No Replacement For Displacement

The Speech He Should Have Made

I was prepared to do a big piece on how the Nobel Committee is a bunch of EUniks, and that the choice of Jimmy Carter was a perfect example of how Europe is filled with a bunch of weenies, yadda yada yada, and I realized that just about everybody else is saying much the same thing(Emporer Misha does the best job). Therefore, I have decided to pretend I'm Jimmy Carter and make the speech he should have made(after first taking my Carter self to the doctor and getting testicles attached):

Good Evening. When I received this award, I wondered if the Nobel Committee was honoring me or cursing me. [laughter] Sadly, I wish I was joking when I say that. When I see those who I share this award with, I wonder whether or not accepting the "Peace Prize" is the appropriate thing to do.

I have found that I share this award with Mikhail Gorbachev, the last dictator of the Soviet Empire. The committee felt that Mr. Gorbachev should receive the award for relaxing his grip on power. If this is true, why has the Nobel Committee not given the Nobel prize to Augusto Pinochet of Chile, Galtieri of Argentina, or for that matter, given the award to Francisco Franco for dying at a convenient moment in history?

While the Nobel Committee lauded Gorbachev for doing what he should have done the moment he achieved power, they have ignored Ronald Reagan, whose steadfast opposition to communism liberated over 120,000,000 people in Eastern Europe, and Boris Yeltsin, who braved the guns trained on him by troops to call for the Russian people to fight for their freedom, and this man,

who stood in front of tanks sent by the Communist regime in China to brutally suppress the first flickers of the light of freedom and took risks to advance the cause of peace and freedom that Gorbachev never thought of doing.

And that is the problem with the prizes given out by this committee. When you choose peace, you choose peace at daggers drawn. You refuse to recognize that true peace can only occur when people are free.

When you gave the prize to Le Duc Tho, did you not realize the nature of the Communists? Did you not see that the result of this treaty would be that hundreds of thousands would flee Vietnam in small boats, that Cambodian Communists would slaughter one in seven of their own people, and that the light of freedom in Indochina would be squelched for decades?

When you gave the award to Lord Edgar Algernon Robert Gascoyne Cecil, and his pacifist International Peace Campaign, did you not take into account that such calls for pacifism in the shadow of monsters like Hitler would not cause prevent war, but only delay it, and bring about the deaths of millions in a World War that could have been prevented if only voices like Winston Churchill had been heard instead?

When you gave the award to Yasser Arafat, did you not forget the wanton murders that he ordered? Did you not listen to his speeches in Arabic when he said that Oslo was the first step to taking all of Israel? Was the memory of the Munich Games that faded? Now, this winner of the Peace Prize sends the children of his people to kill yet more children. He has used the prestige handed him by this committee to foster a curriculum of hate in the schools under his control, has engaged in murder, torture, and wholesale violations of human rights. Yet this committee has given him the Peace Prize.

Last year, the Nobel Committee saw fit to award the prize to the United Nations. Yet the United Nations acts as a bullhorn for countries such as Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, and dozens of other regimes ruled by totalitarian dictators, petty autocrats, or decrepit monarchies, all of whom share the common interest in laying blame on the West while brutally suppressing the legitimate aspirations of their own people to be free. The UN has sponsored abominations like the Durban conference on Racism, which was used as a platform to launch anti-Semitic hatred, and the Johannesburg conference, which was used as a platform to act as an apologist for the continuing brutality and corruption that is endemic to most of the African continent. The United Nations has acted to protect murderous dictators like Saddam Hussein, and provide them with a legitimacy that they would never have been given under other circumstances.

Now the committee has seen fit to give me this "prize", tarnished with the grubby fingers of dictators and tyrants, and poorly maintained by "peace activists" who refuse to confront evil, and give it succor and comfort, hoping that evil will just go away. The Nobel Committee has ignored the much more vital contribution to peace and true freedom that has been performed by the members of the American armed forces. Had it not been for the efforts of these valiant soldiers, 25 million people in Afghanistan would still be suffering under the tender mercies of the Taliban. They would be subject to the routine brutality that was the hallmark of that regime.

So, in light of the following facts, I must reject this prize. I reject it not because I am not worthy enough to receive it, but because the peace prize has sadly made itself a mockery of its own name.

Update: Fiddled with the grammar a bit.