Rogues Gallery

By now you have heard that the President has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Even Saturday Night Live, hardly a bastion of conservative thought, mocked the award. The British seem to think that this is a joke as do many Americans. Here are headlines from the Times Online, a British newspaper's online version.

• Prize Fools - "The Nobel committee’s award to President Obama demeans the peace prize, appears politically partisan and should embarrass the White House."
• Barack Obama's peace prize starts a fight - "Gasps echoed through the Nobel Hall in Osloas Barack Obama was unveiled as the winner of the 2009 Peace Prize, sparking a global outpouring of incredulity"

Those are the rational reactions that reasonable people the world over had when the President was awarded, what is arguably the most prestigious prize in the world, without doing anything to earn it.

But this isn't the first time that the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded with questionable reasoning:

• Al Gore - the 2007 winner was honored for his work on global warming (see previous posts here, here, and here). What does global warming, even if you believe in it, have to do with peace?
• Mohamed ElBaradei - the 2005 winner was honored for his work leading the UN's atomic agency. Given the current situations in North Korea and Iran, his competence has to be called into question. His award was apparently the result of opposing President Bush.
• Jimmy Carter - the 2002 winner was apparently honored for opposing President Bush or maybe it was for his anti-Semitism.
• Kofi Annnan - the former Secretary General of the United Nations won in 2001. This is the man who presided over what was arguably the most corrupt iteration of the UN in its history. This is the same anti-Semite who accused Israel of deliberately bombing a UN observer outpost.
• Yasser Arafat - in 1994 this murderer of Olympic athletes, hijacker of airliners, school bomber, and instigator of the gunning down of passengers in airline terminals at Rome, Vienna and elsewhere was the Nobel's committee for its leading peacemaker.

This award has become a joke after the Nobel committee has let politics ruin it. Sometimes I just hate politics. By the way the following individuals were nominated but not awarded the prize in deference to the President this year.

1. Morgan Tsvangirai, the Zimbabwean Prime Minister, has been tortured and imprisoned in defence of democracy.
2. Denis Muwege, a physician in war-torn Congo, who has opened a clinic to help victims of rape.
3. Senator Piedad Córdoba has mediated in Colombia’s civil war.
4. Greg Mortenson, American US army medic, builds schools for Afghan girls in places where warlords and drug dealers kill people for trying.

Any one of these individuals would have been a better choice. Best of all the choice would have been based on actual achievements.

Hat tip to Mac McBride.