February 4, 2002

1:17 PM

Bush and Blair Nominated for 2002 Peace Prize''The background for my nomination is their decisive action against terrorism, something I believe in the future will be the greatest threat to peace,'' Nesvik said. ''Unfortunately, sometimes ... you have to use force to secure peace.'' ---Harald Tom Nesvik
posted by ezfowler (25 comments total)

OK, so... I'm the first to stand up and say the invasion of Afghanistan was warranted, just, etc. But this is fairly ridiculous. 'war is peace' indeed.
posted by louie at 1:32 PM on February 4, 2002

I survived the Reagan years with my sanity mostly intact. . . .I suppose I'll survive the Dubya years. . . .*sigh*
posted by Danf at 1:35 PM on February 4, 2002

Next up: Ashcroft garners 'Civil Libertarian of the Year' honors from the Cato Institute for "...doing so much to bring public awareness of individual freedoms to the fore in recent months..."

The WOT (War on Terrorism)...Warranted: yes. Correctly propagated: maybe. An act of peace: hardly.

posted by umberto at 1:39 PM on February 4, 2002

Richard Nixon was nominated for a Peace Prize also, which earned one of Esquire's "Dubious Achievement" awards for that year. Their caption was "so that's the sound of one hand clapping..."
posted by jfuller at 1:41 PM on February 4, 2002

And Enron hits the top of Fortune Magazines "best places to work" list.
posted by yesster at 1:45 PM on February 4, 2002

That's a pretty good piece of satire. A bit heavy-handed I think, but I think it got it's point through...

oh. wait.
posted by fuq at 1:50 PM on February 4, 2002

You know he won't stand a chance when the previous "winners" include moral giants such as Arafat.
posted by dagny at 1:52 PM on February 4, 2002

I used to very impressed when someone was a noble winner, but in the last few years I have come to see the noble prize as somewhat less of an honor and more of a gold star or an at a boy kind of thing. Just kind of a non-entity.
posted by bjgeiger at 2:00 PM on February 4, 2002

I nominate Mike Tyson, Sportsman of the Year, then.
posted by tsarfan at 2:13 PM on February 4, 2002

Where's Drudge's Pulitzer?
posted by tsarfan at 2:14 PM on February 4, 2002

Old farts like me recall that we used to have something in our govt called The War Department. Then we changed it to what is now: The Defense Department.
posted by Postroad at 2:17 PM on February 4, 2002

"Political satire became obsolete when thay gave Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize."

-Tom Lehrer

Hmm... Can something be rendered even more obsolete?
posted by Ty Webb at 2:17 PM on February 4, 2002

Ah, we've come full circle. I don't know how true it is, this could just be one of those feel-good modern legends, but Alfred Nobel instituted the Peace Prize to assuage his guilt over creating TNT, which he intended for making demolition in the railroad (and like biz) safer. Of course, people found other, nastier uses for his invention.

I agree that sometimes force is needed to secure peace, but if this was what Nobel had in mind, he would have had no guilt to pay for.

This is ridiculous.
posted by meep at 3:45 PM on February 4, 2002

I meant he invented dynamite, not TNT.
posted by meep at 3:46 PM on February 4, 2002

Um, you guys are aware that thousands of different people are allowed to nominate anyone they choose for the NPP, that many of those people are no more qualified to make such a decision than any of us would be (law school professors?!), and that this is nothing but one of a zillion nominations that will be made ... right?

Well, maybe you weren't.

posted by aaron at 4:01 PM on February 4, 2002

Nobel Peace Prize Winners 2001-1901
Check out past winners; Whoever won WW2 isn't on the list.
posted by Mack Twain at 4:45 PM on February 4, 2002

Sure, now that as many Afgan civ's as people killed in the WTC attack are likely dead, we can call it even, right? Peace all around. What crap.
posted by holycola at 5:23 PM on February 4, 2002

If GWB gets on the same list as Mother Theresa, Mandela, MLK Jr., and the Dalai Lama, the Nobel Prize will be about as meaningful as the Bloggies.
posted by goto11 at 7:03 PM on February 4, 2002

The nominator in this case is a member of Norway's extreme right, anti-immigration Progress Party, but in 1998 three politicians from the same party nominated Bill Clinton for the prize. It seems like they want to endear themselves to the POTUS, any POTUS.
posted by liam at 8:15 PM on February 4, 2002

Scott, are you implying the Bloggies are somehow unimportant? I mean, come on.
posted by chicobangs at 10:37 PM on February 4, 2002

I add this quote, because my friend was just discussing translating Vegetius to pass the time. Evidently, he's rather bored ;-)

"He who desires peace, let him prepare for war."
posted by alethe at 11:38 PM on February 4, 2002

does Norway have an extreme right?
posted by brucec at 4:19 AM on February 5, 2002

Whoever won WW2 isn't on the [Peace Prize] list.

No, but one of them did win the Literature Nobel.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 9:17 AM on February 5, 2002

Ironically, there was some warblogger who made a post several weeks or months ago (damn that Daypop for only indexing for a month), openly calling for Bush to be given the NPP this year. After all, he has seen to it that one of the most violent, oppressive countries on Earth has been given peace and freedom, and decimated an organization dedicated to spreading pure violence and death to the entire civilized world. Kofi Annan, meanwhile, spends all his timing talking about what a wonderful world this would be if everyone would stop fighting and have a lot more meetings. (And that is precisely what he - and the UN as a whole, not just himself - were awarded the prize for last year: "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world."

As long as they're giving out awards like that - and to Yassir Arafat, to anyone who devotes their lives to making blindly obvious proclamations such as "nuclear war is BAD!", etc - the NPPs are obviously going to be little more than a joke. They're not really about achieving peace, they're merely about celebrating those that best adhere to EU leftist political dogma, particularly in the last decade or so.

Anyway, you don't have to worry about Bush or Blair EVER winning the NPP. As Snopes has noted: "Neither Bush nor Blair is likely to win. Bishop Gunnar Staalsett, a member of the secretive five-member Nobel committee which elects the winner, has spoken out against the U.S.-led and British-backed strikes on Afghanistan."

posted by aaron at 6:05 PM on February 5, 2002

Nice catch, DevilsAdvocate...Sir Winston was a great man and a great writer.
posted by Mack Twain at 11:20 AM on February 6, 2002