Gore and the Nobel

I was glad to see that the Nobel Prize committee hasn’t lost its touch. Al Gore, the man whose movie is so inaccurate it needs to come with a warning, has now joined the august panoply of other recent Nobel Peace Prize winners. In case you’ve forgotten, here are some of the highlights in this rogue’s gallery:

Yassar Arafat, one of the bloodiest killers in the Arab world, and a man who easily deceived a credulous West as he unrelentingly, to the day of his AIDS-induced death, plotted to destroy Israel.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian who is probably single-handedly responsible for both the proliferation of nuclear weapons in Iran and for the fact that we went to war with Iraq. As to the latter, if there were in fact WMDs, it happened under his watch; and if there weren’t, it was his regime that allowed Hussein to create the nuclear Potemkin village that led to the war.

Wangari Maathai, who claimed that “the West” bio-engineered HIV and realized it on Africa, one of the most paranoid of conspiracy theories around.

Jimmy Carter, one of the worst Presidents in modern American history and one of the worst ex-Presidents in modern history.

Kofi Annan, who should be remembered for Rwanda, Oil for Food, the increasingly virulent anti-Semitism that’s become the UN’s hallmark, the Congo sexual transgressions, and just about every other horrible thing that happened on his watch.

Rigoberta Menchu Tum, the Marxist confabulator.

Interestingly, once you start looking into the way back machine, past Rigoberta, you start seeing that the Nobel Committee was still awarding the prize to people who, at least as of the time the prize was awarded, weren’t charlatans, crooks, cowards, con men and, most importantly, devoted to “putting America in her place.” In other words, with some exceptions I’ve detailed below, in those early years, the prize seemed mostly to go to be people of greatness and humanity. Still, there’s even a caveat to that. Some of the institutions or people that, at the time they received the prize, seemed decent, have since descended into anti-American madness, such as Amnesty International, which really did used to focus on bad places, not American or Israeli places, or Betty Williams, the Irish peacemaker who wants to kill George Bush. One of them is just plain funny: the United Nations Peace Keeping Forces, an organization that has distinguished itself by doing nothing in Yugoslavia, the Congo (except for the sex slaves, of course), Rwanda, and the Israeli/Lebanese border.

All I can say is, now that the prize officially become just a pathetic anti-Western statement, Al Gore truly has found his rightful place.

UPDATE:  Too funny.  I just found out that Scott Johnson, at Power Line, did almost exactly the same list I did, putting Al Gore in perspective.  You know you’re thinking smart when you discover that your thinking is in line with smart people.