“Right now, I could kill George Bush,” she said. “No, I don’t mean that. How could you nonviolently kill somebody? I would love to be able to do that.” As she made her point, she chuckled and some members of the audience laughed.
Pop quiz time. Who spoke those words? And no fair using Google. So… are we talking a terrorist leader? Or maybe just some left-wing nutcase? Environmental whacko? Cindy Sheehan?
Nope. Possibly. Nope. And nope.
Those words were spoken by none other than a Nobel Peace Prize winner – Betty Williams. Do not believe me? Check out the list of laureats – 1976, specifically. While you are at it, check out one of the winners for 1994.
If something can be said for the entire Nobel “Peace” Prize system, it is only that it is horribly misnamed – at least based upon its winners.
However, back to Betty Williams… She was, ironically enough, speaking at the International Women’s Peace Conference in Dallas… while speaking about killing someone. That is peaceful, alright. Of course, the comment itself is laughable, at best. “How could you nonviolently kill somebody?” Give me a gorram break, twit – killing someone has to be one of the more violent things you can do to someone, especially since it tends to be the last thing. To say that her logic skills are lacking would be putting it mildly. To say that her common sense skills are lacking would definitely be putting it mildly. To say that her public speaking skills are right on the mark… well, that would be putting it perfectly. Catering to the crowd is great and all, and that is exactly what she was doing, but there are limits to even that – offering to kill someone, “nonviolently” or not, is over that limit.
Of course, once people started calling her on the carpet for her comments, she apologized for them:
“My feelings now and again get way ahead of me,” Ms. Williams said. “I couldn’t kill anybody, but I must confess that I’m extremely angry with the Bush administration and what they have done. To say that was wrong.”
That is… after she tried lying to cover her tracks:
Questioned about her speech Thursday morning, Ms. Williams initially denied making the comment but reversed course after organizers confirmed the quote.
Funny how her course keeps changing any time anyone calls her out. And, to make it even better, this was not the first time she has made comments like these:
Last July, she made an almost identical comment about wanting to “kill George Bush” to a group of schoolchildren in Brisbane, Australia. She said her point was that it is hard to be nonviolent when there are so many atrocities in the world.
Uh…. what? What the bleeding hell do all of the atrocities in the world have to do with killing the President? Oh, wait, all of those atrocities are his fault, right? So killing him would just magically solve all of those atrocities, right? Pathetic.
She apologized. I will grant her that. But this is after lying about her comments, making the comments, and then making the comments previously to a group of children. Being of Irish descent as I am, I will certainly admit that what she did for the peace process in Northern Ireland was no doubt quite useful and important and all that good stuff – God knows that conflict was atrociously bloody. But nothing of what she did grants her the right to mouth off about killing people, especially since she is an example of someone who has won a prize for the propagation and advocacy of… well… peace. I must have missed where killing someone was “peaceful”.
I certainly do not agree with everything that President Bush has done in his time in office, conservative Christian and flaming heterosexual though I may be. However, offering to kill someone simply because of their viewpoints… That makes Betty no better than the terrorists and murderers on either side of the Northern Ireland conflict that she so nobly helped make peace between. Her words were disgusting, and she is affront and an insult to anyone else who received the Peace Prize – meaningless though it may have been rendered by other laureats.
Trackposted to Outside the Beltway
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Having been at the peace conference in Dallas last week, I too was disappointed in Betty’s comment about Bush, although hearing her story and all those of victims of violence explains, if not excuses, her feelings. I must add that among the conference speakers were several other female Nobel Laureates, many international leaders and dozens of innovative social entrepreneurs — each one having accomplished great strides in non-violent progress around the world– not to mention the hundreds of us delegates who are working in our own personal spheres for creative, collaborative solutions to conflict. Sadly, the press did not choose to quote those amazing speeches and stories — only Betty’s slip of the tongue. So, once again, even from our inspirational conference, violence is the message the people heard.
Thanks for sharing your experiences from the conference, Anne. I am somewhat disappointed that the news only focused on what Betty said, but considering just how very much out of line it was, it is no great surprise.
That said, I have a very hard time believing this was a “slip of the tongue” – especially since she has said things like this in the past. Additionally, there are no real excuses for that kind of thing, especially from someone of her stature and nature – being a diplomat, of sorts, for the Nobel orgnization and the Peace Prize in specific, she has to understand that all of her public words bear a lot more weight than a “normal” person’s would, and not thinking them through before she speaks is just… well… thoughtless, to put it as politely as I can.