Do you think winners like him discredit the award overall? Not sure what the deal with Obama was but I know Kissinger was an absolute fuck
The thinking was that, because he had negotiated an end the Vietnam War which he had been busily escalating for several years, he and the lead Vietnamese negotiator both deserved to share the prize. The war hadn’t ended, or anything, they’d just signed an agreement (which both sides more or less ignored.)
Every single person at the time thought it was the stupidest thing they’d ever heard. Even the New York Times could see that something was amiss; with their usual bold commitment to justice even when it contradicts the whims of American empire, they declared that it was “at the very least, premature.” Le Duc Tho, the Vietnamese man who he was meant to share the prize with, angrily declined his half of the prize. Kissinger almost declined the prize… not because even he could see that is was an absurd joke, but because he was offended that they were going to give it to Le Duc Tho also. You know… peace-man logic.
When Kissinger entered the conference room, nobody spoke to him. Sensing the hostile mood, Kissinger speaking in French said: “It was not my fault about the bombing”. Before Kissinger could say any more, Thọ exploded in rage, saying in French: “Under the pretext of interrupted negotiations, you resumed the bombing of North Vietnam, just at the moment when I reached home. You have ‘greeted’ my arrival in a very courteous manner! Your action, I can say, is flagrant and gross! You and no one else strained the honor of the United States”. Thọ shouted at Kissinger for over an hour, and despite Kissinger’s requests not to speak so loudly because the reporters outside the room could hear what he was saying, he did not relent. Thọ concluded: “For more than ten years, America has used violence to beat down the Vietnamese people-napalm, B-52s. But you don’t draw any lessons from your failures. You continue the same policy. Ngu xuẩn! Ngu xuẩn! Ngu xuẩn!” When Kissinger asked what ngu xuẩn meant in Vietnamese, the translator refused to translate, as ngu xuẩn (in Chữ Nôm: 愚蠢) roughly means that a person is grossly stupid.[43]
When Kissinger was finally able to speak, he argued that it was Thọ, who by being unreasonable, had forced Nixon to order the Christmas bombings, a claim that led Thọ to snap in fury.
They weren’t great friends. Of course, in the end, Kissinger decided that he owed it to himself to collect his prize, although he didn’t come in person because he probably would have been protested (and maybe arrested, I don’t remember the timeline.)
Aung San Suu Kyi oppressed the shit out of journalists and was complicit in the genocide of the Rohingya. I guess she wasn’t doing that shit when she got her prize at least…
Titles are easy when there are no standards.
Therefore, I hereby crown myself Emperor of my neighborhood, by the authority vested in me by the God of Pineapple Pizzas.
I shall henceforth be known as “The Holy Emperor of Pineapple Pizzas”
Other people are way ahead of you:
Western warmongers get it when the narrative validates it or calls for it, I feel. Obama got it while drone striking the fuck out of folks (but back home people loved him so that was an easy pass), Donny wants/wanted it while supporting an accelerated genocide and dropping bombs in Iran… It seems to follow a predictable pattern, lol.
Obama got it while drone striking the fuck out of it
Nah, that’s the thing: he got it for campaigning before even BECOMING president. And then he proceeded to drone strike the fuck out of the Middle East and Central Asia.
Obama is the only Nobel Peace Prize winner to drone strike another Nobel Peace Prize winner (Doctors Without Borders)
And how the hell did Obama
He was the new, not-a-war-fabricating-criminal American president. That’s it. It shouldn’t be enough imho, but nobody claimed that what I think matters here. Lots of people had renewed hope and optimism, including the Swedish governing body over the Nobel Prizes, based on his not being Bush. Eight years later, that hope and optimism didn’t pay out the way people anticipated, so I personally would suggest that the committee spoke too soon on the topic. But I do remember the peace I felt with that hope and optimism, so there’s that, I suppose. And watching the proto-MAGAs in my office lose their mind at the actions of an independent, private, Swedish organization’s actions as though they deserved a say in the matter was entertaining.
One minor correction, the peace prize is handed out by a Norwegian organisation. The rest of the Nobel Prizes are handled by the Swedish Nobel committee, but the peace prize is an exception.
Edit: source
Thank you! TIL
He took the humans out of one side of modern war. Obviously. So now it’s 50% done, now we just need to take away the villagers he was bombing, and there’ll be no more death and destruction anymore. That’s a huge progress.
It was early Obama too; he hadn’t done much. They pretty much just gave the prize to a guy they liked the sound of.
Obama’s prise was literarily “Not a 2x war criminal starting two illegal wars”. That’s it. He didn’t earn it as much as the committee wanted to say fuck that war criminal W.
People forget just how AWFUL, divisive, and stupid W was. He was the reason Trump would ultimately be able to come to power. W started the Christo fascist bullshit. He started the unpunished lies. He started the constitutions undermining.
I don’t know much about Kissinger except that he’s a treasonus piece of shit war criminal. He faked some peace deal between Palestine / Israel but it was all bullshit.
Kissinger got the same glazing as Regan, because it was pre social media and people were just fed patriotic bullshit about those two cunts.
Usually people point to Newt Gingrich in the 90’s as the start of modern anti-democratic conservatism in America. And yeah, elements go all the way back to Nixon, and from there in a form all the way back to the Puritans.
If you read Kissinger’s Wikipedia, it give him credit for some really significant changes that pulled us back from WWWIII
