Peace Prize for EU: Bold Choice? Bad Choice?
The awarding of the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union is a real head-scratcher.
The Nobel Committee says the EU has, over the years, “contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.” As evidence, the panel asks us to consider how former foes France and Germany are now peaceful allies, and how once-fascist Spain and Portugal are now democracies.
True enough, but that’s not the complete picture. What about what’s happening right now in the Eurozone, where bully Germany (the EU’s strongest country) and its neoliberal allies “seem determined to strip periphery countries of sovereignty and put not just their economies but their societies on the rack in a failing plan to save the banks of the surplus countries”? That, apparently, never entered the Nobel panel’s considerations.
Perhaps the best that can be said about this year’s puzzling choice is that it could have been worse. Truth be told, the Nobel Peace Prize has certainly had less deserving recipients.
Henry Kissinger, after all, was awarded the prize jointly with Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho for a ceasefire in that Asian country’s sad military conflict. It’s worth noting that the United States, of which Kissinger was Secretary of State, did not withdraw its troops from Vietnam until much later, so one can’t truthfully say the ceasefire achieved peace.
Moreover, Kissinger is a criminal thug who (among many crimes) enabled the kidnapping and murder of a Chilean general in 1970, funded the carnage-filled overthrow of a democratically elected Chilean government in 1973 (the year Kissinger was awarded the Peace Prize!), looked away in 1975 as Indonesia invaded and began mass killings and unlawful occupation in East Timor, and was behind the U.S.’s secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos – and that’s only a partial list of the power-mad sociopath’s many offenses against humanity.
Mother Teresa got the prize in 1979 as a reflection of much of the world’s enduring affection for the “saintly” Albanian-born nun who headed the Missionaries of Charity in India. A few observers dared to question the choice when it was made, and subsequent events confirmed that she was indeed an abysmal pick. Two years later, for instance, she accepted a “Legion of Honor” award from notorious Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier; a photograph of her with Duvalier and his wife was then used repeatedly to boost the murdering thug’s esteem. She also wrote a letter in support of U.S. savings-and-loan swindler Charles Keating to plead with a judge for leniency in his sentencing – plus, she took a lot of ill-gotten money from Keating. And there’s much more, including her charity’s somewhat shady financials, and its fondness for letting sick people suffer for God.
Of course, the current occupant of the White House is another one of the Nobel committee’s worst choices. The 2009 prize could kindly be described as representing the hope that many had for Barack Obama as a President for peace. He hadn’t really done anything to deserve the prize other than make speeches and promises. Afterwards, he expanded the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, kept Guantanamo open, ordered lethal drone strikes in Pakistan and other countries, created an ongoing “kill list,” and did much more that could not be described as Peace Prize-worthy.
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For more on Kissinger, read Hitchens’s The Trial of Henry Kissinger.
For more about Mother T, see Hitchens’s Missionary Position.
For more on Obama’s pro-war record, read alternative press and websites.
Yes, the Nobel Peace Prize has a long history of contradictory strangeness. Kissinger being one of a few strange ones. Political joker Tom Lehrer once said that “political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Prize”
Elihu Root got the prize in 1912 but he was the author of U.S. policy in the Philippines following the Spanish-American War, a dark chapter in the history of American imperialism. The brutal American occupation there resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos—some estimates range as high as 1.5 million—between 1899 and 1902. A poem, “In the Philippines”, was written by Katharine Lee Bates after she had personally witnessed some of that cruelty. Later she became famous for her work “America the Beautiful”
Yes.. sometimes no reasoning or logic behind it. But after all … what can you expect about a Peace Prize set up by the man that invented dynamite?
E U???? With all of them kootoowing to IMF? WTF?? As you say David, Germany’s govt is so tangled in fiscal concern … As *on the side* as giving it to Obama. What are they thinking? Or are they simply counting? “Abysmal pick” is so true. Good stuff DAvid. ~!
Perhaps we’re all misreading the motives of the Nobel selections. Seems to me the prize is awarded with tongue-in-cheek irony. Looked at through that filter, the choices make a little more sense.
Ha ha! Hadn’t thought of it that way, Deb.