these things have contributed to _ I wouldn’t say a safer world _ but a world with less tension,” he said.
I’d recommend Jagland take a relaxing walk just about anywhere in Pakistan or Afghanistan or… hell… Chicago… and feel that tension just melt away.
Sigh.
Crossposted (*)
