No peace, no prize

OPINION:

War will continue until the end …

- Daniel 9:26, New International Version

Like the Pulitzer Prize for journalism and the Oscar and Emmy for film and television, the Nobel Peace Prize is an inside job in which liberal, wishful-thinking humanists give awards to one another.

For all I care, the Nobel committee could have given its useless (except for the money) prize to Homer Simpson. Like President Obama, Homer has done nothing to earn it, though he may be the only character who has been on TV more than the president.

According to the Web site www.globalsecurity.org, there are “42 active conflicts and/or wars in the world today.” Not all are shooting wars at the moment, and there are several civil wars and conflicts between Israel and various terrorist groups, but 42 wars is a lot of war.

Peace generally occurs when aggressive evil is defeated, which is why Germany and Japan no longer war with the United States. The Nobel committee apparently believes that when we diplomatically sing, “All we are saying is give peace a chance,” evil people will study war no more and be so impressed by our intentions that they will lay down their arms.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could win the Nobel Peace Prize in an instant if he announced that his god had told him not to eradicate Israel or usher in Armageddon. But Mr. Ahmadinejad won’t because he is evil and must be defeated. Neither will he respond to negotiations or sanctions.

Same with Osama bin Laden. The United Nations would welcome him as a speaker, and the Nobel committee would award him its top prize if he would announce he no longer believed in terrorism and had become a follower of the Dali Lama or some other “acceptable” pseudo-deity. He will do no such thing because he is evil and must be defeated.

The Nobel committee believes George W. Bush is evil, but apparently not bin Laden or Mr. Ahmadinejad. It cringes at leaders who wish to overcome evil by force rather than have the forces of evil overcome them.

The Nobel committee hates Israel, too. This is because its members, and like-minded male wimps around the world, idolize Michael J. Fox instead of John Wayne and find their role models in the liberal ladies of “The View,” not in muscular characters such as Jack Bauer on “24.”

The peace-prize concept is flawed because the problem of war does not lie with those who would make peace, but with those who would make war. If the Nobel committee were realistic, it would stop handing out peace prizes and start issuing awards for those who have confronted evil and produced peace in nations that have only known oppression.

Candidates for such prizes would include Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, who conspired to liberate Europe from the totalitarian hand of Soviet communism.

Bill Clinton also would be a legitimate candidate for his efforts that stabilized Bosnia. He could take some small credit for the peace in Northern Ireland, which, though worked on for decades, finally was brokered on his watch. Mr. Obama was right when he acknowledged that he doesn’t deserve the prize. Neither did Yasser Arafat, Henry Kissinger, Le Duc Tho or Al Gore.

The question should be: Why, despite man’s best efforts, including the League of Nations and United Nations, have we been unsuccessful in eradicating war? The answer lies in this ancient wisdom: “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” (James 4:1-3, New International Version).

That’s why a peace prize is meaningless.

Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist.