How Obama Can Earn the Peace Prize

Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize was more of a nudge toward peace than a recognition of his accomplishments in pursuit of it. Juan Cole of Salon offers some ways Obama could live up to the award:

• Get out of Iraq on time. We’ve done what we can, and the sides there are more likely to compromise without us.
• Don’t bomb Iran. It would make them rush to build a nuclear weapon at all costs; our only option would be full-scale war.

• Stop the CIA drone assassinations. “It is illegal and shameful.” If the US military isn’t in charge of defending the country by force, then we’re a police state.
• Get the Palestinians a state, even if you have to recognize them unilaterally. “Palestinian statelessness is the biggest human rights scandal in the world.”
• Stick to the plan and get out of Afghanistan in 2011. Karzai and the generals will try to keep us there for decades. Let them, and this award is meaningless.