Barack Obama has become the third sitting American president to win the Nobel Peace Prize. This announcement has exhilarated constituents and shocked detractors. To his opponents, the award is shamelessly hypocritical. The president is a CEO of war. With monthly spending rapidly increasing - from $2 billion in October 2008 to $6.7 billion in October 2009 - and with Obama's request for $65 billion for 2010 in the pipeline (minus even an influx of troops), the Nobel Committee has, one can argue, degraded the award's very purpose.

But conducting war does not necessarily preclude an American president from winning humanity's highest honor. Theodore Roosevelt was the Nobel Laureate in 1909, and he possessed a warrior's spirit and a big-game hunter's appetite. Woodrow Wilson mobilized an entire continent to brutally thwart a growing imperialist menace in Europe. Even Jimmy Carter militarized local conflicts in El Salvador and other parts of Central America. In spite of these conscious decisions to empower war makers (or actually precipitate war itself), Roosevelt (the Conservationist), Wilson (the Internationalist), and Carter (the Mediator) all deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. So does Barack Obama.

The Nobel Committee is no doubt familiar with Gandhi's philosophy of ahimsa (i.e., non-violence). Perhaps they are thinking in terms of Gandhian realism when they acknowledge the complexity of Obama's challenges. Gandhi once said that there is "much violence in nonviolence and much nonviolence in violence." The Norwegians, in choosing Obama, have taken Gandhi's aphorism to be a profound truth.

In their wise estimate, Obama's remarkable performance as a political candidate has brought hope to millions and salvaged the moral integrity of a powerful country. Although his entanglement in two inherited wars makes way for criticism of their choice, they have wagered everything that deep down in his soul the president truly desires peace. They have wagered everything that Obama is willing to sacrifice personal safety for the attainment of international security, and that his speeches on race relations, nuclear disarmament, and pluralistic freedom are historically significant.

Even though we live in a world where peace must, at times, be obtained through violent means, Obama is, in the long run, a man who serves a God of peace and hope rather than terror and corruption. Along with the Nobel Committee, the Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence believes that President Barack Hussein Obama is committed to peace and steadfastly opposed to war.

As Americans, we should be proud of Obama. The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize is the world telling America that she still stands for nobility and truth, and that her national character is still ripe for social and spiritual maturation. In many people's eyes, Obama is the crowning achievement of a democracy that has managed to surprise itself by surpassing itself. We are in no position to disinherit this award, because the world has freely and graciously bestowed it upon us. We should all accept this Nobel with exceeding gratitude and with a refueled ambition to actively cultivate peace on every ground we tread.

GEORGE PAYNE, ROCHESTER

(Payne is a 2009-2010 AmeriCorps member and Service Learning Coordinator at the Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence at the University of Rochester.)