US President Barack Obama is just a lucky guy--always getting his way against every odd. Sometimes without even trying, almost happy-go-luckily: his prayers are answered before they are uttered, even before hands are lifted or knees are bent.

Otherwise, how can a president who is already fighting four different atrocious wars--a war of occupation in Iraq, a war of attrition in Afghanistan, a proxy war in Somalia through the hands of Ethiopia, and a mopping-up operation in Pakistan; and preparing to start a fifth against the Islamic Republic of Iran, be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize? Is it a joke?

If it is, it will be on us. There is certainly a contradiction here; but it is not in Obama: it is in the prize itself, it is in the world in which it is given and in some of the unquestioned assumptions on which international norms are based. And before Obama many others steeped in warfare or so-called negotiations to end them have been honoured with the prize. But for the Watergate scandal, for instance, US President Richard Milhous Nixon could have got it. Because of it, there was drama even with his nomination.

In 1972 President Idi Amin Dada of Uganda wrote a telegram to US President Richard Nixon congratulating him on his nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, a message which Amin ended with an observation saying, but Your Excellency, "whoever nominated you must have been joking!"

Distracted by the Watergate scandal and fully exploited by Henry Kissinger, Nixon had allowed the Secretary of State to muddle up both the immediate issue of the Vietnam War, on account of which he [Kissinger] would share the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with a reluctant Le Duc Tho; and the Middle East question, on account of whose Camp David accord, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin would receive theirs five years later.

But despite the Nobel Prize, which co-winner Le Duc Tho, a member of Vietnam's politburo, refused to accept, the so-called achievements of Kissinger's Mideast summitry went up in the flames of the never-fully-quenched Tet Offensive that soon swept the scenery, now emptied of Americans who had avoided defeat with dishonor. According to Nixon, what America got was "peace with honour"--the honour of long-distance runners, because they had to run all the way from Vietnam back to America.

And for its part, the spirit of Camp David was torn to shreds by Laureate Begin in his pig-headed decision to invade Lebanon in the very year he received his prize. After 16 more years of war, another invasion of Lebanon, more summitry and road maps, going through Oslo to Wye, the Nobel Peace Prize went to Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat.

They were all in eminent company. When US President Woodrow Wilson received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919, it was honour for someone who had successfully spread the carpet of US and Western imperialism to cover most of the world; and what sweet irony that it should fall to the lot of Obama, another US president, to begin the process of rolling it back--albeit with the exception of some Persian rugs. The real denouement for any crisis is a return to its origin. And that is exactly what Alfred Nobel's dynamites are doing now. Conceived and made for violence, they were used in terror, and they became a means for attaining peace and rewarding peacemakers; and now, a recipient of its largesse is dropping dynamite on the heads of Afghan wedding guests.

In this case there a touch of bitter irony--it is not exactly a case of chickens coming home to roost: it is more like a case of roosters coming home--to chicken out. Certainly this is not supposed to be the destiny of the most powerful nation on earth.

For much of the world, America's greatness has reality and meaning only in the vision of its Founding Fathers and in the US Constitution-framers' intent of the promises in that great document, not in its military strength, and certainly not in the actions of its presidents. The meaning of Obama lies in how he has come to approximate, to personify and to bridge the gap between ideals and realities of the American Dream, and reassure the world of the end of international impunity.

With his coming, even those not cowed by the awe of America's military prowess nor enticed by its technology of convenience were conquered by the sincerity and easy eloquence of this humane occupant of the White House. He has brought to the presidency an experience and a mindset all the others before him could only have imagined, and even that only imperfectly. He could easily be the Other; because he is in many ways already the Other.

But whatever the world thinks of Obama's new Nobel laurel and no matter how contradictory or incongruous his winning a medal of peace while his country under his watch is at war, the fact remains that he is no less qualified than many others before him. He is in fact more qualified than one celebrated winner whose only qualification and contribution to world peace was Nazi-hunting. Though severely circumscribed--he had to mention the Holocaust mantra even in his acknowledgement of winning the prize--Obama is closer to what Alfred Nobel stipulated in his 1895 will that the peace prize should be given "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses."

A single eloquent Obama statement, ringing with genuine concern and candour, would do and had done more for the cause of world peace and the easing of tension in the world than the entire handiwork of all the Nobel Peace Prize laureates before him. Taking just one area of the world--the Muslim World--his Acceptance Speech, his Inaugural Speech, his speech to the Turkish Parliament and his outreach in Cairo have served to melt six decades of bottled up Muslim fury in a way nothing else could have done. This is despite the fact that all of Obama's wars are against Muslim nations, which automatically makes his other war--the war for winning the hearts and minds of Muslims--a nonstarter; because those who could be won over have no hearts in the first place, and even if they did, they would never mind, anyway.

But in Cairo, Obama captured the essence of the moment: "So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, those who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. And this cycle of suspicion and discord must end." Well, Mr. President, let it.

Even though the Muslim World was not unaware that Obama would soon be cured of his illusions and ideals by the reality and peremptoriness of the power of the status quo, it didn't allow that to detract from the sweetness of the occasion.

Though it tried, the Nobel jury couldn't capture the moment in its full poignancy: "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future." His continuing appeal has gone beyond all that.

Here is a US president who means well, whose very presence inspires hope in the world; whose words ring true, just as his stated dreams will come true. Though it will probably not be Obama, the time is not far when an American president will come who can cut down Zionism to size, liberate the American spirit, so that American statesmen will work only for the interest of their republic and no one else. When that time comes we will see the American Republic out there fighting wars of liberation, not wars of attrition or occupation.