[sk00byd00]

It happened with Kissinger before. If one were cynical, one might assume that the closed Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize committee, entirely different to the Swedish Nobel Prize committee (started by Alfred Nobel), may have been used as a PR mechanism by outside parties for quite some time.

[hga]

You don't think the Peace Prize he got for "helping to establish a ceasefire and U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam" (Wikipedia) wasn't earned?

For those of us who are hawks, it was followed by a 150,000 man armored invasion of South Vietnam, employing more tanks than used in any WWII battle. Which the South crushed with the help of US ammo and air support, only 40,000 managed to make it back home sans their equipment.

That worked the 2nd time they tried it due to Watergate denying the South ammo, which I don't believe he had anything to do with. But no matter how grim the outcome in Southeast Asia, including the Cambodian genocide, outfitting the North with three complete armored armies (the first was used up piecemeal) was critical in bankrupting the USSR and the peaceful end of the Cold War, which otherwise could have ended in even more megadeaths. And I think he gets some credit for keeping us alive when the Democrats turned dovish after one of their's was no longer in the Oval Office.

[pessimizer]

Peace through victory? Maybe they should have a separate Nobel Peace Through Victory prize that you get for killing the most civilians that year in order to create a lasting peace.

At least I'd know where to aim my spit. The mixed-up nature of the current prize is for the birds.

[hga]

Teddy Roosevelt's 1906 one ratified the Japan defeats of Russia.

No awards during WWI except to the International Red Cross (ICRC).

1927: Ferdinand Buisson, France, Ludwig Quidde, Germany: "[For] contributions to Franco-German popular reconciliation" Well, at least they tried....

Same for WWII; the ICRC did fully earn their prizes to my knowledge.

While he didn't get an award for it, George Marshall was the USArmy Chief of Staff, top dog in uniform along with Admiral Ernest King.

It was rather delayed, but Begin and Sadat's 1978 prize ratified Israel's 1967 Six-Day War victory.

Excepting perhaps Norman Borlaug (Green Revolution), Lech Wałęsa (key role in the peaceful end of the Cold War), and Gorbachev (ditto, not that that was his intent), I don't think any of the awardees, or possibly all of them combined, did as much for "peace" (saving lives) as Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin did in ending WWII (Stalin of course gets a big asterisk because he was instrumental in starting it, and didn't join the other side until a figurative gun was at his head (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa) ).

E.g. the "Greater East-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere" was killing an estimated quarter million people a month when we terminated with extreme prejudice Imperial Japan 68 years ago this week.