Leo's Not Amused

I see where Mohamed ElBaradei has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. While I'm more than a little skeptical about the value of this prize, and of the appropriateness of some of the past choices of recipients, this year Mr. ElBaradei is a pretty reasonable choice. At least, he seems that way to me. But to the professionally-disgruntled Leo Morris, the award seems to have been quite offensive. Mr. Morris complains that Mr. ElBaradei was unsuccessful in preventing Iran and North Korea from constructing nuclear weapons. (Does Iran, in fact, have nukes? Uncle Leo doesn't exactly claim that they have; he merely makes a weaselly implication to that effect.) Mr. ElBaradei's real offense, however, was in saying that the Wee Emperor, George II, was talking nonsense about what Iraq had and didn't have -- and being correct about it. Some things just can't be forgiven.

Perhaps Mr. Morris is correct, though, when he says Mr. ElBaradei was not successful in restraining those who should have been restrained in the interest of peace. After all, he failed miserably to prevent President Chickenhawk from painting the ground red, in Afghanistan and Iraq, with other people's blood. Of course, Mr. Baradei could claim that he was as powerless to control Mr. Bush's bloodthirstiness as he was to prevent unapproved regimes from getting unapproved weapons. But it's never too late for the U.N. to mend its ways. Some sort of international alliance -- a Coalition of the Willing -- should come together to put a "coercive inspections" program in place to get nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons out of the Pentagon's hands. After all, the regime on the Potomac has actually proved, over and over again, that it cannot be trusted with WMDs.