Daniel Henninger thinks so:

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee will announce its 2005 winner in October. I think that this year the voters of Iraq should receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

They have already won the world’s peace prize by demonstrating in a single day a commitment not seen in our lifetime to peace, self-determination and human rights–the goals for which the Nobel Peace Prize began in 1901. Formal recognition by the Nobel Committee of what the Iraqi people did on Jan. 30 would do more to ensure the furtherance of these goals, in concrete ways, than any other imaginable recipient this year. Who did more?

The history of the Peace Prize shows as well that Iraq’s voters placed themselves squarely at the center of one of the Nobel Committee’s enduring, seemingly quixotic, goals–peace in the Middle East.

On at least three occasions, the Prize has been awarded to individuals attempting Middle East peace. Ralph Bunche received the Prize in 1950 for work as mediator in Palestine a few years before. Then Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin won in 1976 and in 1994 it went to Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat. Cynics would argue that Arafat deserves another Peace Prize for dying. The way to trump the region’s well-earned reputation for lost causes would be to reward the eight million Iraqi idealists who rejected the cynics who offered death and subjugation over the difficulties of negotiating a democracy.

I like the joke about Arafat. And I also like that idea. This year seems to be the year of democracy, as all of the peace prize nominations we’re hearing about are going to democratic revolutionaries. While seeing Yushchenko and Saakashvili get it would make me smile, it is still to be seen if the reforms they make will create a lasting foundation for democracy in their countries. If they don’t get it this year, they will get it soon in the years following.

Daniel Henninger does makes the good point that giving the prize to the Iraqi people will be a boon to furthering democracy there. Just as how proud the Iraqi people are that they voted and are standing up for themselves, so too will the peace prize cement in their minds the honor and distinction of what they are doing.

This isn’t to say the people of Ukraine and Georgia do not deserve it. But since there has to be a choice, the future of Iraq is assumedly much more blurry so the symbolism would serve a much greater solidifier of purpose.