Well, the results are in: The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to none other than our own President Barack Obama. But it seems that many Americans — both liberals and conservatives alike — feel the president hasn’t actually done anything to deserve this award. I, however, don’t necessarily agree.

President Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. In 1979, Carter allowed the Shah of Iran to be overthrown by Grand Ayatollah Khomeini, leading to the oh-so-friendly Islamic Republic of Iran that we know and love today.

The Shah was a powerful, pro-American ally in the Middle East, and even Carter himself praised Iran as an “island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.” But Carter refused to assist the Shah in crushing the revolution — supported by Iranians partially because of the Shah’s pro-Western policies — and an Islamic Republic was born.

This Islamic Republic brought about the Iran hostage crisis, in which American embassy workers were kept from leaving Iran until Ronald Reagan’s presidency. This was despite a failed rescue attempt of the workers by Carter. The revolution also brought about the Iran-Iraq war in 1980, in which hundreds of thousands died. And still today, the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran is one of the most dangerous possibilities for America and its allies.

Yet, Carter was given the Nobel Peace Prize “…for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts…”

It would seem, then, that the criteria which the last president of the United States was given the Nobel Peace Prize for was his ability to do exactly the opposite of what he supposedly earned the award for — finding peaceful solutions to international conflicts — especially in regards to Iran.

Based on those criteria, Obama is the perfect candidate for this award. He was selected “…for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”

Yet today we face the very real threat of a soon-to-be nuclear-armed Iran. Obama has, if anything, probably helped embolden Iran by giving America the appearance of weakness and naivety through his willingness to meet with Iran without preconditions and his unwillingness to even consider or threaten the use of force against Iran. He even said last month that “serious additional sanctions remain a possibility” if negotiations with Iran fail.

Thus, by doing nothing, he is actually a perfect candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.

All joking aside though, the Nobel Peace Prize has shown a common trend of rewarding the wrong person for the wrong thing, which tends to make the awarding appear biased. It should come as no surprise, then, that Obama won it, regardless of his accomplishments or lack thereof.

If you doubt this, just ponder the fact that, although Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama have received the Nobel Peace Prize, President Ronald Reagan did not. This is regardless of the fact that he won the Cold War without the use of any direct force against the Soviet Union. The award was instead given to Mikhail Gorbachev, the president of the Soviet Union.

Blake Hasenmiller is a senior in industrial engineering and ecomonics from DeWitt.