VigilanceVoice

VigilanceVoice.com
Saturday--October 12, 2002—Ground Zero Plus 395
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Nobel Prize For Terrorism
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by
Cliff McKenzie
   Editor, New York City Combat Correspondent News
 

       GROUND ZERO, New York City, October 12 --  After reading the critical, unsavory comments by the Nobel Peace Prize committee on why President Bush did not receive the award, and instead former President Jimmy Carter did, I took a walk in the rain.

      The streets of New York City at 5 a.m. are like a battlefield, bare, except for crumpled black garbage body bags waiting to be tossed into the crushing jaws of the garbage trucks that prowl the streets in the pre-dawn, picking up the waste humanity creates.

       Rain makes everything glisten in the sallow street lights.   The black plastic garbage body bags were lined up, waiting to be taken, standing in almost military precision as the ceremony of removing the old to make room for the new was ecclesiastical rather than anti-viral.

       I was unsettled.   The fresh, wet air and light drizzle cleansed the webs spinning in my mind as I wrestled not with the fact that Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize, or that all 166 people in his hometown headed to his house for a picnic to celebrate, but what irked me most was the insult shot at President Bush by the Nobel committee chairman, Gunnar Berge.   After announcing this year's winner in Oslo, Berge stated the award "should be interpreted as a criticism of the line that the current administration has taken."  
        In my book, Berge was telling the world that Jimmy Carter won the Peace Prize in retaliation against Bush--a sad politicalization of a prize that should bestowed for no other reason than for its principles, and not be used as bludgeon, a cat of nine tails to whip or punish or go "nee-nee-nah-nah" in a thumb-waving, drop-your-pants-and-bare-your-buttocks insult.
       This is its own form of Terrorism.
       Such actions diminish the value of the giving of the award, and taint the winner's honor by suggesting it was a retaliation against a candidate, rather than an unconditional vote for the recipient.
       There is little doubt in my mind that 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, is a well-deserving winner.  He's been nominated over 10 times, and acting as a statesman of peace, he has influenced the world with his ability to step into hostile situations and broker calm in the midst of rattling sabers.   He has also "walked in the shoes" of the poor and disenfranchised, working alongside hundreds of others building houses, and traveled the four corners of the earth promoting democracy and its values.    He is one of the few Presidents in history to not leap onto corporate boards after his role as the nation's leader, or hit the lecture circuit to rake in giant fees for just appearing at some event.

       When he went to broker peace between North and South Korea in 1994 against the will of then President Bill Clinton, he showed that he is not prone to politics but rather more concerned with statesmanship.   He has monitored elections in third-world countries and takes his causes to the jungles, fighting tropical diseases like guinea worm and river blindness.    If, as Cervantes said, "the proof is in the pudding," then Mr. Carter is a deserving winner for his contributions over the past quarter century, including his 1978 efforts to stop the bloodshed in the Middle East with his Camp David Accords.

        But Terrorism's shadow fell on the award when major world newspapers like the New York Times blares its headlines over the story with :  "Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Carter, With Jab at Bush."

        The lily's gild is tainted with resentment, cat-calling, and excuses to lash out at another behind the award.
        The Nobel citation itself is laced with acidic vehemence against President Bush rather than purely extolling the deserving virtues of Mr. Carter.   The citation reads in part: 

        The prosecution of the current U.S. leadership in the Nobel Prize citation, and the subsequent political comments by its committee, do not further peace, but rather incite war.    When one party attacks another with criticism or admonishment it serves only to invite retaliation.     It is a slap across the face, not only to the person to whom it was directed, but to the ultimate and constitutional principles behind the Nobel Peace Prize itself.         

        The award now becomes a Nobel Prize of Terrorism, for Terrorism's true goal is to induce Fear, Intimidation and Complacency in those it attacks or abuses.   Certainly, Mr. Berge of the Nobel committee was using Terror Tactics when he admonished President Bush, and Terrorized the award to Mr. Carter by inking in a circuitous insult to the President of the Untied States when the award should be free of inflammatory comments.
        Vigilance, the overpowering of Fear, Intimidation and Complacency, would have asked the committee to think through its public comments in behalf of the children's children children.    Had the committee members applied the Principles of Vigilance to the award, instead of the Principles of Terrorism, they would have had the Courage to not use it as a political club against President Bush, they would have had the Conviction to not be Intimidated by Bush's one-man stand against a leader and his followers who killed nearly 100,000 of his own people with poison gas to quell an uprising, and, they would have taken the Right Actions by focusing solely on President Carter's peace achievements rather than slinging the slime of Complacency by offering insults rather than solutions to the dangers Iraq presents to the world at large.          

       While I may at times be critical of the Administration's use of power to face off Iraq's future threats, I laud President Bush for his Vigilance in stepping out of the international crowd and challenging Hussein to a duel.   By threatening him with unlimited force, despite the cries of the international community, Bush is pressing Hussein to the wall.   
        No other country has had the Courage to challenge Hussein directly.   No one in the United Nations has stood up and shouted with a club in their hand, "Let's stop Hussein today!"

