If Davenport's analysis holds true, the US effort in Afghanistan may be saved

by Smitty

Kenneth G. Davenport has an interesting take on Nobel Committee's motives, emphasis mine:

But it is really more than just about Obama's willingness to talk. Rather, there is something more strategic involved: an attempt to restrict Obama's range of decisions in the critical reassessment of the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan. According to Valle, the Nobel Committee reached its decision on the Obama award at their final meeting on October 5. It was thus no secret that the Obama Administration was in the midst of a full scale review of General Stanley McChrystal's request for 40,000 additional U.S. soldiers in an expansion of the U.S. mission. Nor was it a secret that Vice President Joe Biden and others in the Administration were openly lobbying for a change in U.S. strategy that would dramatically reduce the American footprint in Afghanistan in favor of a targeted "offshore" force that would be used for surgical strikes against terrorist targets. The Nobel Committee clearly also knows that in the wake of an all-out focus on health care reform, the Obama Administration has let public support for the Afghan war drift; the latest polling shows that less than half of America supports the war that Obama himself once called "necessary" for America's long-term security. The Norwegians know that Obama is wavering on Afghanistan, and that the Peace Prize could be an effective leverage point in convincing him to radically reduce – or even end – the U.S. war there.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee understands that awarding Obama the Peace Prize will appeal to the President's own image as a transformational figure, and will serve to heighten the already stratospheric confidence he has in his ability to alter the status quo ante. Obama's own belief in the power of his words is well known. Now, with the Nobel Prize in hand, he has a validation that Europe also sees him as The One. The net effect of this will put Obama in a tough position as he addresses America’s security concerns in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and elsewhere. With little more than a press release, the Nobel Committee has achieved what Europe has been trying to do for a generation: it has handcuffed the American president with the imprimatur of "Peacemaker", narrowing the options for unilateral action in the process. For the peaceniks of Europe, awarding Obama the Nobel was a true masterstroke of preventive medicine.

All this is true, Kenneth, but the Obama brain does have another hemisphere beside the crypto-Marxist nitwit: the Chicago-style gangster. How many others have been tossed under the bus already? Does the Nobel Committee bethink itself a different case?

Below the Obama cranium is the suit. In the back of the suit is a slit. Into the slit goes the hand of the real decision makers. That's whose opinion is more important on Afghanistan.

Update: (2256)
The excellent Power Line has a related post that bears inclusion.

Professor Paul Rahe writes:

Next to no one has responded to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama with anything but disbelief, followed by embarrassed laughter and dismay.

There is, however, at least one exception to the rule -- Steven Clemons who directs the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation -- and his argument, such as it is, deserves, I think, attention. For, better than anything else that I have read, it echoes and fully articulates the presumption (and that is the appropriate word) underpinning the Obama endeavor as a whole.

That was just the intro. Rahe then posts Clemons's laughable statement, and then manages to maintain enough academic detachment to analyze it briefly.