The Nobel Peace Prize is a Joke
October 13th, 2009
“We do not admire the man of timid peace. ... When men fear work or fear righteous war, when women fear motherhood, they tremble on the brink of doom” - Nobel Prize Winner Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life, 1899
The Nobel Peace Prize has nothing to do with peace. It has been awarded to people who promoted war and murdered countless innocents, yet some of the greatest advocates of peace, like Ghandi and Dorothy Day, were never given one. Giving Barack Obama, a warmonger who has done absolutely nothing to create peace, a prize is only the latest case discrediting the prize.
The list of warmongers who have received Nobel peace prizes is long. Nobel winner Woodrow Wilson attacked 12 countries and used lies to justify bringing the U.S. into World War One. Cordell Hull, FDR's secretary of state, was given a Nobel Prize despite banning Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany from entering U.S. Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin were all awarded Nobel Peace Prizes despite a long history of using violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his Vietnamese counterpart Le Duc Tho were awarded a joint Nobel Peace Prize for the Vietnam Peace Accords in 1973, yet Kissinger broke the accords almost immediately after signing them. The South Vietnamese government resumed its attacks on the National Liberation Front and the U.S. resumed bombing North Vietnam; the war didn't end until 1975. Le Duc Tho refused to accept the award on the grounds that there was no peace in Vietnam. Kissinger was also behind the bombings of Cambodia and Laos, backed Indonesia's invasion of East Timor, played an important role in the 1973 CIA organized coup against the elected government in Chile, and was one of the organizers of Operation Condor, a campaign by the U.S. and several South American dictatorships to eliminate all dissidents from the region.
Thus far, Barack Obama has been as much of a warmonger as other Nobel winners. Shortly after taking office he ordered an additional 17,000 soldiers be sent to the Afghan war and he is currently considering sending more troops. He is continuing Bush's war in Iraq, his bombing of Pakistan, and the long standing U.S. support for Israel in its war with the Palestinians. The military budget has continued to increase under his administration.
The Nobel committee's justifications for awarding Obama the prize don't hold water. They cite his supposed work on behalf of nuclear non-proliferation, yet beyond rhetoric calling for the current nuclear powers to maintain a monopoly of nuclear weapons he hasn't done anything. As President of the nation with the most nuclear arms in the world he could substantially reduce the number of atomic weapons, but has not done so. They like his rhetoric about hope, but rhetoric is not the same as reality. Obama himself admitted he hasn't done anything to deserve the award, yet accepted it anyway. His recipient of the prize only makes its illegitimacy more obvious.