The Nobel's feeble gesture.

• Author: Zinn, Howard
• Position: It Seems to Me - Criticisms on Nobel peace prize recipients - Essay

I don't like to annoy my readers. Who else can I count on? There are not so many that I can afford to antagonize some of them. But sometimes it happens. In this case, it was all because I received a phone call from The Guardian of London informing me that Barack Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and wondering if I would write something brief in response to that news. I sat down and dashed something off. "Ah," you say, "dashed off," suggesting that I didn't think too much before I wrote it. True, but when I read afterward what I had said, I didn't want to change a word. The little piece was printed in The Guardian and reprinted on Common Dreams --thus reaching people both in Europe and in this country.

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I began getting responses, from both continents. Interestingly enough, the messages I got from abroad agreed vigorously with me.

The responses in this country were mixed, and enough of them showed annoyance, even anger, at what I said, for me to think: I must respond. At moments like that, I turn to Matt Rothschild and The Progressive to give me space. I guessed that The New York Times and CBS News would not be as welcoming.

So I will say here what I wrote for The Guardian , and then discuss the arguments made by critics of my piece. I do this not just because I think it will make an interesting exchange, but because I think that the issue of the prize raises a larger question: What is the role of a progressive--a progressive, a radical--in this two-party system?

So here is the original sin, and then my reaction to those who were as troubled by my little essay as I was by the action of the Nobel committee.

I was dismayed when I heard Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize. A shock, really, to think that a President carrying on two wars would be given a peace prize. Until I recalled that Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Henry Kissinger had all received Nobel peace prizes. The Nobel committee is famous for its superficial estimates--won over by rhetoric and by empty gestures--and for ignoring blatant violations of world peace.

Yes, Wilson gets credit for the League of Nations--that ineffectual body that did nothing to prevent war. But he had bombarded the Mexican coast, sent troops to occupy Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and brought the United States into the slaughterhouse of Europe in the First World War--surely among stupid and deadly wars at the top of the list.

Yes, Theodore Roosevelt brokered a...