{"id":19025,"date":"2013-10-01T17:20:44","date_gmt":"2013-10-01T21:20:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=19025"},"modified":"2013-10-01T17:20:44","modified_gmt":"2013-10-01T21:20:44","slug":"putin-for-the-peace-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/19025\/putin-for-the-peace-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin for the Peace Prize?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Unlikely? Sure. But nonetheless a group of pro-Putin Russians sent a letter to the Nobel Peace Prize committee requesting consideration for their country\u2019s president.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe group says Putin deserves the honor for his efforts in brokering an agreement for Syria to hand over its chemical weapons under international control, a plan the group says helped avert a \u2018new world war,\u2019\u201d according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/Big-Peace\/2013\/10\/01\/Russian-group-backs-Putin-for-Nobel-peace-prize-over-Syria\" target=\"_blank\">Breitbart.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Then the story stops being funny.<\/p>\n<p>Drawing a contrast to President of the United States Barack Obama, the group\u2019s leader says that Putin, \u201cwho is trying to stop the war and suggest a political solution, is more worthy of such a title.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now, of course Putin \u2013 the man who <a href=\"http:\/\/rt.com\/politics\/putin-ossetia-abkhazia-independence-005\/\" target=\"_blank\">invaded South Ossetia<\/a> during the 2008 Summer Olympics \u2013 is no peace-loving reincarnation of Ghandi. The lifeline he threw to Obama over Syria was nothing more than a canny power politics move that makes it easier for his authoritarian allies in Damascus to oppress their people with impunity.<\/p>\n<p>Still, the argument that Putin deserves a fair hearing to receive the Peace Prize is at least plausible since the committee in charge of conferring it debased its standards by <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/2009_Nobel_Peace_Prize \" target=\"_blank\">awarding its 2009 installment to Obama<\/a> on the pretext that he <em>might<\/em> do something worthy to receive it.<\/p>\n<p>Four years later, Obama was poised to start a war until Putin negotiated a European-style system of endless weapons inspections and diplomatic meetings. Had the roles been reversed, Obama supporters would be claiming their man made good on the Nobel\u2019s committee\u2019s prediction. But since history played out the other way, perhaps the American president can do the Norwegians a favor and mail their devalued token to Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unlikely? Sure. But nonetheless a group of pro-Putin Russians sent a letter to the Nobel Peace Prize committee requesting consideration for their country\u2019s president. \u201cThe group says Putin deserves the honor for his efforts in brokering an agreement for Syria to hand over its chemical weapons under international control, a plan the group says helped [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[797,24,3701,4297,4296,141,2414],"class_list":["post-19025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-nobel","tag-obama","tag-peace","tag-prize","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-syria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19025"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19033,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19025\/revisions\/19033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}