Editorial

Former United States president, and now Nobel Peace Prize
laureate Jimmy Carter has done more than give peace a chance
““ he’s helped make it work.

Carter has been “waging peace” for more than 25
years now. His achievements range in time and scope from
negotiating the end of a 30-year war between Israel and Egypt in
1978 to working to improve relations between the United States and
Cuba in May of this year.

He also negotiated the SALT II treaty, which reduced the nuclear
supplies of the United States and Russia during the Cold War, and
has worked to promote health care in less economically developed
nations through the Carter Center. Carter’s organization has
also tried to serve as a mediator in conflicts abroad, such as in
Sudan, as well as act as a watchdog for democratic elections, like
it has done in parts of China and East Timor.

Other leaders have been awarded the prize for far smaller
achievements and lesser commitments to the world’s long term
well-being, so that when Carter was chosen, it hardly came as a
surprise.

More surprising was Gunnar Berge, head of the Nobel Peace Prize
selection committee, admitting Carter’s selection “must
also be seen as a criticism of the line the current U.S.
administration has taken on Iraq.”

President Bush was originally nominated for the prize, but the
selection committee made it obvious achieving peace through
diplomacy is vastly more commendable than forcing
“peace” through war. Whatever President Bush’s
warped sense of peace is, most people don’t consider
preemptive strikes, unilateral action and abuse of power part of
its definition.