Oslo Robs 43: Bush Deserved Nobel Prize

By the Editors

On October 9, the American people awoke to learn that their 48-year-old President of nine months had won the Nobel Peace Prize for “captur[ing] the world’s attention.” Though some were more receptive than others, nearly everyone viewed the honor as premature if not wholly inappropriate, especially in light of other possible awardees who have gone to formidable lengths in the pursuit of social justice. The Wash­ington Examiner, for example, suggested Hu Jia, the Chinese pro-democracy and AIDS activist imprisoned for three years for criticizing his country’s government. National Review recommended Oscar Biscet, the Afro-Cuban medical professional and noted advocate for human rights and democracy in Cuba who is currently serv­ing a 25-year prison sentence at the behest of Fidel Castro. Given such intrepid examples of sacrifice on behalf of humanity, the choice of a man for his ability to read a teleprompter raised more than a few eyebrows.

The fact that the prize was given to someone who was undeserving by his own admission, together with the Nobel Committee’s stated reasons for choosing Obama, suggests opposition to the President’s predecessor played a greater role in the decision than any desire to recognize contributions to peace. According to the Com­mittee, Obama has given precedence to “multilateral diplomacy” and “dialogue and negotiations” as means of conflict resolution, and the United States is now “playing a more constructive role” in combating climate change. As many have observed, these assertions are not so much an endorsement of Obama’s meager record as they are a backhanded condemnation of George W. Bush’s supposedly nationalist, go-it-alone approach to foreign policy.

Though these five retired Norwegian politicians and other European elites continue to browbeat Bush for his rash unilateralism and warmongering, there is no other U.S. president, with the possible exception of John F. Kennedy, who has been so committed to promoting humanitarian causes abroad.

The former President’s philanthropy is particularly evident in South America. Early in his first term, the Bush administration engineered IMF aid packages for Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, all of which were expe­riencing economic crises. By late 2002, all three had entered a period of sustained recovery. In 2001 Colombia was overwhelmed by radical paramilitaries fighting the government and each other while the nation’s economy suffered; thousands of educated Colombians fled the country and investment plummeted while the narcotics trade flourished. Thanks to Bush’s increased military and financial aid as well as strengthened intelligence shar­ing with the Colombian government, President Álvaro Uribe has managed to defeat the bulk of the rebels and has ushered in a period of sustained growth and job creation.

Perhaps the greatest global atrocity against human rights in the modern era is human trafficking: over 27 million people worldwide are enslaved for purposes of forced labor and prostitution, including an estimated 14,500 to 17,500 victims trafficked into the United States each year. President Bush strengthened legislation to prosecute domestic traffickers and their customers and to provide victims with legal protection and rehabilita­tion. His administration launched a multimillion-dollar initiative to end slavery overseas and made trafficking a key diplomatic issue by creating the human trafficking “blacklist,” which identifies countries whose govern­ments have failed to take meaningful measures to combat slavery.

President Bush’s greatest altruistic achievement is the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEP­FAR), the largest commitment ever by a single nation toward an international health initiative. In May 2003 Bush approved a federal commitment of $15 billion over five years to combat global HIV/AIDS, an amount that was doubled last year. The State Department reports that PEPFAR has supported life-saving treatment for more than 2.1 million worldwide and saved nearly 3.28 million adult years of life as of the end of September 2009. The program has supported care for more than 10.1 million people affected by HIV/AIDS, funded HIV counseling and testing for nearly 57 million, and supported prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission during nearly 16 million pregnancies.

Of course, none of this matters to the Nobel Committee, since it was all done without “multilateral diplo­macy.” But Bush made progress within the all-important “international institutions” as well: at the 2008 G-8 summit, the President won approval of his proposal that member countries issue periodic reports detailing their progress in fighting poverty, a measure that will ensure their fulfillment of humanitarian commitments.

This is to say nothing of his domestic “compassionate conservative” agenda, which included the creation of the White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI). By making it easier for reli­gious organizations to receive government grants, the OFBCI has expanded access to flexible, personalized charitable programs. Prisoners who have been linked with federally funded faith-based mentoring programs, for example, return to prison at less than half the national average. Grantees have dramatically increased access to community health clinics and have expanded the scope of the federal effort to aid recovering drug addicts: Bush’s Access to Recovery voucher program has allowed 260,000 people to obtain treatment, and teenage drug use declined 25 percent from 2001 to 2009.

Based on these achievements, George W. Bush certainly deserves the Nobel Peace Prize more than a man who made a film about global warming. Despite this success, it is considered absurd to suggest he is anything more than an impulsive cowboy who started a war without an international mandate. Though he arguably de­serves criticism for invading Iraq and definitely does for his four-year mismanagement of that war, his adminis­tration, if both campaigns he initiated are successful, will have liberated fifty million people from authoritarian governments and eliminated two state sponsors of terrorism.

Apart from Iraq, Bush is denounced for failing to take action to avert a climate crisis. But whatever criti­cism he has earned with respect to these policies is not really relevant as far as Oslo is concerned, since Obama has not changed them. The current President’s Iraq strategy is essentially a continuation of his predecessor’s, and we will likely be sending even more troops to Afghanistan. Though the White House backs the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, it has little chance of passing the Senate. More crucially, Obama has not negotiated any agreement that would limit the emissions of China and India among others, without which unilateral action would be ineffective if not counterproductive.

Though the notion that George W. Bush most deserves the Peace Prize is debatable, he deserves it more than Obama, and he certainly does not deserve the treatment he has received from the Nobel Committee. This body’s choice to give Barack Obama an award for not being George Bush amounts to using a once-prestigious honor as a means to trumpet its own obnoxious ideology, and that is beyond shameful. Rather than endlessly excoriating him, those who claim to champion world peace and humanitarian causes should be on their hands and knees thanking Bush for improving the lives of so many who will never be able to repay him. Even the staunchest Republican admits that the 43rd presidency was riddled with flaws, but Bush, like Obama, aspired to help those in need, and, unlike Obama, accomplished much in that regard. It is time for the senseless hatred of this man to cease.