President Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize last week, and it may be the first time the Nobel Committee, based in Norway, gave out the award based on potential rather than concrete accomplishments.

Obama himself admitted as much, and more than a few Democrats were scratching their heads over the award. For the presidents’s detractors, apoplexy is the only word to describe their reaction.

William Kristol said Obama shouldn’t accept the award from the anti-American Nobel Committee. Rush Limbaugh said the prize places Obama in cahoots with the European leftist elite.

Kristol, who has been wrong about everything he’s ever written about — such as Iraq — is, surprise, wrong again. The Nobel Committee is not anti-American, as it proved this year, but it is anti-conservative American. The committee, like the world, spent eight years gagging while American neoconservatives used the military to solve all problems. Such a one-note foreign policy was anathema not only to peace but to America’s strength and moral standing.

When citing Obama, the committee noted his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Witness the Cairo speech and the fact Obama wants to initiate a dialogue with Iran.

The Taliban and al Qaeda, still in the cross hairs of America’s military, denounced the award putting America’s right-wing pundits and tea-party jihadists in good company. Don’t expect the domestic critics to follow Obama’s lead in diplomacy.

Obama is the third sitting U.S. president to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The first was Teddy Roosevelt, an anti-corporation environmentalist, in 1906, for brokering a peace deal between Russia and China. In 1919, Woodrow Wilson won for his role in ending World War I.

The Nobel Committee has given Obama a wake-up call. It said that the world welcomes a U.S. leader with visions of cooperation instead of conservatism that demands the U.S. make and maintain enemies.

So far, it’s been easy for Obama to talk the talk. Now he has to walk the walk. He has to end the American bloodletting in Afghanistan and set up a plan for withdrawal as he’s done with Iraq. He can’t perpetuate the wars his predecessor entered.

Domestically, he’ll always have detractors who are fueled by racism and hate. Obama needs to ignore them and pursue the policies that brought him to the Peace Prize.

The world has given you a thumbs up, Mr. President. It’s time to play hardball with those who would happily thwart your vision and keep the U.S. an isolated, warrior nation.

Stephen Dick can be reached by href="mailto:steve.dick@heraldbulletin.com">Clicking Here