Pacific Views

Of course, the Nobel Committee considers all nominees but it's not like the Academy Awards. And whilst you may disapprove of some of their choices, they'll never give the award to the instigator of a war. They've tried awarding political agents who where belligerents, and therefore the only plausible principles in a peace process--logic appears to be that, hateful as Kissinger was to opponents of the Vietnam War, the politcal system had put him at its apex, and therefore he alone was capable of (a) gaining control of the machinery of state and (b) defeating the hawks therein.

Theodore Roosevelt, instigator of the Spanish American War, won the NPP in 1905 for negotiating the Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japanese War (orders of magnitude larger and deadlier than the former). Sean MacBride, co-instigator of the Irish Civil War (1921-1922), won the NPP for co-founding Amnesty Int'l and work on the European Convention for Human Rights (NPP, 1974; Lenin Prize of USSR, 1977); Arafat shared the '94 prize with Shimon Peres and Ritzak Rabin (an explosively controversial decision on all sides, but everyone agrees that they were belligerants in a war begun long before any of them were born); ditto, Menachim Begin and Anwar as-Sadat (1978). IMO the absolute least worthy candidate of all time was not Kissinger, but T. Woodrow Wilson, a flaming flaming flaming racist who implemented Jim Crow in the federal government and went MUCH further than any other American leader to liquidate civil liberties.

But, even WW did not instigate the war he was credited with ending.

we think it might be far more appropriate to nominate dubya for the *IgNobel* peace prize (see this webpage). he'd fit really well into a list of past honorees that included the prime ministers of india & pakistan after both countries exploded nuclear weapons in the same year ....

oops. the url for the IgNobels didn't work. let's try again:

http://www.improb.com/ig/ig-top.html

Emma has a feature at Notes on the Atrocities called Satire Friday. You might want to check what date this was posted.

Thanks, Al-Muhajabah. I had wondered why I hadn't heard about this story earlier.

I don't think we need worry about this. The Norwegians may kill whales, making them an unusual choice to award the peace prize, but they're not crazy (except for that Kissinger thing!).

Why not give the Swedes a good laugh?