What the Nobel Peace Prize President has Wrought

What the Nobel Peace Prize President has Wrought

Lauri B. Regan

The former director of the Nobel Instituteregrets his decision to award Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. Recall this was prior to Obama accomplishing anything other than pulling the wool over the eyes of the Nobel committee and the majority of Americans. Geir Lundestad, who also awarded the prize to terrorist Yassir Arafat, stated in his memoir, "We thought it would strengthen Obama and it didn't have this effect." I beg to differ.

The Nobel Prize no doubt bloated Obama's already overinflated ego. Perhaps it also empowered him to ignore the wishes and values of the American people as he projected his own disdainful attitude of American power across the globe. The results are not pretty. In fact, Nobel Peace Prize Obama is directly responsible for the deaths of Americans, Syrians, Iraqis, Iranians, Libyans, Yemenis, Egyptians, Nigerians, and Ukrainians, not to mention the displacement of millions from their former homes.

Kassem Eid, a member of the Syrian opposition living in D.C., penned an op-edin the Wall Street Journal describing his shock and disappointment upon learning that Obama ignored the plight of the Syrian people because he feared upsetting the Iranians. Without remorse, Obama ignored "the torture of protesters, the rape of women, the bombardment of civilians, the barrel bombs, the massacres, the sieges, the starvation, and the gassing of hundreds of innocents with sarin in August 2013." Eid observed:

President Obama wishes for a legacy of peace through diplomacy; that I understand. What I can't understand is why he believes that making deals with dictators can bring peace. During the Obama presidency, millions of people in Iran, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine protested for a better life only to be met with bullets, tanks and fighter jets.

Now tens of thousands in the Middle East are fleeing for Europe, despairing of ever seeing peace or freedom in their homelands. Had the president supported these people against oppression, he would have made the world a better place and achieved a true legacy. Instead he risks leaving behind disappointment and memories of drowned refugee children lying on beaches.

But ignoring atrocities committed by tyrants against their own people is not new to Obama. It began in 2009 when Iran's Green Revolution rose up against the Mullahcracy with which Obama had already chosen to ally. How he ignored the blood pouring forth from the beautiful face of Neda Agha-Soltan, shot dead in the street during the uprising is mind-boggling but everything this president does is inconceivable in a vacuum. It only comes into focus by understanding that Obama reached out to the mullahs the moment he entered office. As Michael Doran reported:

In the first year of Obama's first term, a senior administration official would later tell David Sanger of the New York Times, "There were more [White House] meetings on Iran than there were on Iraq, Afghanistan, and China. It was the thing we spent the most time on and talked about the least in public [emphasis added]." All along, Obama has regarded his hoped-for "comprehensive agreement" with Iran as an urgent priority, and, with rare exceptions, has consistently wrapped his approach to that priority in exceptional layers of secrecy.

It is ironic that Obama chose Samantha Power, an enthusiastic proponent of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, as our UN ambassador. Rather, the administration not only ignores its responsibility as catalyst of the death and destruction taking hold across the world, but also of its duty to stop it.

Rather than adopt a foreign policy designed to protect the world's civilian population by embracing America's role as the world's policeman, Obama has chosen to replace the Pax Americana with an Iranian hegemon. ISIS is expanding notwithstanding Obama's claims, based on altered intelligence data, that they're the JV team. A Cold War II is developing with an emboldened Vladimir Putin setting up military bases in Syria decades after Reagan forced the Russians to their knees. Walls are being erected across Europe decades after Reagan's policy led to Gorbachev tearing down the Berlin Wall.

Obama promised to transform America. He has in fact transformed the world leaving death and destruction in his path of revolution. Bush created a democratic Iraq free of oppression. The Nobel Peace Prize president prematurely withdrew American troops and created a wasteland of chaos and violence. American lives and treasure were spent building a successful nation state and Obama willingly destroyed it.

