Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama is arguably one of the most absurd awards the Nobel committee has ever made.
Highly patronizing, it will be received with incredulity around the world. In fact there has rarely been an award that has been so obviously partisan and political in its intention.
The award is apparently an encouragement to America's first black president and a way of saying we hope that there is going to be a new direction in Washington's policy. However, all of this undermines the point of a Nobel Peace prize.
Obama has only been in office since the beginning of the year and while his foreign peace aims are noble, his achievements are rather few. He has done nothing in the Middle East and nothing to improve relations with the Russians.
In his own homeland he has actually undermined peace by becoming the most pro-abortion President ever to be elected. Former Nobel winner Mother Teresa once said that "the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion."
To award a prize simply on hope suggests a naivety and a blindness that I think will only damage the value of the prize and diminish its value to all its previous winners.
Tom Richardson
London, England
I find it appalling that President Barack Obama should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Obama supports institutionalized and systematic murder through embryonic stem cell research and abortion.
He supports homosexuality which thwarts the natural generation of life. Since he was sworn in as President he has stockpiled his administration with "culture of death" advocates - one of whom is a registered communist.
He rigorously supports a winless war in Afghanistan, has taken over - in dictatorial fashion - major American banks and the car industry, and is trying to introduce socialized health care with death panels that encourage euthanasia.
Only recently he snubbed the Dalai Lama and proclaimed that the US is no longer a Christian nation. In short, Obama has been installing a totalitarian form of government in the United States and is promoting it throughout the world. For this he is given an award for peace.
Obama's peace prize shows these prizes are political, not governed by the principles of credibility, values and morals.
Paul Kokoski
Hamilton, Ontario. Canada
