Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize

Unless CNN is having an out-of-season April Fool's joke, Barack Obama just won the Nobel Prize for Peace.

I am not particularly thrilled. I think it is too early in his presidency and, well, I like how the science prizes are handed out years after the events occurred. For those prizes, longevity is a plus as the prizes are handed out years later and never posthumously.

for Obama, this is too much, too early. He is still someone I expect great things of, not really someone who I consider as having done great things yet - okay, getting elected president is no small potatoes, but, again, it's too early - he needs to accomplish something while in office before I will be satisfied.

I think he may well deserve it in the future, but I am not sure he does, yet.

I should disclose, I guess, that I don't know what he did to win this one. Maybe he does deserve it and I simply didn't know what for.

Updated almost immediately after: Reuters has a report - I guess it is true.

The Reuters article gives a short political history for Obama but does not note any specific thing that he did to win -strange, in an article about his win.

From the BBC (My bolding):

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the Norwegian committee said in a statement.

"His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

Asked why the prize had been awarded to Mr Obama less than a year after he took office, Nobel Committee head Thorbjoern Jagland said: "It was because we would like to support what he is trying to achieve".

"It is a clear signal that we want to advocate the same as he has done," he said.

He specifically mentioned Mr Obama's work to strengthen international institutions and work towards a world free of nuclear arms.

It seems he won for expected, future contributions. I am not an American but I support Obama in general, just as I supported Al Gore, very strongly, for his very specific actions. Still, I think the Nobel Peace Prize is losing relevance and am not sure if Gore, much less Obama, deserve the prize. As a more local example, I am concerned that Kim Dae-Jung won his prize by buying it - in giving the North Koreans so much.