Below are all the American Presidents and Vice Presidents who have received the Nobel Peace Prize, in order from first to most recent.  It was an educational experience to review all the awards since the first was given in 1901.  That bears on whether the Peace Prize just awarded to President Obama is a positive or negative thing with respect to international war and peace.

1906 - (President) Theodore Roosevelt who “drew up the 1905 peace treaty between Russia and Japan.”   This was an actual shooting war, which ended with the treaty which Roosevelt negotiated.

1919 - (President) Woodrow Wilson as “Founder of the League of Nations.”  The fatal failure of the League of Nations was a major contributing factor in the outbreak of World War II.  Had the League acted against Italy for its brutal invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, Germany might have been discouraged from invading Poland three years later.  Major powers had a veto power on League actions, so Italy and Germany could and did prevent the League from acting to protect its member state concerning Ethiopia.  The U.N. shares the same veto defect.

1925 - (Vice President) Charles Gates Dawes as “Chairman of the Allied Reparation Commission.”  The reparations required to be paid by Germany, and the schedule for those, are recognized now as one of other contributing factors to the German institution of World War II.

2002 - Jimmy Carter, Jr. for “his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development “ Anyone who chooses can look up the number of dictatorial governments, their murderous habits, and fake elections to keep them in power. which Carter has supported for decades.

2007 - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Albert A. Gore “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change....”  Of course, the world is now cooling, not warming, so the mantra has been changed to “climate change.”  The more prosperous any nation is, and the more of its people who are employed, the better their health and welfare.  Damaging economies and putting people out of work so all Gore’s work based on false science will have negative consequences.  The only question is, how bad will they be?

2009 - Barack Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”  As even Barack Obama acknowledged in his remarks this morning, he has not accomplished anything to justify this award.  He therefore accepted it as “encouragement for his policies.”

        One each of the prior U.S. presidents and vice presidents who received the Nobel Peace Prize received them for their policies coming out of World War I.  That is Woodrow Wilson and Charles Dawes.  The historians who have described the contributing causes of World War II, the deadliest war in human history, so far.  Both of those men helped to create World War II, and that happened because of policies for which they had received the Nobel Peace Prize.

        One of the questions raised about the award just announced for Obama is whether it is pure politics, intended to help Obama and set back his opponents. A bias in favor of peace at any cost is not new for this award.  Just bring up the official winners since 1901, select all of the winning organizations which have the word “peace” in their names.

        Look up the histories of those organizations, and you’ll find that the peace awards have always been in favor of the “peaceniks,” as they are called, with limited recognition that peace sometimes depends on deterring powerful and dictatorial regimes.

        If there is another world war, beginning in the Middle East, the deaths and damage may exceed those from World War II.  And if that happens, part of the cause will be the policies of the man who will receive the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.  It will be 1919 and 1925 all over again.