The Nobel Peace Prize has been a joke, a travesty, a mockery of the intent for so many years, it comes as no real surprise that the current winner is someone who appears to have accomplished only one thing that could possible put him anywhere near contention: winning one election (the Senate doesn't count as he got private divorce records released about his opponent so the last minute replacement Republican candidate, Alan Keyes, had no time to mount a real campaign, or any real chance).
My first real notice of this was when I discovered that Le Duc Tho, who co-led the North Vietnamese Military, was a winner (he refused, as his country wasn't communist yet, oops, I mean "wasn't at peace.") Of course, as an American, it struck me funny that the loser of the Cold War, Mikhail Gorbachev, won it in 1990, and that Yasser Arafat co-winning in 1994 with two men (and their country) he spent his entire life trying to wipe from the Earth is a joke.
2001 was a banner year for the Nobel award: The UN and its Secretary General, Kofi Annan. Guess the oil-for-food scandal didn't get in the way of the peacemaking. Obviously, given my political and philosophical stance, it's no surprise that I laughed at both Jimmy Carter and Al Gore's wins.
Sandwiched in between these are many that really have worked for peace, often by working for democracy in horrible, despotic situations at great personal sacrifice, like several of those that lost to our current President. Hmmm.
This is a different joke that those crazy choices above, though. It's an insult to those that have truly worked for Peace all their lives, those that have died for the cause, no matter even if sometimes it was horribly misguided and skewed from a leftish, utopian-hoping unrealistic perspective. So I say, shame on the Nobel Peace Prize committee. Shame on you.
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