Riverwood Presbyterian Church

Culture Wars

Oslo Syndrome

by Clay Staggs

So I got up this morning and saw the news that Al Gore had actually won the Nobel Peace Prize. Perusing a sampling of reaction on the internet, I think that the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, hit the nail on the head:

“The relationship between his activities and world peace is unclear and indistinct,” the statement said. “It rather seems that Gore’s doubting of basic cornerstones of the current civilization does not contribute to peace.”

The award committee practically acknowledges as much:

Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth’s resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.

Got that? There MAY be a danger of conflict. What planet are these people living on? I suppose it escaped their notice that the US Army and the US Marine Corps have been in Iraq actually trying to bring some semblance of order and peace to that country for several years now, and are actually having some measure of success. Or how about the residents of Anbar province, where the locals have turned on Al Quaeda and pacified their cities?

Actually, I know that it didn’t escape their notice. They’re a bunch of political hacks. Consider some of their past award recipients, noted this morning by Scott Johnson at Powerline:

2005
MOHAMED ELBARADEI (joint winner). He’s done such a nice job with Iran.

2004
WANGARI MAATHAI. The Kenyan ecologist peacefully teaches that the AIDS virus is a biological agent deliberately created by the Man.

2002
JIMMY CARTER JR., former President of the United States of America. A true cosmopolitan, he has undermined the foreign policy of his own country and vouched for the bona fides of tyrants and murderers all over the world.

2001
UNITED NATIONS, New York, NY, USA.
KOFI ANNAN, United Nations Secretary General. Among other things, they have respectively served as the vehicle for, and presided over, one of the biggest scams in history.

1994
YASSER ARAFAT (joint winner), Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO, President of the Palestinian National Authority. He was a cold-blooded murderer both before and after receiving the award.

1992
RIGOBERTA MENCHU TUM, Guatemala. She is the notorious Guatemalan faker and author, sort of, of I, Rigoberta Menchu.

1988
THE UNITED NATIONS PEACE-KEEPING FORCES New York, NY, U.S.A. Notwithstanding rapes and sex abuse committed by the team in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and the Congo, still doing fine work all over the world.

The will of Alfred Nobel, in establishing the Peace Prize specified that it go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” I leave it to the reader to decide whether Al Gore and the luminaries noted above actually fit that description, or are just the most politically correct flashes in the pan at the time.