Category ►►► Nobel Nitwittery

October 9, 2009

The Nobel Cheese Prize

The Norwegian Nobel Committee insists that the Nobel Peace Prize is not "politicized," even in the wake of today's award to President Barack H. Obama, essentially for having the "potential" to be the most internationalist, anti-American, defeat-and-retreat president in history. The chairman of the committee, Thorbjorn Jagland, actually admitted the pick this year was intended to bring about a desired political result:

“It’s important for the committee to recognize people who are struggling and idealistic,” Mr. Jagland said in an interview, “but we cannot do that every year. We must from time to time go into the realm of realpolitik.

But liberals and lefties still insist the prize is meaningful, that it's not hopelessly debased and discredited because of its extraordinary embrace of leftism. They especially insist it's not partisan.

All right, so let's investigate the winners' political leanings; to trim the field to something manageable, let's restrict inquiry to American winners who were politicians, or who won the award for primarily political activity (as opposed to, say, Jody Williams and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, winners in 1997): Among all American politicians who have won the Nobel Peace Prize, how many were Republicans and how many Democrats?

At first blush, it appears fairly even: six Republicans and nine Democrats. But what fascinates is the distribution of those wins.

Here is a table of American political recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. To make things easier, I have colored the Republican recipients' rows reddish and the Democrats' bluish:

 

American political Nobel Peace Prize recipients

Recipient: Red for Republican, blue for Democrat	Year
President Theodore Roosevelt	1906
Secretary of State Elihu Root	1912
President Woodrow Wilson	1919
Vice President Charles G. Dawes	1925
Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg	1929
Republican Vice Presidential Nominee Nicholas M. Butler	1931
Secretary of State Cordell Hull	1945
Diplomat Ralph Bunche	1950
Secretary of State, Defense George Marshall	1953
Chemist Linus Pauling (won for campaign against nuclear testing)	1962
Rev. Martin Luther King, jr (won for campaign against Jim Crow laws)	1964
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger	1973
President Jimmy Carter	2002
Vice President Al Gore	2007
President Barack H. Obama	2009

 

The point that jumps right out is the divide -- the chasm -- between those prizes awarded to American politicos up through 1931 and those from 1945 onward... which is to say, before the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (early prizes) and after World War II ended (late prizes).

There were six early prizes, and all but one went to Republicans. But this perfectly matches the party affiliation of the presidency -- six presidents during that period, only one (Wilson) a Democrat.

The early prizes simply reflect the fact that political Nobel Peace Prizes during this period were typically awarded for administrative initiatives. For example, TR received his for negotiating the Treaty of Portsmouth, ending the Russo-Japanese war; while Elihu Root got his for a series of negotiations, arbitrations, and treaties while serving as Roosevelt's Secretary of State. Thus it's no surprise that a recipient's political party would correspond to that of the president who appointed him.

But look at what happened after World War II: Among the nine late prizes, only one went to a Republican, Henry Kissinger -- in stark contrast to the presidencies during the post-war period, six Republicans and six Democrats. And the only Republican to receive the award during that time had to share it with Vietnamese Communist Party mass murderer Le Duc Tho.

More telling, Kissinger won the prize for brokering a "peace treaty" that overthew the spectacular victory in Vietnam, won by Gen. Creighton Abrams after he replaced Gen. William Westmoreland, and substituted an even more stunning and inexplicable defeat, which owed more to Richard Nixon's domestic troubles than any military losses. Thus the lone award to a Republican was for betraying the conservative principle of peace through strength.

Since the end of WWII, conservatives have been utterly shut out of the Peace Prize sweepstakes:

• Eisenhower did not win for winning the war against totalitarian fascism and Naziism;
• Ronald Reagan did not win for winning the Cold war and liberating tens of millions from Communist tyranny (neither did Pope John Paul II, but I'm still talking about Americans);
• George W. Bush did not win it for removing two of the three most violent, sexist, and repressive regimes in the ummah.

But Jimmy Carter (!) won the Prize for relentlessly wandering the globe, preaching appeasement of evil and bullying beleaguered Israel into signing fraudulent "peace accords" with the Palestinians, who never had any intention of honoring them.

And now Barack H. Obama has won it for... well, to be perfectly blunt, for being the first black President of the United States. He certainly had accomplished nothing else when he was nominated for the Prize, less than two weeks after being sworn in as president; and arguably, he hasn't done anything more since then to bring about actual peace anywhere. Militarily, he has continued the (victorious) Bush policy in Iraq -- and now advocates continuing the (failing) Bush strategy in Afghanistan. Some peacemaker!

I believe the point is made: Prior to the Great Depression and the huge boost it gave to the stature of international socialism, the Nobel Peace Prize was a meaningful recognition of attempts to bring about world peace -- even misguided attempts, such as Woodrow Wilson's establishment of the League of Nations (which the United States never even joined, so flawed was the design).

But after global depression and war, the Prize became a political football awarded to whomever seemed to best articulate the leftist view of politics and the advance of world socialism... whether or not his accomplishments had anything to do with fostering peace; indeed, whether or not he had any accomplishments at all. That it has remained, as today's announcement makes clear. It's unlikely that anyone associated with conservative principles will ever again win -- and certainly not for upholding those principles.

