Ever since the announcement that Barack Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize, there has been a lot of grumbling in the press that he did not deserve it.(and they have a point)
But this weird corollary has come along with that assessment, and that is that Ronald Reagan should have won one.
No, really!
It was always absurd that Ronald Reagan, whose political project led to the end of the gulag and the fall of the Berlin Wall, and who gambled his personal standing in the world for a system that would protect the common man from annihilation in a nuclear missile attack, could not win it. [The Nobel Peace Prize]
--Peggy Noonan, the Wall Street Journal.
you have got to be kidding me -- Ronald Reagan didn't get one, but Barack Obama, nominated 12 days after he was sworn in, gets a Nobel Peace Prize. . . but Ronald Reagan, could I just ask you to respond to that? The man who helped bring the Cold War to an end did not -- [win the Nobel peace Prize]
--Chip Reid, CBS News
Reagan deserves the Nobel Prize, first, because he showed again the benefits of promoting "Peace through strength." . . .That relates to the second reason why Ronald Reagan deserves the Nobel Peace Prize: As President, he successfully conducted himself as a man of peace.
--Bruce Chapman, Seattle Post-Intelligencier
Ronald Reagan also went to Berlin and made a plea for world peace and integration. Reagan played a role in liberating Eastern Europe, and articulated a vision of a world without nuclear weapons. Did Reagan get a Nobel for any of this? Or share Mikhail Gorbachev's? No.
--Ben Adler & Daniel Stone, Newsweek
Damn Liberal media!
Okay, off the top of my head, here are a few reasons why maybe, just maybe Ronald Reagan didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize.
1) Invaded Grenada for no good reason.
2) Sent the marines into Lebanon. (later "cut and ran")
3) propped up bloodthirsty dictatorships in Guatemala and Argentina.
4) fought a proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. (arming the mujahidin who would later become the Taliban and Al Queda)
5) Sent chemical weapons to Sadam Hussein, provided intelligence on where to deploy them.
6) Sold missiles to Iran, funneled the profits to Nicaraguan terrorists.
Also, Reagan had little if anything to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The USSR's implosion was thought to be inevitable long before Reagan took office. And when their house of cards finally did collapse, it was George H.W. Bush in the White House, not Reagan.
So can we please stop pretending that Reagan deserved the Nobel Peace Prize? I'm not trying to say that Barack Obama deserved it either, but come on! Reagan?
