War is Peace!!! Bush/Blair Peace Prize???

[St_Hereticus]

Holy George Orwell, Batman!!!

Bush, Blair Nominated for Nobel Prize for Iraq War (http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2706011)

Why am I not surprised by this? :confused: :mad:

[Clancie]

Good point! (And what a mockery it would make of Nobel's intention!)

At least I felt better after reading this:
The director of the Nobel Institute where the five-member committee meets, said Simonsen's proposal would have to wait for the 2004 award because the deadline for nominations for 2003 passed on February 1.
So, hopefully, the whole thing was just politics without a chance in the world of ever happening.

[ssibal]

You are shocked by this? They are much more deserving of the prize than a previous winner (i.e. Arafat).

[schmdavi]

Thankfully, a nomination means near to nothing, you can check out the procedures at www.nobel.se (http://www.nobel.se) . A lot of people can nominate people for the Nobel Peace prize. Including every member of a governmental body from any country. I trust the Nobel comitee to weed out stupid nominations, such as this one.

[arcticpenguin]

Originally posted by schmdavi
Thankfully, a nomination means near to nothing, you can check out the procedures at www.nobel.se (http://www.nobel.se) . A lot of people can nominate people for the Nobel Peace prize. Including every member of a governmental body from any country. I trust the Nobel comitee to weed out stupid nominations, such as this one.
Not that the committee is above politics itself...

[schmdavi]

No, AP, it really isnt. But if they would really award the prize to Bush/Blair or even consider them seriously, they would lose any credibility.

Only time can vindicate the actions Bush/Blair have taken. If it turns out, lets say in 5 years or so, that they really ameliorated the situation in the region, not only through the war, but foremost through what they have done afterwards, then the Nobel price would be justified.

But at this time, its just stupid to nominate them

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by schmdavi
No, AP, it really isnt. But if they would really award the prize to Bush/Blair or even consider them seriously, they would lose any credibility.

Only time can vindicate the actions Bush/Blair have taken. If it turns out, lets say in 5 years or so, that they really ameliorated the situation in the region, not only through the war, but foremost through what they have done afterwards, then the Nobel price would be justified.

But at this time, its just stupid to nominate them

Henry Kissinger won the prize too. Don't forget that Yassir won the prize jointly. Both sides failed to live up to the agreement. I think it was more a prize of encouragement than of recognition.

[PogoPedant]

Jan Simonsen, the man nominating Blair and Bush, was elected to parliament when a member of the Progress Party. This party is known for being about as far out to the right as possible without alienating the entire population. (Right-wing populist is the favoured description by their detractors.) Unless my memory fails, Simonsen was kicked out for being too narrowminded.

That Blair and Bush have been nominated to the Peace Prize by this politician should serve as a warning to them both.

[bjornart]

Eligible to nominate candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize:
[list=1]
Members of national assemblies and governments of states
Members of international courts
University rectors; professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology; directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes
Persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
Board members of organizations who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
Active and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee; (proposals by members of the Committee to be submitted no later than at the first meeting of the Committee after February 1)
Former advisers appointed by the Norwegian Nobel Institute
[/list=1]

In 2002 Jimmy Carter was selected from a record 156 nominees. This year there is also more than 150 nominees.
Simonsen is only looking for attention and emphasizing that he was for the war while the current government was against. Politics is all it is.

[Skeptic]

First of all, there is no official process of "nominating" anybody to a Nobel prize. The Nobel prize committee doesn't limit itself to any formal list of "nominees", and can choose anybody it wishes (as long as they're alive.) I could "nominate" myself to all Nobel prizes, with just as much formal importance as the one "nominating" Bush and Blair. A better description is that some people are lobbying for them recieving the prize.

Second, I'd say that getting rid of Saddam Hussein DOES deserve the Nobel peace prize. Europe enjoyed 60 years of peace solely due to the fact that Britian and the US first got rid of Hitler by war, and then stopped Stalin by the threat of war. War isn't peace, but the RESULT of war often is peace--if it is war against the right people e.g., murderous dictators like Saddam and Hitler, and carried on to the right conclusion, e.g. killing them and establishing a democracy.

Third, considering the fact that Yasser Arafat won it, the Nobel Peace Prize is totally meaningless anyway; it's as if Dr. Mengele won the Nobel prize for medicine. Then again, Mengele killed less jews than Arafat.

[bjornart]

Skeptic. The list I quoted is given on both the Swedish Nobel Institute and Norwegian Nobel Institute's web-pages, and according to that there _is_ an official way to nominate candidates.

[subgenius]

Alfred Nobel created the awards, in part, to assuage his guilt over the fact that his invention (dynamite) would be used so extensively in warfare.