The first time we saw a proposal that the Nobel Prize for Peace be given to the men and women of the American Army was a decade ago. It was proposed by a professor in New Jersey, N.J. Kressel, in an editorial page article in the Jewish Forward. A year later, when American G.I.s were once again rushing into harm’s way in an effort to avert a war — in October of 1994, it was during a new outbreak of tension in the Persian Gulf — the Forward issued a formal editorial (under the above title) in support of the idea, though the Nobel Committee was already preparing to give the prize to Yasser Arafat. For some period thereafter, the newspaper continued to nurse the notion. Today, as we enter Nobel Prize season with American G.I.s again dying on the field of battle in support of freedom for America’s friends in another country, we’re happy to pick up the theme.

The idea of giving a prize in peace to the American Army, which is a group of fighting men and women, may at first seem a contradiction in terms. But the American G.I. — and we speak here of both G.I. Joe and G.I. Jane — is an unusual institution. The mission of our Army has always been noble, from the War of Independence, to the preservation of the Union, to the destruction of the Central Powers, to the defeat of the Axis. But with each passing decade in the post-World War II period, their expeditions have seemed ever more idealistic, from Korea to Vietnam to the first war in the Gulf to the Battle of Iraq. Today, 130,000 G.I.s are stationed in Iraq, where, after toppling what even skeptics of the war concede was one of the most bestial regimes on the planet, they are hunted by shadowy forces intent on defeating an embryonic free and democratic government.

There are a number of worthy candidates for the prize in peace, including, we don’t mind saying, a dying Catholic pope, John Paul II, who played such a heroic role during the climactic years of the Cold War, or Wei Jing Sheng, the erstwhile electrician who, back in the 1980s in the face of Red China’s ridiculous program of “Four Modernizations,” posted his famous essay, “The Fifth Modernization, Democracy.” It takes nothing from their heroism, however, to observe that for selflessness, for a cheerful willingness to put his or her life on the line, none has a better, nobler record than the men and women of the American armed forces. They have shown the world that while war may be hell, soldiers need not be the devil. Much of Europe may have stood down from this fight, but there was never a moment of flinching by the G.I.s who went into it. Nor is there now, and few would have understood their spirit better than Alfred Nobel.