Yeah. I heard it from The Onion yesterday. My outrage was so deep that instead of feeling anger, I felt a black, vacuous place create itself around my innards, and I quickly repressed even the thought until popping into LJ just now. So troubling -- like a violent crime against one's person -- that I truly had displaced the idea from my reality immediately upon learning it. Goddamnit.
When I first hear this I was totally outraged, but after reading into it I was a little less so. Bush and Blair were nominated last year for the War on Terror as well, which to me destroys the credibility of the peace prize. Any member of a world parliament/cabinet can nominate someone, so obviously it's going to covort into a big international buddy system. The fact that it took someone from Norway to make the nomination says something weakly against it. But I think the best that comes out of this is that we realize the peace prize isn't what we thought it was as kids.
Wait...but they didn't win it last year, either. And what are the chances they would this year?
I don't see why one or two of thousands of people with the power to make a nomination and who do so unwisely means the peace prize has no significance anymore. Its not exactly like the committee can deny a nomination.
I just read this as "that's really stupid" of the person who nominated them. If they actually won, then you'd see me here, along with the rest of the world, renouncing the award.
If anything I'm thankful that even with all the international attention to the nomination and the history of threats and coercion from Bush about this war they will still be in a position to deny the award.
(then again, we've still yet to see who actually wins)
Winning really isn't the point, my perspective on all of this is basically that for years I had presumed the Nobel Peace prize to be this pristine thing doled out by people who champion compassion above all else. The reality is that historically it has gone to some people with some pretty vicious agendas; I mentioned two in my post Henry Kissinger and Yasser Arafat. Kissinger especially, but there are other winners that seem to indicate that this prize is ocassionally given as scooby snack to people who decided to have fewer people gunned down this morning when they woke up. I'm not saying the prize is totally invalidated or given to the likes of Charles Manson when he's on his meds, but I am saying that this incident has given me cause to read up on the prize and decide that it isn't as pristine as I thought it was.
Hearing something like this makes one thing that some people didn't realize the word 'peace' was in the Nobel Peace Prize. Yeah, I really do think that Bush is on the same level for ultimate compassion as the Dalai Lama and Mother Theresa, as he licks his chops and turns his all knowing eyes toward Korea, ready to pronounce his verdict as high ruler of all that is true and good and noble.
I have difficulty saying what would have been the best action about Iraq, although I would've liked it to go differently than it did, but I'm sure we can all agree that our Mr. President was oozing compassion and caling out to the world to get together and hold hands as he gave the 'green light' to invade.
yes, oh my fucking god!