Putin should NOT get the Nobel Peace Prize
Much as it pains me to criticize the very interesting and very important essay by Lyuba Lulko (https://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/10/lyuba-lulko/one-statesman-prevented-ww3/), I feel I cannot sit idly by and let him get away with his claim that Putin should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Why not? Did not the heroic Putin save us from a conflagration in Syria, that the U.S. was threatening? Did not this undeclared imperialist invasive war against Syria, a country that posed no threat to the U.S. whatsoever, threaten to bring into it Iran and even Russia? Could this have turned into World War III? Yes, yes, and yes. Thank God for Putin. Lulko makes all these points, and he does so superlatively.
Why, then, do I oppose the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Putin? I do so because this Peace Prize is irredeemably besmirched by it having been awarded to that war-mongering monster, Obama. This is a man who drones innocents from afar, murders women and children in Afghanistan, still has not removed all U.S. troops from Iraq (I do not here distinguish between formal members of the U.S. armies and others in the pay of Obama who are toting guns in that long suffering country).
It is not that Putin doesn’t deserve a Peace Prize. It is that the Nobel Peace Prize is unworthy of Putin. Lulko comes close to this insight when he offers this quote: “Mr. Obama should give his Nobel Peace Prize handed to him in 2009 to a true man of peace, Mr. Putin, President of Russia.” If Mr. Obama were to offer this prize to Mr. Putin, the latter should refuse it. He should drop it like a hot potato. To repeat: It is not that Putin doesn’t deserve a Peace Prize. It is that the Nobel Peace Prize is unworthy of Putin.
Can this matter be rectified? Yes, of course. Nothing is beyond redemption. All the Nobel Committee has to do is apologize to the world for awarding its prize to Obama, take it back from him, and then award it to Putin. It would be somewhat tarnished even then, but under these conditions I would then agree with Lulko that this award should be given to Putin.
One further complication. There are others, too, who deserve an untarnished Nobel Peace Prize. Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden.
5:31 pm on October 5, 2013
