By David@Sixthestate.net
Even by the steadily declining standards of The Globe and Mail, Canada’s “paper of record” hit an unusual low in its angry and Orwellian response to the announcement that the European Union was being given this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. It’s definitely a bit of a head-scratcher, although notably less so than, say, the fact that Barack Obama was once given the Peace Prize for the singular distinction of being an American President who wasn’t George W. Bush. Now that Obama has been repeatedly implicated in war crimes, I wonder if the committee members regret their decision. Probably not. Obama is not the first war criminal to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Even so, this is abominable. The Globe and Mail is upset that the EU won the Prize not because European peace isn’t an historically important achievement (it is), but because, they claim, NATO should have given the Prize. NATO, not the EU, is most responsible for European peace in the eyes of The Globe’s editors. It’s an interpretation of history that I suspect would not be all that well received by many researchers.
More to the point, though, it’s a horrifying proposal. The Globe and Mail is actually recommending that the Nobel Peace Prize should be awarded to military alliances. What’s worse, they don’t seem to realize there would be a problem with this. First, they argue, NATO really is a peace organization because it says so in the NATO Charter. Well, that makes sense. In other news, the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea is a democracy. Let’s all go there and volunteer with a political party during their next election campaign. What’s that? They’re not really a democracy? Unpossible! It says so right in their name!
The second reason is just as good as the first: because NATO “won the Cold War.” Really? The Peace Prize should now be given to the victors of political conflicts? This kind of wanders far away from their first argument, which is that NATO contributed to peace in Europe; more to the point, it gets away from peace altogether. Something tells me that no one who is part of writing this piece of tripe remembers who actually won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, in recognition of the winding down of the Cold War.
And of course, because the new Globe and Mail is a strictly juvenile, unprofessional conservative parrot, no complaint about the lack of recognition of the Western military by the Nobel Peace Prize committee would be without a gratuitous slur: “that would have meant giving the Nobel Peace Prize to NATO militaries, with the U.S. military earning the biggest share in it, something the leftish Norwegian Nobel Committee could not countenance.” Yeah, those Norwegian lefties just hate America. They never give Peace Prizes to American leaders, never not ever!
I’m surprised I have to explain to the editors of this country’s leading newspaper that military alliances don’t win peace prizes. If it really upsets them, I’m sure they could trump up an award of their own and give it to NATO. Maybe the Minipax Peace Prize?
Yes, that was a literary reference. Probably too high-brow for whatever audience the Globe is trying to appeal to these days.