by Old Dad » Sat Oct 10, 2009 11:46 am
Requiel wrote:Major Tom wrote:My notion is that the Nobel Foundation should have waited two more years (so we'd know a bit more about his term and it won't be in an election year).
After all, we all saw some of their previous selections - Yasser Arafat and Le Duc Tho (who declined it).
Major T.
Both of those were joint awards. Le Duc Tho was a joint winner with Henry Kissinger for negotiating the end to the Vietnam war. Arafat won jointly with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin for the Oslo Accords. In both those cases I'd say that the people involved made measurable and significant contributions to world peace.
I must say, Requiel, that you are normally HIGHLY accurate when it comes to things of historical politics. But you're *way* off the mark about Arafat - he made NO genuine effort toward achieving peace in any form! In fact, giving him that award could be almost compared to giving Hitler one.
The reason it was all a sham on Arafat's part is that peace would have demoted him to a near-nobody. He had power, continued increasing personal wealth and position as long as there was NO peace. If the conflict had ended, he very well would have most probably been given a high political office but would have lost the near-total autonomous hold he held as leader of the PLO. He would have been forced to share all his advantages - that he currently held undivided - with members of any kind of organized government. So, peace was the LAST thing he ever desired. The man was nothing but a thinly disguised warlord.
[quote="Requiel"][quote="Major Tom"]My notion is that the Nobel Foundation should have waited two more years (so we'd know a bit more about his term and it won't be in an election year).
After all, we all saw some of their previous selections - Yasser Arafat and Le Duc Tho (who declined it).
Major T.[/quote]
Both of those were joint awards. Le Duc Tho was a joint winner with Henry Kissinger for negotiating the end to the Vietnam war. Arafat won jointly with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin for the Oslo Accords. In both those cases I'd say that the people involved made measurable and significant contributions to world peace.[/quote]
I must say, Requiel, that you are normally HIGHLY accurate when it comes to things of historical politics. But you're *way* off the mark about Arafat - he made NO genuine effort toward achieving peace in any form! In fact, giving him that award could be almost compared to giving Hitler one.
The reason it was all a sham on Arafat's part is that peace would have demoted him to a near-nobody. He had power, continued increasing personal wealth and position as long as there was NO peace. If the conflict had ended, he very well would have most probably been given a high political office but would have lost the near-total autonomous hold he held as leader of the PLO. He would have been forced to share all his advantages - that he currently held undivided - with members of any kind of organized government. So, peace was the LAST thing he ever desired. The man was nothing but a thinly disguised warlord.
