Obama Accepts Nobel Peace Prize

It's an award many people said he shouldn't get. But despite worldwide skepticism, President Barack Obama traveled to Oslo Thursday to accept the Nobel Peace Prize at a formal awards ceremony. He spoke for 36 minutes while scooping up his prize, and humbly made it clear he's fully aware that many people — perhaps himself included — thought it was awarded a bit too prematurely.

"I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated. In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage," Obama told the crowd, according to The New York Times. "Compared to some of the giants of history who have received this prize — [Albert] Schweitzer and [Martin Luther] King, [George] Marshall and [Nelson] Mandela — my accomplishments are slight."

Unless you're off living in a Winter Wonderland, you probably also know that last week Obama ordered 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan, a move that many see as counter to the mission of the Peace Prize. But Obama defended his actions, arguing that, "we lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it is easy, but when it is hard."

One of the most interesting aspects of the ceremony is we finally learned why the Nobel committee chose to bestow the award upon Obama, only the third sitting president to receive the prize since Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, endowed it a century ago.

In short, it seems the Nobel committee was moved by the simple act of his election. Nobel chairman Thorbjorn Jagland explained at the start of the ceremony that Obama's leadership had been a "call to action for all of us." He referenced King, the winner of the prize in 1964, as he turned to Obama, saying, "Dr. King's dream has come true."

We see his point. It's been 144 years since the abolition of slavery, and the Nobel committee's award reminds us of just how far we've come.

Photo courtesy of Steve Jurvetson via Wikimedia Commons.