Obama's first year.

• Author: Wright, Tim
• Position: Letter to the editor

Howard Zinn's criticism of the Norwegian Nobel Committee is justified ("The Nobel's Feeble Gesture," December issue). President Obama is hardly a worthy recipient of the peace prize, given his failure to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. But whether he deserves it or not is largely a moot point now. The question we should be asking is, what leverage might it provide the progressive movement?

At every opportunity, we must remind Obama that this prize was given to him not for anything great he had achieved, but for the important promises he had made. People everywhere--including all the way down under, in Australia--expect that they will be fulfilled.

Tim Wright

Melbourne, Australia

In the 1970s, my father dropped his subscription to The Progressive because he tired of its constant carping that Jimmy Carter did not meet The Progressive purity test. He wondered, when all was said and done, if the editors were happier under the first Reagan terra than they would have been under the second Carter term that did not come to pass.

One generation later, I am disheartened by the tone of the writers and readers of The Progressive as we once again eat our own. President Obama is somehow denounced as a false prophet because he cannot move quickly enough while facing a ruthless and disloyal partisan opposition.

Recently, many progressives and commentators laughed up their sleeves regarding the new conservative purity test the RNC was mulling over.

How much smarter are we?

Randall Schroeder

Big Rapids, Michigan

I will not be renewing my subscription to The Progressive .

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