Last Wednesday, someone said to me that Jimmy Carter, however nice he might be, is one of history’s losers.

The following Friday, Carter was notified that he was to receive the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. Who says irony is dead?

Luckily, for his sake, the man who called Carter a loser isn’t the only one eating his words as a result of Friday’s Nobel Peace Prize announcement.

Many commentators have criticized comments made by Gunnar Berge, chairman of the committee that awarded the former president, for saying that this year’s award was “unequivocally” intended to criticize “the present U.S. administration.”

President Bush, in case you’re still in the mood for irony, was also a nominee for this year’s prize.

Such criticisms are shallow. They misrepresent the nature of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The selection committee is essentially a government panel, appointees of the Norwegian Parliament, meaning the frame of mind for deliberations is political from the start.

Further, the prizes must have some political context because recipients do not emerge from a vacuum.

Their work has a direct impact on the political world.

And by recognizing the work of some, the committee indirectly disparages the work of others.

In 1987, for example, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez won for his work in orchestrating the Latin American peace plan.

The fact that the plan was necessary because of American support of the Contras could mean that Sanchez’s Nobel Peace Prize was also a criticism of the American administration.

The committee also shows favoritism in its choices.

This was abundantly clear just two years ago when Kim Dae-jung of South Korea received the prize for his efforts to assuage tense relations with North Korea.

The committee did not reciprocate by awarding North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, implying either that these negotiations were one-sided or that only South Korea’s effort counted.

Do we really have the right to cry about the politicization of the prizes when they have been equally (and sometimes far more) political in the past?

For us to do so now shows either ignorance of or indifference to previous controversies, and I’m not sure which is better.

What has surfaced from this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is nothing new if our concern is that the awards are political.

Our collective outrage is a variation on the “Don’t say that about my sister” doctrine. Criticism is fine when it comes from within.

To use the metaphor my doctrine implies, I could say anything I wanted about my own sister.

But if you said something similar to my own remarks, it would be cause for a fight.

Similarly, criticism of American policy is suitable when it comes from Americans.

But from others, as was evident during the recent German elections and protests in foreign capitals, it unifies Americans in a way that war cannot.

Are we really so thin-skinned that we would admonish a man simply for verbalizing what should be abundantly clear to us?

American policy should not be assembled by the arguments of yes-men — especially our foreign policy, since it directly affects everyone in the world.

Our foreign policy should acknowledge that the stands we take will not always be popular.

We should see Berge’s remarks as an opportunity to assert who we are and what we stand for.

Criticism of criticism does nothing.

Only when we stand up to the negative comments of others will our policies begin to lead others in a positive way.

Keegan Drake

is columnist at the Oklahoma Daily at the University of Oklahoma. His column appears courtesy of U-Wire.