Over at CNN they're handing out 'Hero' awards. The Academy Awards is coming up in February. And just next week we get the Kennedy Center Honors. Like the awards presentations at the end of an athletic season, these events tend to cluster around the end of the year. Just in time for the end of the Bush Administration comes the International Medal of Peace. It was awarded today to our president, George W. Bush.
Rick Warren, Elmer Gantry award winning pastor, made the presentation on behalf of The Global Peace Coalition, an organization of churches and businesses, in recognition of Mr. Bush's contribution to the fight against AIDS. Some might find incongruous the very notion of giving a man who started two foreign wars an award for international peace. Others may question the real achievements in the fight against AIDS of a man who has waged an eight year crusade against condom distribution. Many on first reading the story thought it was a plant by The Onion. But if Henry Kissinger could win a Nobel Peace Prize, why shouldn't Mr. Bush get the far humbler International Medal of Peace?
After all Bush has completely destroyed only two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan. Well, three if you count the U.S. Then there's Georgia and Iceland. Thailand is spinning into chaos, Congo and Somalia are already there, but we can't really blame Bush for those. Can we? Anyway it's not like he started an actual world war. Unless you count the global war on terror. That's not really a war – is it? Although GWOT does seem to be killing a surprising number of people around the globe.
But as Pastor Warren points out, this award is being given for Mr. Bush's contribution to the "fight against HIV/AIDS and other diseases," not specifically for the cause of peace. Even though AIDS rates seem to be rising. And even though the award is called the International Peace Medal.
Puzzled readers will be glad to know there is a very good explanation for all this. It's only confusing if you make the mistake of defining peace as the absence of war, health as the absence of illness. Whereas Dr. Warren would be the first to point out that the Bible is rife with examples of the need for burnt sacrifices and offerings to God as a necessary precondition for peace and health. And here's where we see just how much ahead of the pack the good Dr. Warren really is. Mr. Bush has consistently produced burnt offerings since September of 2001. Tens of thousands of Americans, killed or maimed. Many tens of thousands more Iraqis and Afghans. And if you count all those who may have contracted AIDS in the last eight years because of Bush's opposition to condoms, the total of burnt sacrifices may well soar into the millions.
With all the peace offerings Mr. Bush has produced on his watch, the coming Pax Bushiana should be the peace to end all peace. Indeed, we may already be experiencing it. After such a performance, let's not begrudge the man his medal.