THE WEIRS TIMES & THE COCHECO TIMES, Thursday, December 1, 2011


7


PUTIN WINS” PEACE PRIZE” UNITED NA-


by John J. Metzler Syndicated Columnist


TIONS--George Orwell would have laughed at the very no- tion. Russian Premier Vladi- mir Putin has won a curious- ly -awarded Peace Prize for his military at-


tack on Chechnya in 1999, and his “iron hand and toughness” in dealing with separatists near and far, the old fashioned way. For his bellicose actions, Putin was lauded as a figure, “outstanding in keeping world peace.” “War is Peace,” extolled Big Broth-


er’s ill-named Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s epic novel Nineteen Eighty- Four (1984). In fact, the rich politi- cal irony of the twisted political dia- lectic aptly fits the prize awarded to the Russian leader. “His iron hand and toughness


revealed in this war impressed the Russians a lot, and he was regarded to be capable of bringing safety and stability to Russia,’’ read the English language version of the committee’s statement. ‘’He became the anti-terrorist Num- ber One and the national hero.’’ The bitter insurgency fought by the Russian military against Is- lamic militants in Chechnya was marked by widespread human rights violations on both sides. Qiao Damo, the president of


the Confucius Peace Prize com- mittee, stated: ‘’Those wars were righteous wars. Mr. Putin fought for the unification of his country.’’ The conflicts were also aimed at separatists in both Chechnya and Georgia. Could this be a thinly veiled threat to rumblings of sepa- ratism in Tibet, Sinkiang, or even Taiwan? But before the readers think


the story is a spoof written into a P J O’Rourke book such as Give War a Chance, the facts are dead serious. The Confucius peace Prize was


set up to counter to last year’s genuine Nobel Peace Prize award to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. When Prof. Liu won the Oslo ac- colade, a curious committee of six- teen “patriotic Chinese scholars” set up this farcical charade.


FOR CHECHEN WAR There were other contenders,


among them German Chancellor Angela Merkel, American Micro- soft founder Bill Gates, and South African President Jacob Zuma. Needless to say, Putin’s KGB se- cret police credentials no doubt sealed the deal. Sadly the respected aura of Chinese sage Confucius is again being misused for political propa- ganda by the very forces in Main- land China who once attempted to discredit him. In the 1970’s the Chinese Communist Party’s virulent anti-Confucius Campaign reached fever pitch in trying to besmirch and then eradicate the thoughts of Confucius. When the People’s Republic gained the “China seat” in the UN in 1971, one of the first things Beijing’s diplomats demanded was that a quotation of Confucius hanging in the UN headquarters, be removed at once as it “offended the New China!” In today’s PRC of course, Con-


fucius has been “reappraised” and regained his rightful standing. While the Confucius Peace prize is not being awarded through any official Chinese Ministry, a cynical canard to counter Liu Xiaobo’s No- bel no doubt came from on high. One can only imagine that the Confucius Peace Prize committee is already sifting through a formida- ble list of contenders for next year’s award; among them Syrian Presi- dent Bashar Al-Assad to honor his bloody domestic crackdowns, Zim- babwe’s Comrade President Robert Mugabe for ruining the country, or a posthumous award to Libya’s Colonel Mummar Gaddafi for his forty year rule of terror. Whether Vladmir Putin lists the Confucius peace Prize among his foreign political accolades when he runs for Russian President next year is debatable. But if there is a positive story to come from this political farce, it would be to shed new light on the plight of Profes- sor Liu Xiaobo and his continued incarceration.


John J. Metzler is a United Na-


tions correspondent covering diplo- matic and defense issues. he is the author of Transatlantic Divide; The USA/Euroland Rift? (University Press, 2010).


FAILURE OR SUCCESS Many people


by Thomas Sowell Syndicated Columnist


are lamenting the failure of the Congres- sional “Super Committee” to come up with an agreement on ways to re- duce the run- away federal deficits. But you cannot


judge success or failure without knowing what the goal was. If you think the goal was to solve


the country’s fiscal crisis, then obviously the Super Committee was a complete failure. But, if you think the goal was to improve the chances of the Obama adminis- tration being re-elected in 2012, it was a complete success. Imagine that there had been


no Super Committee in the first place. Who would be blamed for the country’s fiscal crisis? The overwhelmingly Democratic Congress that voted to spend the money which increased the deficits more during the Obama administration than in the eight years of George W. Bush. When the Obama administra-


tion’s massive spending spree was going on, Republicans were so hopelessly outnumbered in both houses of Congress that nothing that the Congressional Republi- cans could say or do would have the slightest effect. Even the cleverest political spin-


master would have a hard time trying to keep blame from falling on the Obama administration, without the later shift of attention


to the debt crisis. Two things got the blame shift-


ed. The first was the national debt ceiling, which had to be raised, if politicians were not going to be forced to either cut existing programs or shut down the gov- ernment -- neither of which was politically attractive. By the time a vote on raising


the national debt ceiling was re- quired, Republicans had gotten control of the House of Repre- sentatives. This meant that the national debt issue was now a bipartisan issue, whereas the spending that drove the national debt up to that national debt ceil- ing had been a problem strictly for the Democrats. Splitting the blame with the


Republicans for what Democrats alone had done was a political victory, in terms of making the Obama administration less vul- nerable at the polls in 2012. With the help of the media, the


big issue was no longer the big spending that drove the national debt up to the legal ceiling, but the failure of the Republicans to help solve the debt ceiling crisis. Many people lamented the fail-


ure of President Obama to become engaged in the process of working out a solution to the fiscal crisis, and regarded that as a failing. But, again, success or failure de- pends on what goal you are trying to achieve. If the goal was to reach a bi-


partisan solution to the country’s fiscal crisis, then the president’s involvement might have increased the chances of doing that. But, if


See SOWELL on 8


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