Reuters reports that "A Norwegian parliamentarian nominated President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair for the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday, praising them for winning the war in Iraq."
That it's even conceivable for someone to win a peace prize for waging war is preposterous, that these two get it for this particular war seems especially ridiculous.
Hopefully, this will be one of those big jokes that we can laugh in a few years.
I'm laughing already, but at the same time, I'm scared.
this isn't the first time this has happened. last year, following their "successful" war on afghanistan, the terrible twosome received peace prize nominations for taking "decisive action against terrorism". [as cheap as it is to invoke orwell to lend an argument credibility] it's all very orwellian. but no worry: they lost, and they'll lose again.
so far as i can tell, nobel peace prize nominations are a dime a dozen [from past experiences involving mother theresa and henry kissinger, a win is valued at maybe a quarter/dozen]. all members of the swedish legislature get the right to nominate, and like anyone else, sweden've got a few right wing nuts in their parliament who do self-evidently absurd things such as this.
also, remember the 2nd episode of the simpsons [the one about bart being a genius, it features the "kwyjibo" line]? the teacher asks the genius kids if they know any examples of a paradox. one kid replies "if you want peace you must prepare for war", another says "without law and order [or something], man has no freedom". bart comes up with "you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't". the simpons' writers are pretty clever to have made bart's pithy saying the only true paradox, and to have made the supposedly intelligent kids victims of tired dogmatisms.