Daniel Henninger says Iraqi voters should win this year's Nobel Peace Prize. That's a splendid idea. What are the odds?
They have already won the world's peace prize by demonstrating in a single day a commitment not seen in our lifetime to peace, self-determination and human rights--the goals for which the Nobel Peace Prize began in 1901. Formal recognition by the Nobel Committee of what the Iraqi people did on Jan. 30 would do more to ensure the furtherance of these goals, in concrete ways, than any other imaginable recipient this year. Who did more?Posted by Alan at February 11, 2005 01:07 AMThe history of the Peace Prize shows as well that Iraq's voters placed themselves squarely at the center of one of the Nobel Committee's enduring, seemingly quixotic, goals--peace in the Middle East.
On at least three occasions, the Prize has been awarded to individuals attempting Middle East peace. Ralph Bunche received the Prize in 1950 for work as mediator in Palestine a few years before. Then Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin won in 1976 and in 1994 it went to Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat. Cynics would argue that Arafat deserves another Peace Prize for dying. The way to trump the region's well-earned reputation for lost causes would be to reward the eight million Iraqi idealists who rejected the cynics who offered death and subjugation over the difficulties of negotiating a democracy.