Barack Obama’s ten days at the helm of the U.S. I don’t think quite earned him the nomination for the peace prize. Instead the committee, as in the case with Carter and Gore, is drawing on the former respect that the Nobel once garnered to influence contemporary policy. I think the message is that Obama is now supposed to get out of Afghanistan, leave Iraq, sign cap-and-trade, defer to the U.N., and shun the Israelis — just the sort of thing that is likely to make war much more likely.