Friday, October 9, 2009

The missing Nobel prize

From a Tom DiLorenzo post on the Lew Rockwell blog:
So Obama joins Woodrow Wilson in the pantheon of American presidents who have won the Nobel Peace Prize (Wilson won it in 1919). I learned this morning that nominations for the prize had to be in by Feb. 20, about one month after Obama was inaugurated. That means that the prize went for his rhetoric during the campaign, not anything he could have actually accomplished. As I recall, his two most memorable foreign policy pronouncements during the campaign were 1) advocating that the U.S. bomb Pakistan; and 2) escalating the war in Afghanistan. He did order the murder of some people in Pakistan by bombardment shortly after taking office. I’m still surprised, though, that he won the prize after killing so few people. Usually, one must be a major league murderer like a Wilson or a Teddy Roosevelt to win such a prize.
Who would be the recipient of a Nobel prize if the committee decided to award one for the best warmongering? Might Obama walk away with both awards? Perhaps American presidents would be excluded from the category of warmongering since it is part of their job as the world's cop. The path to world peace is perpetual war.

Incidentally, Adolf Hitler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1939, but the nomination was shortly withdrawn. Too bad for Hitler's Nobel credits that his aggression couldn't be packaged more diplomatically.

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