AlleyCat
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On Tue, 22 Mar 2016 13:16:53 -0700 (PDT), Bret Cahill says...
> That explains why 80% of Nobel Laureates supported supported Obama.
And gave him a PEACE Prize BEFORE he slaughtered 1000's with drones and
military artillery.
Laureates Create Conflict of Their Own
Critics can spout a litany of reasons why a particular laureate falls
short of the award's prestige. Often they argue lack of achievement.
Sometimes they list uglier reasons. Honoring one person above others,
especially a polarizing figure, naturally engenders conflict. This is
the Nobel Peace Prize's second irony.
President Barack Obama belongs to the first category. Even ignoring the
two wars he was embroiled in when selected, the timing meant that his
nominations were submitted between two months before and two weeks after
his election [source: CNN]. Some people wouldn't eat a banana that
green.
Sometimes it's the achievement, not the laureate, that is too unripe.
When Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin were honored in 1994,
David Horovitz of the Financial Times said the honor was about "hopes of
peace rather than peace itself" [source: BBC]. Events bore him out.
Along similarly premature lines, North Vietnamese leader Le Duc Tho
invaded South Vietnam just two years after sharing the award with Henry
Kissinger in 1973.
Arafat and Kissinger also illustrate how laureates' checkered pasts
incite controversy. A Nobel Committee member resigned over Arafat's
selection, saying the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader
was "too tainted by violence, terror and torture" [source: BBC]. When
Kissinger received the award, musical satirist Tom Lehrer pronounced
satire "officially dead" [sources: Frost, Thompson].
Although the prize committee chooses laureates based on singular
accomplishments, the world tends to hold honorees to a higher standard.
Kofi Annan's shared prize with the United Nations in 2001 rekindled
criticism of their handling of Rwanda [source: Dallaire]. In 2004,
Wangari Maathai became the first female African laureate, and received a
thrashing for accusing scientists of creating HIV for biological warfare
[source: ABC/AFP]. Rigoberta Menchú Tum received the prize in 1992 for
casting light on the plight of Guatemalan indigenous peoples with her
memoirs, which some argue were false [source: Horowitz].
There is always a group, internationally or at home, that considers a
laureate a troublemaker -- or worse. Some would call Menachem Begin,
Yasser Arafat, Henry Kissinger, Nelson Mandela, Shimon Perez and the
fourteenth Dalai Lama terrorists, occupiers and/or war criminals.
However, had the prize committee been influenced by such criticism, it
might never have honored human rights activists like Albert Lutuli
(1960), Martin Luther King Jr. (1964), Andrei Sakharov (1975), Adolfo
Pérez Esquivel (1980), Aung San Suu Kyi (1991) or Liu Xiaobo (2010).
The fact that the committee did honor them is largely thanks to Carl von
Ossietzky. During the run-up to World War II, many opposed honoring the
anti-Nazi pacifist because it meant meddling in German internal affairs.
However, many of the same people who balked at honoring Ossietzky
supported Neville Chamberlain's nomination in 1938 for his appeasement
of Germany, which left Czechoslovakia defenseless and opened the door to
further Nazi aggression.
Now that's irony.