Nobel Prize for Idiocy

"How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand?"

That was the question asked by Nobel laureate in literature, Harold Pinter, a British playwrite, who decided the best use of his Nobel speach time was to rant about Bush and Blair being "war criminals" who should be tried in the Hague. But that wasn't enough. "The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them," Pinter claimed.

I'm going to be generous, and suppose that Mr. Pinter is a great writer, who deserved this award, because otherwise, he sounds like an idiot. I am second to none in my disdain for Bush or people who like Bush (we're talking the politician here, stop smirking!), but "war criminal?" "Systematic crimes?"

How many people did Saddam Husein need to kill before the gutless cowards of this world would send help to his victims? A hundred thousand? A million? Saddam Hussein killed at least a million people when he decided to invade Iran. He later invaded Kuwait, lobbed missiles at Israel (a country in no way involved in the war), and later took out a contract to kill the sovreign leader of another country. (And yes, even though I don't like old Bush any better than young Bush, it's still a crime.) In between, he murdered and tortured imense numbers of his own citizens in ways that are simply bizare and unreal. One incident, which made a huge impression on me as a young soccer player, was when his lunatic son had the feet cut off of members of the national soccer team when he thought they did not play well enough. I wonder how Mr. Pinter would feel about the invasion of Iraq to depose Saddam if it had been his own clay feet that got the ax?

Systematic crimes? I'll be the first person to agree that my country has blown it a bunch of times, but we were also the reason that all of Europe doesn't speak German. Or Russian. Or the Chinese and Indians don't speak Japanese. For every stupid thing we did, we had a moment of greatness. Many times when Europe systematically appeased tyrants like Hitler, or tolerated genocide like in the Balkans, it was Americans that acted. When the UN has needed money, it wasn't Europe, Asia or Africa that paid the big bills, or sent the large numbers of troops. One European journalist noted that the amazing thing after 9-11 wasn't what the US did, but that, given the chance, we didn't just drop the bomb on all the Islamic fundamentalist countries; that we didn't kill people on anything like the scale we could have. Large parts of the problems in Afghanistan and Iraq were our fault. Now we're paying the price to clean it up. We may have provided some very flawed leadership throughout history, but we have never run from a problem. At times when the rest of the world hid their heads in the sand, we, often with Britain at our side, tried to do something.

Bush is an idiot, and lots of us know it. Just because it was an idiot that removed the tyrant doesn't mean removing the tyrant was a dumb idea, let alone a crime. Mr. Noble prize winner doesn't think we talk about our mistakes, don't reflect on our decisions? There are more Americans burried in more countries than any other soldiers of any nation, and we are quickly followed on that sad list by Britain. Some of those folks died in stupid and pointless conflicts fought under stupid and clueless leaders. Some of them died building a world in which a man could win prizes in playwriting, while slandering his country, its leaders and its allies, and be safe doing it.

Maybe someone from the Nobel organization should point that out to him.