Obama's 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Was Regrettable, Ex-Secretary of Committee

Giving President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 was a mistake, said the former secretary of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, Geir Lundestad. It didn't produce the results the panel had hoped for, according to CNN.

In his memoir published Thursday, Geir Lundestad said the main reason Obama had been awarded had been due to his ambitious nuclear disarmament goals that he had drawn out during his drive. However, it never happened.

"[We] thought it would strengthen Obama and it didn't have this effect," he told the Associated Press in an interview. "Even many of Obama's supporters believed that the prize was a mistake. In that sense the committee didn't achieve what it had hoped for."

In 2008, Obama had focused on world peace and nuclear disarmament. "It's time to send a clear message to the world: America seeks a world with no nuclear weapons."

"As long as nuclear weapons exist, we'll retain a strong deterrent. But we'll make the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons a central element in our nuclear policy," then-Senator Obama added.

However, as a President, Obama has bombed seven countries, which exceeds the record of the former President George W. Bush. He has also escalated a "controversial drone program" that has led to the death of thousands of Middle Eastern civilians and extra-judicial deaths of multiple American citizens.

Moreover, in 2014, he started to revamp America's nuclear arsenal, allocating over $1 trillion dollars for nuclear upgrades over the next ten years.

Obama had been shocked that he had been given the award, and had even toyed with skipping the official reception ceremony in Norway's capital, Oslo, according to the BBC.

However, his staff, while looking at whether anyone had ever refused it, found that it had been too rare, such as when a government prevented a dissident from attending.

"In the White House they quickly realized that they needed to travel to Oslo," Lundestad wrote, according to hngn.