       Simultaneously, Hussein has violated every principle of "peacekeeping" the United Nations originally set--specifically barring UN weapons inspection teams to control his development of "weapons of mass destruction."
         In the business world, things get done because the CEO of the company has the right to act, to make decisions that might fly in the face of the Board of Directors.    Decisions by committee are well know to become camel humps.  They always have been, and always will be, for they require appeasement of all the varied factions, and to appease all the points of view ends up creating an emasculated decision.    Winston Churchill was very familiar with "appeasement,"--his worst enemy as a leader.   He was famous for saying:  "Appeasement is feeding an alligator in hopes it will eat you last."
        President Bush is not into appeasing the United Nations, or the many factions who oppose unilateral actions against Iraq--if that's what it takes to bring Hussein into check.    Opponents of Bush's unilateralism  would rather "feed the alligator."    Yet, they all know that Hussein daily is "doing something," for why else would he kick out the UN inspection teams and hide his activities?   In addition, Hussein is a renowned Terrorist, capable of killing his own people with chemicals, including women and children.    

        Even more ironic is the founder of the Nobel Prize, Alfred B. Noble (1833-1896).   A Swedish chemist and engineer, Nobel is best known for inventing dynamite, the precursor of all modern warfare weapons.   Even a nuclear bomb is an evolution of dynamite, for dynamite was an invention that allowed one to handle a high explosives and to package them in a transportable, storageable format.  A nuclear bomb's power is often cited in terms of "tons of TNT," or another way of saying "tons of dynamite."   Or, another way of saying it, "tons of Alfred Nobel."

       Many were killed when Nobel was working on perfecting his product until the scientist finally found a way to stabilize the explosive he wanted to blast rock for construction purposes.   But Nobel also knew the dangers of what he had invented.  He knew his product could be used to "kill and maim" as well as "build and prosper."   He created the Nobel Prize as a mea culpa of sorts, his way of seeking absolution for being a creator of Terrorism.  
        Every suicide bomber wears his product of destruction to their death, and the death of the innocent.
        Offering a "Peace Prize" to cancel a "Terrorism Product," seems to me to throw the "righteous indignation of guys like Gunnar Berge out the window.

         I am not swayed by his catty remarks.   
         In fact, the blowback from his attacks on President Bush make me more aware that what Bush is doing is the right thing--he's using Courage to stand up to Hussein rather than be kowtowed by the Fear of global opinion against him.   He's applying his Convictions as a Father of Vigilance to a situation that threatens the world at large instead of shrinking down by the Intimidation of people like Gunner Berge or the Nobel committee who offer only talk and no action to resolve a critical mass problem that grows more dangerous and unstable each day in Iraq.   And, President bush is taking Right Actions rather than falling into a pit of Complacency where pundits sit around a table and discuss humanitarian ways to resolve the crisis in Iraq and forget the leader of the country is one of the most inhumane of all world leaders, willing to kill his own people as a symbol of his ruthlessness and amorality.
        Then there is the Nobel Committee.
        The Terrorism slingers.  The hide-behind-the-podium warriors whose namesake is responsible for the killing and maiming of countless millions.        

        As a Father and Grandfather of Vigilance, I laud President Bush's resolve to stand up to the bully of Terrorism.   Despite all the pressures that would drive him to drop his club and be consumed in the sea of Complacency the UN is calling for--their agreement to resolve the issue--Bush is standing tall.   He's challenging Hussein.   He's telling the Beast of Terror that even if the rest of the world is Fearful, Intimidated, and Complacent about taking the Right Action, he's not.   He's risking worldwide sanction for his actions, and perhaps the Presidency in the next election.    And for what?
        Peace.
        It is peculiar to me that the Nobel Peace Prize was granted to Jimmy Carter for a lifetime of working for peace when the award is not a "lifetime award."   The award is like an Oscar--"to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind."
        In the "preceding year" is the key to what the founder of the award sought his committee to honor.   What other leader in the world has stood up to the criticism of the world to face off Terrorism?    I can't think of anyone at the moment, except President Bush.

       And what gripes my butt more than anything, is that every nation knows Saddam Hussein is "mad," capable of mass destruction, capable of unleashing horrible weapons that make dynamite look like an ant on an elephant's buttock.   They are just burying their heads, and fearful the United States isn't playing the "appeasement game."   They are fearful the "committee" won't have its say in the decision, and like little children who want to be part of the game, refuse to play unless it is by their "rules."
        Peace sometimes has an expensive price.   That price is often Courage, Conviction and Right Action in the face of Fear, Intimidation and Complacency. 
       Peace is, by all measures of its meaning, the art of Vigilance.   Peace is the absence of Terrorism, not coexisting with it.  Those who think that "war" is the opposite of "peace" are misguided.   Terrorism precedes all wars.   To stop it, one must police its evolution, yank out its roots before it grows so strong it chokes all those around it.   Peace cannot be negotiated, it must be won by destroying the Terror that threatens it.
       Disarmament is the key to non-violent peace.  Disarmament removes the "weapons of destruction" from the warlords who would kill and main at will.  
       President Bush wants Iraq disarmed, today.   For far too many years the UN has allowed Iraq to violate its disarmament treaties.   Bush has said, "enough is enough."
       If the Nobel Peace Prize was given under non-political conditions, it would have gone to President Bush.  No one else in the world has, over the past year, proven the essence of the award more than he--not only in his strategy to unilaterally disarm Iraq's weapons of destruction, but in his overall "War On Terrorism." 

       While the world sits at tables discussing Iraq and feeding the alligators, President Bush is loading his gun to go hunt the Beast of Terror.
       In my book, President Bush is doing a "dynamite" job--just the kind that Alfred Nobel would be proud of, for he's doing it as a Father of Vigilance--to protect the children, and their children's children from the one man who has history of killing children, and, if history is a precursor to the future, will do it again and again and again.
       The Nobel Prize of Terror?   It goes to Gunner Berge and the Noble committee.