When I opened my AOL account at 6:00 this morning I thought that it was April Fool's day. The headline - Obama wins Peace Prize. I closed my eyes, opened them again, but still. There it was. A cruel joke. I kept waiting and waiting for the punchline, but nobody said, "Gotcha!"
What are they smoking in Oslo? I want some of that.
The man who has expanded illegal, immoral wars on two fronts, who has broken basically every campaign promise he ever made, and the man who is bailing out the companies that make possible, in fact, demand, imperialism, is getting a peace prize?
I'm sure the talk show hosts and pundits are going to be having a blast over this today and over the weekend, and there will be all kinds of allegations of politics in Oslo. It will get ugly, and it will be sad. But the bottom line is, he does not deserve this. There are hundreds of people out there in the world doing things that really do make this a more peaceful, kinder world. Any and all of them should be awarded prizes for doing their quiet work before Obama. Think of what Gandhi did in his life. No peace prize. But Obama gets one.
Of course, anyone who knows the history of this committee will not really be surprised. After all, Kissinger was also awarded a peace prize and we know how much he's done to promote the cause of peace. Wink. Wink. Likewise Menachem Begin and Mikhail Gorbachev. Hardly the people whose names come to mind when one thinks of "PEACE".Â
But what upset me even more than the award itself was when I tried to discuss this with someone I care about and he said, "Well, who else are they going to award it to?"
Who else, indeed. Is the world in such a sorry state of affairs that the only one who could realistically win a peace prize in 2009 be a man who keeps sending troops to kill and be killed? A man who orders the destruction and death of thousands of innocent men, women and children every time he sends out another "surge"?
If this is the best we have to offer, in all the world, then I fear, ladies and gentlemen, that 2012 can't come fast enough.
Kate Mucci
Producer
Matrix TV News
