Three wars at once?

For those Norwegians to give Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize was just awful.

It exacerbates his own country's domestic political polarization and dysfunction. It does that mainly by reinforcing chauvinistic and odd and destructive conservative notions that to be popular in the world is to betray the essential macho pre-eminence of America.

Falling in line behind Jimmy Carter and Al Gore is not where your American president needs to be, politically speaking.

And the prize is simply unearned. Obama hasn't accomplished anything yet in terms of international peace. He has talked a good game. He has warmed up well in the bullpen and thrown some effective pitches in the first inning.

Then there's this little factor: It's thoroughly dubious to give the world's most prestigious peace prize to a guy who commands a military that wages two elective wars.

One was misbegotten and begun in the first place by a predecessor's lies. Obama promised to end it, but he is doing so with such cautious deliberation that his actions are essentially indistinguishable from those of that largely disgraced his predecessor.

The other is an ongoing, and soon to be escalated, sideswipe of a pitiable excuse for a nation because we happen to need the territory to look for the creepy murdering terrorists who are the ones with whom we have the real and serious score to settle.

I lean toward joining those on both the right and left who suggest Obama should have made a gracious demurral and declined this prize. I hesitate only on account of the likelihood that he might have stirred even greater folderol.

He was between a prize and a hard place. At least he won't keep the money.

But of all the commentary about the error and irony of Obama's prize, the cake was absolutely taken last week by a little gem of a right-wing essay I read only because it showed up in some of our media company's papers and on our Web site at arkansasnews.com.

This was in the interest of free dialogue and vigorous debate, I guess. So let's have some.

A conservative in New York named Bill Siegel wrote that the real irony of the prize was that Obama, by not starting a third elective American war to force regime change this time in Iran, would be singularly responsible for Iran's getting nuclear weapons. So, this fellow wrote, Obama would be singularly to blame for the tragic chaos in the world, the death and destruction and nuclear proliferation, and spikes in oil prices that would ensue.

Two wars at once that you started yourself -- that's one too few for any peace prize, I guess.

This writer ridiculed Obama for his hesitance to go into Iran and throw out the political and religious leadership.

And he ridiculed his insistence on trying first to pursue a policy of engagement by which we and our allies will attempt to talk with Iran about how it might become more forthcoming and cooperative and prove to us, if it can, that it enriches uranium for commercial purposes alone.

Failing that, this president talks about severe economic sanctions to try to isolate Iran.

This writer concludes that Obama's "charm," by which he refers to this policy of trying to talk before killing, conceivably could work.

But the writer doesn't think that makes it worth trying.

He further concludes by suggesting it's always possible that Obama might yet invade Iran and take it down.

Then he might actually deserve a peace prize, this eerie essay asserts, although it would merely go to show that George Bush should have gotten the award first.

If the essay hadn't lost me at hello, it surely would have lost me there.

John Brummett, an award-winning columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock, is author of "High Wire," a book about Bill Clinton's first year as president. His e-mail address is jbrummett@ arkansasnews.com.