Clearly the judges of the Nobel Peace Prize don’t get it. What exactly did President Barack Obama do to deserve the Nobel prize?

They obviously don’t understand their own guidelines. To quote from "‘He got the prize for what he has done’" (article, Oct. 15), "[T]he prize should go to the person who has contributed most to the development of peace in the previous year."

To say "Who has done more for that than Barack Obama?" is a little disingenuous.

During 2008, Obama was campaigning for the presidency. He wasn’t making policy or signing peace treaties; he was campaigning. The deadline for nomination was Feb. 1, when he had been in office less than two weeks. Obama’s efforts to heal the division between the West and the Muslim world (read "give in to terrorists") and do away with a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe (read "abandoned our allies") were done after Feb. 1, thereby being eligible for next year, at the earliest.

In response to [left-wing Norwegian politician and Nobel prize panel member] Aagot Valle’s comment "Don’t you think that comments like that patronize Obama? Where do these people come from?" I can say that no, these comments do not patronize Obama, however it does cast doubt on the intelligence of the judges and we come from a country where you actually earn something before you can say that you deserve it.

Staff Sgt. Alfred S. MeyerRamstein Air Base, Germany

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