Well, Al Gore has won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. And I have to say that I don’t think he deserves it. When his accomplishments are stacked up next to those of some recent winners, he just doesn’t make the cut.
In 2005, the International Atomic Energy Agency and Mohamed ElBaradei won it for their tireless efforts against nuclear proliferation. It was under their watch that India, Pakistan, and North Korea all tested bombs, Iran raced towards it own bomb, and Libya revealed that it had had a nuclear weapons program for years.
In 2002, Jimmy Carter won it for his repeated attacks on Israel, sanctifying “elections” of various dictators and other thugs, and other examples of being a worthless twit. Carter was the most ineffectual and worthless president in recent history, and built on that legacy to become the worst ex-president in history.
In 2001, Kofi Annan and the United Nations won the award for… well, I’m sure they did something decent. I just can’t find it.
The 1994 Award was shared by Shimon Perez, Yitzhak Rabin, and Yassir Arafat. Arafat’s was more of a “lifetime achievement” award for decades of terrorism, and he promptly used the opportunity to turn his life around. He was reborn as a thieving head of a pseudo-state and unleashed a wave of terrorism that he could plausibly distance himself from, while enriching himself to the tune of an estimated couple of billion dollars before he finally died of AIDS in Paris.
In 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev won the award for surrendering and admitting defeat for the Soviet Union. The notion of honoring the man who made that defeat not only possible, but inevitable is too much like honesty, I guess.
And in 1988, the United Nations Peacekeepers added the Nobel Peace Prize to their collection of honors — alongside the Gold Jockstrap for Rape Of Refugees, the Bronze Toilet Seat for Sitting On Their Asses And Doing Nothing, the Silver Fig Leaf for Covering For Terrorists and Dictators, among other honors.
That’s just the last 20 years. I didn’t even get to go back far enough to list Henry Kissinger (1973). Compared to those worthies, what’s Al Gore done? He made a crappy movie.
Next year, I hope that the Nobel Committee returns to their prior standards. I would like to nominate the government of Burma, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, and Muqtada Al-Sadr for consideration.
And, if it’s not too late, let’s toss in Che Guevara into the mix.
