Today Barack Obama received his Nobel Peace Prize in Norway for his accomplishments in the area of …..? Well, nothing actually. It was called anticipatory, in other words, he got the prize for what they hoped he would accomplish. There’s that hope thing again. I hope he stops burying this country in debt.
TR and Woodrow Wilson
In some puzzling way, President Obama’s acolytes like to make comparisons to two other presidents who won the Nobel Peace prize. But they actually accomplished something or introduced a concept that eventually prevailed. In 1905, Teddy Roosevelt successfully negotiated the end of the Russo-Japanese War, and that peace actually stuck. Woodrow Wilson created the League of Nations which, although it failed survive, it was the forerunner of the United Nations. Gentlemen, take a bow. As for President Obama, I guess we’ll have to keep holding our breath and hoping.
Damaged Goods
However noble, the Nobel Peace Prize might have been, it has been reduced to a sad joke. Let’s look at some past recipients:
- 2007 – Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Al Gore won the Peace prize for his deeply flawed documentary, which by the way two members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have called for him to return the Oscars he won for the same film. He didn’t win the Nobel Prize in Physics or Chemistry. Meanwhile the IPCC is embroiled in the midst of Climategate. Who lost out to these two? A woman who smuggled approximately 2,500 Jews, mostly small children, out of the Warsaw ghetto before the Nazi’s could exterminate them.
- 2005 – Mohamed El Baradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way” . While investigating Iran El Baradei “opposed the publication of a secret report generated by his own agency, one which indicated Iran was using its civilian program as a cover to make weapons. And why did he oppose publication?” {more} Do you feel blissfully peaceful now when you ponder Iran?
- 2002 – Jimmy Carter – “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development”. Well he must have gotten tired as he mused about how any opposition to President Obama’s policies being racially motivated for the most part.
- 2001 – The United Nations and Kofi Annan – for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world. It seems they wanted to wait until the UN was nearly irrelevant in world affairs and Kofi Annan’s son was ripping off the UN’s Oil for Food program. Hmmm, that must have come from the “better organized” part.
- 1994 – Yassir Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin – for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East. How’s that working out?
Notably Absent
So where are the Nobel Peace prizes for Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, for ending the Cold War without firing a shot? That wasn’t just peaceful that was miraculous. But then again, they were conservatives and therefore they don’t qualify for the Nobel Peace Prize.
