The American Spectator

Special Report

Al's Ignoble Nobel

By Ben Stein on 10.15.07 @ 12:08AM

Let's make this really, really simple. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee gave the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and about 3,300 UN bureaucrats and professors who worked on the chi-chi, politically correct, ultra-hip topic of global warming. As far as I know, none of the 3,300 ever had to put his or her life on the line. Mostly, they worked in air-conditioned classrooms and labs and were well paid. Al Gore has made an enormous business of his opposition to the oil companies. He has made literally tens of millions from his crusade (far, far more than any oil company executive presently working ).

I have an idea of who should have won the Nobel Peace Prize: the American combat soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and their families. They have put up more to stop terrorism, save lives, bring peace to an embattled part of the world, and offer hope to innocent civilians in a large region of the world than Al Gore and his scientists could even imagine.

Your humble servant spent last Tuesday at the amputee ward of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. I think the Nobel Committee might have wanted -- instead of wading in with their big feet into a political campaign -- to honor the men and women who have volunteered to be without their natural limbs for the rest of their lives for the children of Iraq and Afghanistan -- and for all of the peace and freedom loving people of the world.

To think of Al Gore and his 20,000 square-foot home, and his glib comments on late night talk shows, and his private jets, and then to think of the grunt getting his legs blown off and lying in a hospital bed with ten tubes in him -- and then to think one gets the Nobel Peace Prize and one is ignored by everyone except his friends and his family -- well, it just sort of makes me want to throw up.

Oh, wait. Didn't Yasser Arafat and Jimmy Carter get that prize, too? Hey, is there maybe a pattern here?

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Business, Global Warming, Iraq, Oil