The record screams for itself.

Cross-posted to Hot Air's rogues' gallery...

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 9, 2009, at the time of 5:53 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Imagine There's No Peace Prize, It's Easy If You Try

So at the very moment that President Barack H. Obama convenes his "war council" to decide whether to accept Gen. Stanley McChrystal's recommendation to expand operations in Afghanistan -- changing to a counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy and adding 40,000 additional troops to the war effort -- the Norwegian Nobel Committee announces that the president, who has fewer peace-related accomplishments (or accomplishments of any sort) and done less for the advancement of peace than possibly any previous recipient, has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

Could the two be connected? Is the committee attempting to nudge Obama towards rejecting McChrystal's strategy in favor of withdrawal and appeasement of the Taliban? It could even be a direct bribe, since it includes more than a million dollars in prize money.

Nah; I'm sure there's no connection and no bribery. It's just another one of those amazing coincidences that seem to swirl around liberals and leftists.

(A reporter at the White House press briefing noted that Obama was nominated twelve days after being inaugurated. Now there's an accomplishment!)

Cross-posted on Hot Air's rogues' gallery...

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 9, 2009, at the time of 12:48 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 12, 2007

Le Duc Tho, Jimmy Carter, Yassir Arafat - and Al Gore?

As you've all no doubt seen, the whispers turned out to be correct, for a change: Algore, in conjunction with the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, has won the Nobel "Peace" prize.

Now perhaps someone can explain to me what on earth global warming has to do with "world peace"...

Oh, wait; here we go:

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said global warming, "may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth's resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world's most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states."

Well! Who can argue with that?

Drudge has already linked to speculation that this will propel Algore into the presidential race, a possibility that Friend Lee and I were kicking around recently:

All of Gore's body language and every answer he has given to questions about running have been to discourage the idea that he would become a candidate. But for whatever reason, he has declined to make a definitive statement taking himself out of the running.

Only he knows the reason for that. Is it just to play with the press and the political community and then revel in the absurdity of all the speculation or is it because he actually believes there might be a set of events that would make is possible for him to run and win?

I assume that if Gore does decide to run, his entire campaign will more or less revolve around implementing some draconian, Luddite shutdown of industry in order to appease the Globaloney gods. Will that, combined with his status as the angriest dog in the world, be enough to knock Hillary off her pedestal of clay?

I have long believed that Hillary Clinton's only political asset is the "aura of inevitability" that surrounds her like a foggy, opalescent soap bubble; a serious campaign kafuffle could puncture it. Within the soap bubble, an old and familiar dust-devil still swirls around Sen. Clinton (D-Carpetbag, 95%), like the cloud constantly following around Pig Pen in Peanuts: a curious Clintonian cacophany of coincidence, inside of which weird things just... happen.

• A thousand dollars of aimless investment miraculously turns into $100,000 worth of cattle futures;
• Billing records vanish, then just as mysteriously reappear after the statute of limitations has run;
• The Attorney General of the United States abruptly cannot bear to appoint an independent counsel to investigate even the most well-founded allegations of gunpowder, treason, and plot;
• Documents disappear from the National Archives and are destroyed, and the miscreant -- former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger -- not only gets off with a slap on the well-padded wrist, he ends up advising Hillary on national-security issues. Son of a gun! Wonder how that just happened to... happen?

None of these incidents has any real cause, and certainly nobody is to blame; they're just -- amazing coincidences. Nobody in the elite media would dream of questioning the First Lady or the senator (now) from the great state of New York; and like Mary Poppins, she never explains anything.

But this is possible only because of the magic bubbles that others have always lent her, hiding the cacophany of coincidence: First, President Bill prevented those prying eyes, for his own reasons, by coarse and vulgar threats. Then she was shielded by being the senior junior senator from New York, with all the political power that carries.

And now, the aura of her inevitable presidency -- created by the press, the Democratic primary voters, and even the other Democratic candidates -- shields her from questions she shies from answering and arguments she shrinks from debating, even during a so-called "candidates' debate."

But now, if Mr. Inconvenient Truth decides to ride his Oscar, Emmy, and Nobel steed into the Democratic primary (campaign slogan: "Re-elect Al Gore!"), how long before his rusty sword lances that boil of inevitability? There is real bad blood between the Clintons (especially Hillary) and the Gores (especially Tipper -- mee-ow!); I think the latter believe that all the money, political muscle, and attention lavished upon the former played a major role in the latter winding up unemployed and overweight in 2001. All the king's Carvilles and all the king's Begalas were so busy getting Hillary the Roman toga she was promised, in exchange for not divorcing Bill, that they were unavailable to help push Vice President Gore over the top.

I believe there is at least a 50% chance that the Democratic race for the nomination is about to go from Clintonian coronation to globaloney Gore-gasm in sixty seconds. If Rantin' Al Gore decides to throw his head into the ring, then all bets are off.

And who knows? I might even pull an incredible victory out of a prediction I had long since written off as failed. And that would make it all worthwhile.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 12, 2007, at the time of 3:50 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

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