Once upon a time, in a land called America, awards were given to people who had actually done something to deserve them. In the good old days the kid who carried the team was named the Most Valuable Player. Nowadays every kid gets a trophy or a plaque proving that he or she was there. This supposedly makes each person feel that they were of value to the team. What it actually does is diminish the prestige of the award given the kid who really amounted to something.

And once upon a time, the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize was conferred upon people who actually did something to foster peace. President Woodrow Wilson, for example, was cited in 1919 for creating the League of Nations, a grand attempt to promote world peace which failed miserably. America's Cordell Hull won the 1945 award for his work initiating the founding of the United Nations, a successor to the League of Nations, which has similarly failed to produce.

In 1950, America's Ralph Bunche received the accolade for his 1948 work as mediator in Palestine. The 1953 Nobel Peace Prize went to General George Marshall, creator of the Marshall Plan to aid economic recovery of post-World War II Europe.

But along about then the criteria for what it takes to win a Nobel Peace Prize changed direction. The prize started going to folks who talked a good game but didn't actually do anything.

One notable exception is the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., for his civil rights campaigns which, as we all know, actually bore fruit.

In '73, Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho of South Vietnam were awarded the prize for negotiating the Vietnam Peace Accord. Le Duc Tho declined his prize. Those of us who still study history know how long that peace lasted.

The one noteworthy thing James Earl "Jimmy" Carter did during the debacle of his presidency was to persuade Israel's Menachem Begin and Egypt's Anwar Sadat to sign the Camp David peace accord. For his efforts, Georgia's peanut farmer got nothing; the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize went to Begin and Sadat. For his efforts, Sadat was assassinated in 1981 by Islamic Jihad and a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot, which became al-Qaeda.

And get this: in 1990 the Nobel Peace Prize went to Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the USSR, for "helping to bring the Cold War to an end."

What a joke.

The man who actually did bring it to an end was President Ronald Wilson Reagan, who in a 1987 speech at Germany's Brandenburg Gate, demanded, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this [Berlin] wall!"

One other example of people who do, as opposed to people who talk, winning the award was when an organization, Doctors Without Borders, won the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize. That group continues to work around the globe today, at great personal risk to themselves.

Perhaps emulating the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences "lifetime achievement awards," given to actors never judged good enough in their own films to win an Oscar but who have lived a long time, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Jimmy Carter in 2002 "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts."

In other words, we feel sorry for you, Jimmy. Kind of like giving a plaque to the kid who sat on the end of the bench, guarding the water bucket. You couldn't get it done, but thanks for playing.

Now comes electrifying news that President Barack Obama is the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner, "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

What a joke.

The man has accomplished absolutely nothing to foster peace. He signed an executive order allocating over $20 million to resettle Palestinians in America, has extended an open palm to Ima Dinner Jacket in Iran, and along the way as president of the United States bowed to a foreign ruler while on his world tour apologizing for America's being the world's guardian of freedom.
Just before being named the Nobel Peace Prize recipient, in fact, all major news services reported America's Commander-In-Chief would be holding meetings with advisors, as he does not know what to do about the situation in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan. That place where America is at war. That place where our young men and women are in harm's way for freedom's sake. And the Nobel Peace Prize winner has no idea what to do about it.

Forgive me for asking, but shouldn't the Nobel Peace Prize be granted to someone who actually does something, instead of to someone who only talks a good game?

Nat Harwell is a long-time resident of Newton County. His columns appear regularly on Sundays.