And while Obama cannot be blamed for the creation of Islamic jihadist entities like al Qaeda and Boko Haram, he is absolutely responsible for ISIS as well as other terrorist groups flourishing throughout the region. Tweeting a picture of Michelle holding up a "#Bringbackourgirls" sign is far from a policy designed to actually save Nigeria's innocents from slavery and death. Obama's claims of success in Yemen were followed by the Iranian-backed Houthis' takeover (and deaths of thousands), proving his will to protect innocents from the failures of his policies is nonexistent.

Ironically, Obama did choose to attack one dictator. Notwithstanding Moammar Qaddafi relinquishing his WMDs in the wake of the Iraq war, Obama decided to nonetheless intervene in Libya. His leading from behind resulted in the deaths of four Americans including the U.S. ambassador. Benghazi remains a cover-up but what is clear is that the administration failed to protect Americans.

There are four other American heroes whom Obama is ignoring. They are being held by his buddies in Iran's notorious Evin prison and the best Obama can do is negotiate a treaty allowing the bad guys to go nuclear while paying them $150 billion. Only as an afterthought did Obama promise to try and get these hostages released. Al Qaeda could teach the administration a lesson or two in negotiating skills given that Iran just released five AQ prisoners including one with a $5 million bounty on his head and responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans.

Patterns have developed with this administration and the only endgame that is clear is that Iran, which now controls multiple capitals in the region including Tehran, Damascus, Baghdad, Beirut and Sana'a will have a nuclear weapon 10-15 years hence. A Middle East dominated by a nuclear Iran hell-bent on destroying Israel before turning its attention to America will make North Korea look like the real JV team. Perhaps there is a reason the administration refuses to disclose the number of Americans killed by Iran.

Unlike Obama, the Supreme Leader hasn't hidden his intentions from the world. It seems that it's almost weekly that the Iranians produce a new video depicting the destruction of both the Little Satan and the Great Satan. Labeling chants of "Death to America" as merely political rhetoric while ignoring the true intent of the leaders of the world's largest state-sponsor of terrorism is reminiscent of the fools who ignored Hitler's plans to annihilate the Jews laid out in Mein Kampf. Yet Obama is no fool. What he appears to be is someone with little regard for human life.

Obama's policies have also helped purge Christian life that existed for thousands of years in the Middle East. He did not blink an eye when the Muslim Brotherhood, the terrorist group he helped bring to power in Egypt, spent a year attacking Coptic Christians before being overthrown in a military coup. ISIS is destroying history by blowing up ancient Christian and ancient sites across Syria. Christians are being murdered or are fleeing the region en masse.

Books will be written describing the damage left in the wake of the Nobel Peace Prize presidency. From an expansionist and emboldened Russian president invading Ukraine to North Korea threatening nuclear war, the world is a far more dangerous place than when Obama came into office.

But so is America. Put aside his degrading our military to levels not seen since pre-World War II. Obama's immigration policies will lead to terror attacks becoming a common occurrence. As he announces plans to bring in tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in addition to the 100,000 Muslim immigrants he imports every year, Kenneth Palinkas, head of the union representing 12,000 immigration officials observed:

In addition to the extremely real and serious threat that ISIS has already or will soon slip across our porous southern border, it is also essential to warn the public about the threat that ISIS will exploit our loose and lax visa policies to gain entry to the United States. Indeed, as we know from the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, from the Boston Bombing, from the recent plot to bomb a school and courthouse in Connecticut, and many other lesser-known terror incidents, we are letting terrorists into the United States right through our front door.

The blood on Obama's hands will not end when he leaves office.

I am reminded of two idioms: "you get what you pay for" and "you get what you deserve." In politics, you get what you elect. Americans who voted for Obama are getting what they "paid" for. But those of us, who did not vote for this disaster, do not deserve the pain that has accompanied it anymore than do the innocent citizens of the world who are but after-thoughts of his ideological policies. The question is whether the Nobel Peace Prize president will one day get what he deserves. One can only hope.