George Bush Should Receive a Nobel Prize

Scott Norvell has a fine piece here on the election in Afghanistan. He writes from Kabul:

It was a regrettably typical comment from an American reporter in this part of the world. "At least it's news," he said of the Afghan election scuffle over the weekend. "Otherwise, this is just a success story."

God forbid it be a success story.

But that's what it was here, no matter how hard the international media tried to spin it. There were no car bombs raining body parts all over the polling stations. There were no last-minute assassinations. There were no drive-by shootings. The best they could come up with for "news" was grumbling from hopelessly trailing opposition candidates about washable ink and threats of a boycott. The media's disappointment was palpable.

When Kabul came out of its election-time shell on Monday, the picture was instead one of a city reveling in the chaos of commerce. Real estate prices are rising, and the din of new construction is pervasive. Foreign investment is up. There are three times as many private cars on the streets as five years ago, and women can go shopping without getting whipped by thugs from the Taliban Ministry of Vice and Virtue for baring sockless ankles beneath their burqas. It is a chaos to which Afghans have been accustomed for centuries, one they are happy to have back.

This is a Nobel prize caliber accomplishment. In fact, it surpasses in magnitude virtually anything any previous recipients of that award have achieved. What other world leader has done so much for so many of the world's oppressed in just four years? Maybe FDR in WWII (although it's questionable), surely Reagan, but it took him eight years, and even then it wasn't until after his presidency that his policies toward the communists brought about the collapse of their tyranny.

What other world leader has done as much for women's rights in such a brief period of time as has George Bush? Twenty five million women in Afghanistan and Iraq can vote for the first time ever. In Afghanistan they can go to school and hold elective office for the first time. This is monumental, but it leaves our feminists unimpressed. After all, Bush still opposes the right of a woman to kill her unborn child.

Bush's accomplishment of freeing fifty million people in Afghanistan and Iraq is probably unique in world history, but the odds that Bush will be awarded the Nobel are probably about the same as they were for Ronald Reagan. Doubtless the enlightened eminences who decide upon the recipients, if they don't select some mentally unstable virago who rants about white scientists developing AIDs in order to wipe out the black race, will choose someone who campaigned hard to prevent what Bush has achieved. Maybe Jacques Chirac, now that he's no longer receiving bribes from Saddam, can use the cash.