The creator of the Nobel Prize, Alfred Bernhard Nobel, the scientist who invented dynamite and whose work contributed to the development of high explosives, became increasingly concerned with the military use of his inventions. The general purpose of the peace prize is to recognize and encourage activity that contributes to the reduction of various forms of violence around the world, including war, terrorism, insurgency, and violent forms of crime.
George Bush, on the other hand, delights in weapons of mass destruction even as denounces them. Certainly, the U.S. military is such a weapon, as has been demonstrated in its destruction of the nation of Iraq. It is significant that the day before Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize the U.S. military had killed nine children and six women northeast of Baghdad. Of course, the military does not intend to kill women and children, but that is the problem with weapons of mass destruction: they cause a lot of collateral death and damage. Interestingly, “collateral” means “additional but subordinate or secondary”; thus the death of women and children is acceptable as long as the primary goal of killing insurgent leaders is achieved.
I do not blame the military so much as I blame the Commander in Chief. He sent this greatest of weapons of mass destruction, the United States Military, not into a war zone (though it became that), but into a city populated by civilians. Imagine President Truman ordering the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima but with the caveat of not killing any civilians. Even if one believes that Truman made the wrong choice, one has to recognize that thousands of Japanese civilians were already dying in the American bombing of Japanese cities and that many thousands of American soldiers would have died if Japan was invaded. So, one can argue that there was a clear and present danger to thousands of Americans and Japanese if the war continued to drag on and that less innocent life would be sacrificed by using what might be called the first weapon capable of killing cities. However, the same justification cannot be used for the invasion of Iraq since neither the Iraqi people nor the Iraqi government was a threat to the American people, only to the Iraqi people, but not as nearly the threat the U.S. military has proven to be. Since the Americans arrived in Iraq, every day there has been a 9/11 day.
And the same day Al Gore was announced as a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates were getting the cold shoulder from Russian President Vladimir Putin because of the Bush Administration’s plan to develop missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic. It is obvious that the Bush Administration’s obsession with warfare continues to undermine the world’s confidence in the sanity of the United States. Putin joked about militarizing the moon. Certainly, if that were possible, Bush and Cheney would have the U.S. military and Halliburton on the moon today. It was a sick joke, but since George Bush became president the world has been a sicker place.
If Al Gore is successful in getting the world to act to minimize the damage global warming will do to environments and economies, he will help minimize the violence, conflict, and general chaos that will most certainly plague many parts of the world. Even wealthy developed nations that now profit the most from producing greenhouse gasses will suffer as they are drawn into regional conflicts and have to defend their borders from millions of illegal immigrants fleeing degraded environments, failed economies, and ineffective and corrupt governments. Thus, developed nations such as the United States will benefit if Al Gore is successful in getting all the nations of the world to take the problem of global warming seriously enough to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gasses.
If George Bush’s efforts to use America’s weapon of mass destruction, the U.S. military, to bring freedom (the extreme form of which is chaos) to all of America’s enemies (a list that continues to grow), then we can expect to live in a world of unending suspicion, war, violence, and misery. If there were a Nobel War Prize, certainly George Bush would be a deserving recipient.
