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December 10, 2008
An Undeserved Peace Prize

Martti Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president just got a Nobel Peace Prize. But what about this?

Mr. Ahtisaari found himself defending the U.S. invasion, the absence of a nuclear or biological weapons program notwithstanding. "Since I know that about a million people have been killed by the government of Iraq, I do not need much those weapons of mass destruction," he said.
Nobel Finn

May be Saddam really killed so many people. If he did, it was over some 30 years. The 'western' sanctions nearly killed as many in a much shorter timeframe. The U.S. war on Iraq, supported by Martti Ahtisaari,  killed as many in just five years.

As far as I know Martti Ahtisaari never retracted the above. He does not deserve a peace prize.

Posted by b on December 10, 2008 at 15:26 UTC | Permalink
Comments

any committee that gave the war criminal henry kissinger their prize, knows it not even worth pissing on

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 10 2008 15:42 utc | 1

prize

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 10 2008 15:56 utc | 2

thanks sloth, corrected

Posted by: b | Dec 10 2008 16:56 utc | 3

Perhaps claiming to be a politician — and being recognized as such — means embracing corruption, hypocrisy, and a sociopathic set of personality traits. Oh, and a love of money above all else.

Posted by: James Crow | Dec 10 2008 17:08 utc | 4

Just for his role in Kosovo he is about the inverse of a “bringer of peace”.
If you look at past NPP winners, there’s a lot of very unpeaceful guys. It’s almost Orwellian.

Posted by: Soj | Dec 10 2008 17:56 utc | 5

The Finn’s anti-peace views on Iraq are nowhere near as bad the damage he has done in the Balkans, where had been part of an ongoing aggression. See: http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2008/10/disgrace.html

Posted by: Aleksandar Jokic | Dec 10 2008 17:57 utc | 6

Ever since Theodore “Big Stick” Roosevelt won in 1906, the prize has been suspect. There have been some worthy winners, but many frogs, and lots of window dressing. It is a good way for war criminals who get involved in a small act of justice later in their careers to repair their reputations. Few, if any, have really challenged the privileges of the ruling whitemen who dole out the prize money — earned from war in the first place.
I am not aware if an avowed communist or socialist has won the prize, or if peace is considered to be the provenance of free-market capitalism, even if it represents a reformist scion.
An very thought-provoking discussion on the relationship between peace, justice, and the inevitability of war — and where past prize winners fall on the just war spectrum — is to be found here. (Well worth the free registration.)
As Pope Paul VI said: “If you want peace, work for justice.”

Posted by: Malooga | Dec 10 2008 18:37 utc | 7

I saw this squat little turd on bbc last night. When he was asked why he thought kosovo was so successful given that even the EU countries supplying police and bureuacrats don’t recognise Kosovo he went into a spittle lathered rant about South Ossetia how Kosovo was completely different from South Ossettia. The interviewer hadn’t mentioned anything about Russia, Georgia, or South Ossetia.
He is obviously sensitive to criticism that he has spent his life as a lackey of empire because deep down he knows it to be true. He cannot slip from the role of corrupt fixer to international statesman as easily as he had hoped.
It seems to me that this is a particularly corrupt man who knows where some stinking corpses are buried particularly within europe although he claims to have achieved wonders in africa and asia, so he blackmailed those who decide such things into putting himself up for the prize.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 10 2008 20:23 utc | 8

> I am not aware if an avowed communist or
> socialist has won the prize
Define “avowed”? Does Mikhail Gorbachev count? He was certainly a USSR communist party member. Le Duc Tho was one of the founders of the Indochinese Communist Party.
As for socialists… depending on whom you ask, Pauling, Sakharov, Walesa, the Quakers, could all be considered socialists. There are more names on the list that look like they’d fit to me, but I’m not going to spend time looking up things that you could just look up yourself.

Posted by: Boris | Dec 10 2008 22:15 utc | 9

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