Vin Suprynowicz

On Friday, President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

Here’s where I’m supposed to establish I’m not some kind of grumpy, sour-grapes Obama-hater by saying all Americans should share some national pride in the Norwegian committee’s decision to honor our freshman president’s efforts and intentions, blah blah blah.

What a pile.

Even the five-member committee — elected by the left-leaning Norwegian Parliament — acknowledged the honor is intended to honor the new “tone” Mr. Obama has brought to international diplomacy, rather than any concrete accomplishments, which could hardly be expected after a mere eight months in office.

Maybe they should call it the “Neville Chamberlain Prize.” He had high hopes.

The stunning announcement may have resulted in part from the lack of other high-profile nominees. Speculation had focused on such candidates as Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a Colombian senator, a Chinese dissident, and some Afghan woman’s rights activist.

The president accepted the award with good grace.

That being said, however, it was a jaw-dropping decision, which could even hurt Mr. Obama by implying he has won a series of struggles which still lie before him, and before us. (Or are we required to pretend there’s now peace in the Afghan hills, that people who do no more drugs than “Barry the Stoner” did in high school are no longer being sent to prison the world over, that Iran and Israel are now dancing cheek-to-cheek, since Mr. Obama has already won his award for making it so?)

It was also a choice which can only further undercut the reputation of the Nobel Prizes for gravitas and sagacity, accelerating the 20-year tendency of the outfit to promote leftist political goals and indulge in modern liberalism’s most pathetic foible, that being to place high-flying rhetoric and the assertion of good intentions ahead of actual accomplishments.

In his 1895 will, chemist Alfred Nobel — in part based on his dismay at the military uses of his best-known invention, dynamite — stipulated that the peace prize should go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.”

If the Nobel juries understood what really promotes international peace and understanding, they’d be honoring those who generate genuine peace and prosperity through low tariffs and international free trade. (Mr. Obama SAYS he’s in favor of free trade — at the same time he slaps a 30 percent punitive tariff on cheap Chinese tires. When is he going to remove all quotas and tariffs on the import of Dominican sugar, just for starters, which would cut the price of most sugar-containing American foods by more than half?)

The Nobel folks don’t do that, of course, since such characters are universally reviled in Leftland as “greedy capitalists.” But at least, up till 20 years ago, the Peace Prize honored its founder’s wishes while maintaining some real-world credibility. The 1953 prize, for example, went to retired General George Marshall … though not for his real achievement in “increasing the fraternity between nations and reducing the size of standing armies,” which he accomplished by helping win the Second World War, but instead primarily for originating the post-war Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe.

The Nobel committee’s real divorce from reality began to become apparent when the 1990 prize went not to Ronald Reagan for helping bring down the slave empire of the Soviets, but (incredibly) to his adversary Michail Gorbachev, honored for his last-ditch attempts to keep bankrupt Russian Communism afloat, which the committee chose to interpret as “helping bring the Cold War to an end.” (Why not a 1945 award to Adolf Hitler for losing the Second World War and shooting himself in the head?)

Prior to that, the 1964 prize to Martin Luther King, the 1971 prize to Willy Brandt, the 1975 prize to Andrei Sakharov, the 1983 and 1986 prizes to Lech Walesa and Elie Wiesel, were all thoughtful and justified.

But after 1990? The 1994 “Peace Prize” to Yasser Arafat, who drove his own people into exile and poverty by trying to violently overthrow the government of Jordan, and never gave up his goal of “driving the Jews into the sea”? The 2007 prize to former Vice President Al Gore for promoting the economic suicide of the West in the name of halting “man-made global warming”? And now this?

Even peace-lovers here in the U.S. note Mr. Obama still currently oversees the military occupation of Iraq and an escalating though undeclared war in Afghanistan. (Mr. Obama was to meet with his top advisers on the Afghan war Friday to consider a request by Gen. Stanley McChrystal to send in as many as 40,000 more troops. Mr. Obama ordered 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan earlier this year and has continued the use of unmanned drones for attacks on guerrilla forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a deadly strategy devised by the Bush administration.)

Instead of demanding real-world accomplishments, members of the Nobel Committee said their choice could be seen as an early vote of confidence in the “change in global mood” wrought by Obama’s calls for peace and cooperation, praising his pledges to reduce the world stock of nuclear arms, ease American conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthen the U.S. role in combating climate change.

A “change in mood,” accomplished through mere word-choices and a rhetorical assertion of world brotherhood about as convincing as a bunch of teen-agers singing Cum-ba-ya around the campfire at YMCA camp? Heck, I can “change the mood” by lighting some candles and sliding a new CD into the player; when do I get my million bucks in dynamite money?

“Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics,” the citation read, in part. “Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play.”

Former Polish President Lech Walesa, who won the prize in 1983, responded, “So soon? Too early. He has no contribution so far. He is still at an early stage. He is only beginning to act.”

Associated press writers Karl Ritter and Matt Moore may have gotten to the bottom of the matter Friday, reporting: “The award appeared to be at least partly a slap at Bush from a committee that harshly criticized Obama’s predecessor for his largely unilateral military action in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.”

“Those who were in support of Bush in his belief in war solving problems, on rearmament, and that nuclear weapons play an important role … probably won’t be happy,” sneered Aagot Valle, a member of the Nobel Committee and of Norway’s Socialist Left party, who apparently managed to refrain from simultaneously offering the former president a middle-finger salute.

It appears Barack Obama just won the Nobel Peace Prize for precisely the same accomplishment that got him elected president: He’s “not George Bush.”

As our economy heads down the federally assisted 1933 rat-hole, only this time with a non-convertible dollar following it down the drain; as our enemies rub their eyes in disbelief to find the world’s most powerful military under the command of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, a child prince who wants to throw away our most powerful deterrents “because they’re not nice” (a policy heartily endorsed by our loyal friends the Scandinavians, the French, and Vladimir Putin) — we are about to find out whether that’s enough.