The Nobel Appeasement Prize

Quick, name the greatest peacemaker of the 20th Century who never received a Nobel Peace Prize? The wrong answer given by Foreign Policy magazine is Gandhi. The right answer is British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Churchill would strike many as an odd choice for a Nobel Peace Prize. Didn't he preside over the bloodiest war of the 20th century that was fought around the world. A war that left millions dead and entire nations in ruins. And that of course is exactly the point. By resisting Hitler, Churchill brought peace to Western Europe and to every part of the world threatened by Nazi Germany. By contrast Gandhi did nothing but advise England to surrender, to let the Nazis occupy their cities, rather than "taint" themselves with violence.

Both Churchill and Gandhi wanted peace, they just wanted different kinds of peace. Churchill wanted a secure peace for England and Europe by defeating the Nazis. Gandhi wanted a sham spiritual peace by surrendering to the Nazis, letting them do their worst and priding himself on being better than them. Churchill wanted to hold the moral high ground by taking the strategic high ground. Gandhi wanted the moral high ground by waving the white flag of surrender. These radically different notions of what peace is are at the heart of our problems today.

A notion of peace that rewards the Gandhis over the Churchills, rewards appeasement over resistance. It promotes the idea that throwing your hands up in surrender is better and nobler than reaching for a gun to defend yourself and your family with. That is the significance of the Norwegian committee awarding Obama a Nobel Peace Prize, which should be renamed the appeasement prize.

The Nobel committee cited Obama's speech about a "World Without Nuclear Weapons" as his qualification for receiving the award. Naturally this does not mean that the United States will actually prevent the Hitlers of tomorrow from getting their hands on nuclear weapons. Rather it means that the United States and countries reasonable enough to follow its lead will give up nuclear weapons. Leaving them exclusively in the hands of madmen, tyrants and terrorists. That is the self-destructive Gandhian ideal that the Committee and Obama want to promote... surrender, helplessness and impotence are the points on the moral compass of pacifism.

Naturally Obama did not get the Nobel Peace Prize for anything he actually accomplished. But this actually makes him a worthy successor to Jimmy Carter, whose unwanted "diplomacy" enabled North Korea to continue developing nuclear weapons, and Al Gore who made a movie telling others to live simply, without ever following his own advice. Both accomplished little except to make empty speeches and handicap those who actually wanted and want to do something constructive. Without Carter's intervention, half of Asia might not be constantly waiting for the bomb to drop. And what Carter did for Kim Jong Il, Obama is supposed to do for the Islamists, a grand devil's bargain to enable mass murder in the name of peace.

In the face of Nazi terror, Gandhi advised England to surrender, arguing that fighting the Nazis was worse than losing to them. There is a free world today only because England, America and the remains of the civilized world disregarded Gandhi's "noble" ideas and did the right thing by fighting the Nazi war machine instead. Gandhi's ideas would not have made the world civilized, as so many today insist, they would have made the world Nazi. That is the simply truth, perverted by those who brand the armies of the free world as Nazis, and real Nazis, as victims.

Those who would apply Gandhi's ideas today to restrain and throttle the use of force against terrorism, would produce not a world free of cruelty or violence, but a world broken under the Islamist boot, a world without freedom, without kindness, mercy or hope. And where the Bush Doctrine emphasized the right of America to defend itself and the world, the Obama Doctrine emphasizes multilateral diplomacy and a willingness to negotiate until the bombs begin falling, and probably all the way until doomsday itself.

The Nobel Peace Prize has a long history of rewarding the false diplomacy of the leaders of killers like Le Duc Tho, Sadat, Desmond Tutu, Gorbachev, Mandela, Arafat and their enablers like Pauling, Kissinger, MacBride, Peres, Kim Dae Jung, Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter, El Baradei and of course Barack Obama. The Nobel Peace Prize does not foster peace, it fosters only appeasement. Little wonder that UN agencies won the Nobel Peace Prize six separate times. And if there is any group of organizations more useless and more disabling to the free world than the UN, look and be fairly certain that they have their own Nobel, already or pending.

In 1947, after all the American, Canadian, British and Australian soldiers who had died fighting to liberate and bring peace to Europe-- the Nobel Committee instead handed over the award to the pacifist anti-war Quaker American Friends Service Committee. This was after giving the award to the ICRC in 1944 whose conduct during the war had bordered on Nazi collaboration. After the end of a war which saw Norway itself occupied and liberated and protected from Nazi and Soviet troops, the Committee saw fit only to go on promoting the same old pacifist doctrine of appeasement first.

Yet had the British and Americans decided that a non-violent negotiated solution was best-- Norway would have gone on being ruled by Nazi Germany until the end of time. In a truly ironic paradox, had England and America been governed by the ideas that the Nobel Peace Prizes sought to instill, the prizes, whose disposal was halted by WW2, would never have been given any, except perhaps and most appropriately to Vidkun Quisling.

And that in sum total is what the Nobel Peace Prize amounts to, a trophy for the murderers cunning enough to get what they want at the negotiating table, and their pet Quislings. It is only fitting that Obama who has left Eastern Europe naked in the face of Russian aggression, given Iran an open invitation to use endless delaying tactics while developing nuclear weapons, enabled Chavez's Marxist expansionism across South America and is preparing to cut a deal with the Taliban themselves-- receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Not for what he has done, but for what he has not done... by way of omission, stand up to evil.

Obama has made appeasement look cool, which is all that the committee really values in a patsy, figureheads to turn into heroes and make the morally indefensible ideas of pacifism more palatable. Gandhi's ideas on their own are laughable, but when combined with a saintly figure somehow seem credible as a quasi-religious virtue. Obama's ideas are equally laughable, but when combined with his manufactured image, were accepted by large numbers of Americans.

Protesting that Obama has done nothing to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize misses the point. It is precisely because Obama has done nothing, but give ridiculous speeches, that has was given the Nobel Peace Prize in the first place. Doing nothing is the greatest virtue of pacifism, to lift your hands high and let the enemy have his way with your country is exactly the sort of high moral notion that the Nobel Peace Prize. Just ask the various League of Nations officials, random pacifists and disarmament promoters who received the award in the 1930's, until Hitler's armies swept across Europe, temporarily putting an end to the awards.

The Nobel Peace Prize is no high honor, it is pacifism's highest honor to the conscious and the misguided appeasers. To receive it is to paint a giant target on your own country's back. A "Kick Me" sign a hundred feet tall lighting up the night sky. A white flag waving high.

"As the world celebrates International Day of Non-violence, US president Barack Obama today said America has its roots in the India of Mahatma Gandhi." PTI

"I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions." - Gandhi