Hegseth’s Noble Nobel

We’re delighted to read that our secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, has come out for bestowing the Nobel Peace Prize on G.I. Joe. This came at his press conference today. “The one institution that should win the Nobel Peace Prize every single year is the United States military,” the secretary of war said. He suggested that it’s deserved “because we are the guarantor of the safety and security of not just our country, but of a lot of people in this world.”Bravo, we say. It happens that the Sun has for years now been calling for the Nobel in peace to go to our military men and women. The most recent editorial to make that pitch was issued less than a year ago. The idea, though, goes back further than the current Sun, to when the Jewish Daily Forward, which we were editing at the time, published an op-ed piece by a professor in New Jersey, N.J. Kressel. He called for just the idea that excites Secretary Hegseth.The piece by Mr. Kressel was issued by the Forward in 1993. A year later it was formally endorsed by the Forward in an editorial called “A Nobel Prize for G.I. Joe.” The widely-read American Legion magazine, in November 1996, reprinted the piece and gave it the cover. Nearly a decade later, the Sun issued — also under the headline “A Nobel Prize for G.I. Joe” — its own endorsement of the proposal. “The idea of giving a prize in peace to the American Army, which is a group of fighting men and women, may at first seem a contradiction in terms,” we said in our own endorsement in 2003. “But the American G.I. — and we speak here of both G.I. Joe and G.I. Jane — is an unusual institution.” We argued that the mission of our Army — our independence, our union, the defeat of the Central and Axis powers, Korea and Vietnam — was always noble.That sentiment was underscored last year when the United States Army, which predates the formation of the federal government, celebrated its 250th anniversary with a parade at Washington. The liberal press begrudged the pomp, with the Times grousing about the “tremendous scene” at the capital. Yet the celebration struck these columns as an apt way to mark the achievements of a force that has to a degree that is rare in history united might with right.It’s hard to think, in any event, of a historical moment when the logic of a Nobel Prize in Peace for G.I. Joe and G.I. Jane is more compelling than it is now. Our military seeks to defeat a tyranny so as to disarm a nation of 93 million persons who suffer under a regime that threatens a vast region. What a wonderful signal it would send for the Norwegians to recognize the peacemaking role of America’s military in a world on edge.

Hegseth’s Noble Nobel

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