Barack Obama, after only nine warmongering months, has won the Nobel Peace prize. What for? For keeping in place the 60,000 US troops terrorising Afghanistan and adding thousands more?
For withdrawing in name only from Iraq?
For drone bombing Afghanistan and Pakistan and killing innocent people?
For arming Israel to the teeth and helping it imprison Gaza?
For supporting Israel's ongoing genocide against the Palestinians?
For vetoing (as he will and has already threatened to do) any action on the Goldstone report into war crimes in Gaza?
For opposing — nudge, nudge, wink, wink — the coup in Honduras?
As Tom Lehrer said when another war criminal, Henry Kissinger — the man who bombed the hell out of Vietnam and Cambodia and killed millions – won the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize: "It was at that moment that satire died. There was nothing more to say after that."
Apparently satire isn't dead.
Let's be clear. Barack Obama runs the biggest killing machine in the world. He unleashes it to protect the interests of US capitalism. This is not a break from the imperialist past but its continuity.
Barack Obama is a war criminal. He should be in leg irons before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
This article first appeared in En Passant with John Passant
