by Paul Joseph Watson

In a world where war criminals like Tony Blair are rewarded and those that oppose war criminals, like the Iraqi shoe thrower Muntadhar al-Zeidi, are imprisoned and tortured, it comes as no surprise that another war criminal – Barack H. Obama – has been rewarded for his stoic service to imperial bloodletting with the Nobel Peace Prize.

The man who gallantly promised “change” from the Bush regime’s illegal wars and a return to diplomacy over belligerency in dealing with Iran, has perpetuated the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq while expanding another in Pakistan and becoming belligerent towards Iran.

How in anyone’s mind can such behavior constitute a move towards peace?

Obama has done nothing to dismantle the sprawling network of well over 700 U.S. military bases all over the world.

Instead of coming to an understanding with Iran over their nuclear power program, Obama gleefully read from his trusty teleprompter and crafted the hoax that the Iranian nuclear facility at Qom was an evil secret that the Iranians had kept hidden from America as part of a clandestine agenda to build nuclear weapons. In reality, Iran had followed precisely the guidelines set out by the IAEA on when to report the facility and the U.S. had known about it for several years anyway.

Obama’s slick propaganda in expressing his shock at the “discovery” of the plant was worthy of an Oscar but not a Nobel Peace Prize, since the scam has increased the likelihood of sanctions on Iran that will only accelerate the path to war.

By dutifully playing his part in this contrived hoax, Obama was mimicking the tactics of how George W. Bush sold the attack on Iraq.

As Paul Craig Roberts wrote, “By accusing Iran of having a secret “nuclear weapons program” and demanding that Iran “come clean” about the nonexistent program, adding that he does not rule out a military attack on Iran, Obama mimics the discredited Bush regime’s use of nonexistent Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” to set up Iraq for invasion.”

The fact that Obama launched himself into the role of war hawk in an effort to propagandize for belligerency towards Iran completely discredits the claim by Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland that Obama “Has been a key person for important initiatives in the U.N. for nuclear disarmament and to set a completely new agenda for the Muslim world and East-West relations.”

Obama’s acting skills in front of a teleprompter and his slick rhetoric about peace and diplomacy may look good on the surface, but the reality of what he has actually done to further the PNAC agenda for endless war underlines why the award of the Peace Prize is a sick joke.

If Obama intended to bring peace to the world, then why were his early appointments mostly neo-liberal war hawks who have a history of backing military adventurism?

If Obama is such a huge peacenik, then why has he sent 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan already, with tens of thousands more at least on the way?

If Obama plans to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq and bring peace to the region, then why has he gone back on his promise and ensured that tens of thousands of U.S. troops will remain in the country?

If Obama is so deserving of being recognized for his efforts towards peace, then why has he intensified the Bush-era missile drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan that have killed and injured countless innocent civilians?

If Obama is so interested in promoting peace, then why does he protect war criminals who have violated the Geneva Conventions from prosecution?

Beyond the meaningless platitudes served up by his fellow elitist snobs, the true hilarity of Obama receiving the prize was illustrated by just a couple of individuals who the corporate media dared to quote.

Issam al-Khazraji, a day laborer in Baghdad, told Reuters: “He doesn’t deserve this prize. All these problems — Iraq, Afghanistan — have not been solved…The man of ‘change’ hasn’t changed anything yet.”

“Liaqat Baluch, a senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a conservative religious party in Pakistan, called the award an embarrassing “joke.”

“By implementing his war continuation plan, Obama will complete the work of Bush and his militarist clique,” writes author Chris Floyd, and in doing so send, “an apparently endless stream of American troops to die — and, in even greater numbers, to kill — in a criminal action that has helped bankrupt our own country while sending waves of violent instability and extremism around the world. It will further enfilth a cesspool of corruption and war profiteering that has already reached staggering, world-historical proportions.”

Floyd encapsulates perfectly why Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize award is a disgusting farce, an insult to those who really are fighting for peace in the world, and just another reminder that the Nobel Peace Prize represents little more than a gaggle of back-slapping elitists who bestow awards upon each other so that they can pose as global saviors to the public when in reality they are mostly a bunch of crooks, con-artists and deceivers.