Nobel Peace Prize 2025: María Corina Machado

As an Ethiopian man, I view this new Nobel Peace Prize with profound skepticism, a feeling rooted entirely in the disastrous outcome of Abiy Ahmed's utterly undeserved award. The premature praise he received for peace-making quickly evaporated, leading instead to a catastrophic war and the fragmentation of our nation. His prize has been followed by widespread conflict, massive displacement, and an alarming return to authoritarian rule. For us, the entire Nobel Peace Prize now feels meaningless, a hollow symbol given its failure to prevent—or perhaps its role in emboldening—such terrible suffering in Ethiopia

For me, that skepticism began when Obama received the award. To his credit, he did not think he deserved it. But I have never viewed it in the same light since.

Barack Obama is the only two-term President in US history to be at war every day of his Presidency. The only one.

Did Obama start the Afghanistan war? or the Iraq war?

Yes, he could exit those countries hastily. But that has its own cost. Getting in wars is the easy part. Getting out of one is the hard part. Ask Putin who went into Ukraine on a 3-day limited special military operation.

Bush Jr. got us into multiple wars and unlike his father did not limit the scope of them. His father did get us into a war with Iraq but was smart enough to keep it limited in scope.

Also, under Obama, the "wars" were not real wars like the Russia/Ukraine war where both sides are losing hundreds of people every week. But they were more like peacekeeping operations that occasionally ran into skirmishes.

Obama was very explicitly promising to get out of the middle east wars.

Of course it's hard, but if that's true, then why is he making those promises, or worse, why is he being given a peace award based on those promises?