The Obama Presidency 

 

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Introduction

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GW Bush is remembered as the President who invaded and destroyed Iraq based on invented threats, created Guantanamo, sent people to be tortured at black sites around the world, presided over a financial crisis based on institutional fraud, and worked to strip Americans of their privacy and their rights.  The Obama years are often seen in opposition to those of the previous administration, a welcome renormalizing of rules and expectations after 911 and after the Bush culture of war, surveillance, and repression.  But, contrary to that view, in almost every way Obama continued Bush policies and added some unenlightened ones of his own.  In general, the Obama administration was not undoing the dark legacy of Bush and Cheney, but adopting and enlarging their program.  JL

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The following is a compilation of excerpts from essays by a variety of writers that first appeared in Zmag or on Znet during and shortly after the Obama administration. Authors are indicated in red following their text.  Zcommunication has archived the essays by topic making it easy to find relevant text (although the source documents seem, in 2023, to have vanished).  There are 31 topics, 20 on foreign policy, 11 on domestic policy. 

  

Part 1. Foreign Policy

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1. War

Obama ran as an antiwar candidate and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize even as he extended the war in Iraq and enlarged the war in Afghanistan. He has been at war every day of the eight years of his presidency, longer than any other American president. The Obama administration’s main contribution to global affairs has been chaos and death— either by proxy (Syria and Ukraine), drones (Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc.), dollars, gun trafficking, sanctions (Iran, Russia, North Korea, Venezuela, Syria), or direct military intervention (Afghanistan and Libya). Obama has slaughtered human beings with missiles and bombs in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia— and every one of those places is worse off for it. (Swanson)  US Special Forces under Obama operate in 134 countries, nearly double the number under George W. Bush. (Turse)

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2. Peace

There’s little an American president could do to make things better in the Middle East, Obama says, never stopping to consider the possibility of halting arms shipments, stopping the bombings, grounding the drones, ceasing the overthrows, dropping support for dictators, withdrawing troops, paying reparations, giving aid, shifting to green energy, and treating others with respectful cooperation. (Swanson) The Obama administration has so far been unable or unwilling to act on its own oft-repeated understanding that “there is no military solution” to the ISIS crises. Instead, the US strategy has relied almost solely on military action, with little or no investment in the funds, personnel, or political capital to wage the kind of powerful diplomacy that’s so desperately needed. (Bennis)  In a world of increasing danger and threats of war, the Obama administration has been completely unwilling to champion any serious peace proposal. Even the pathetic “peace process” Obama faked with Israel-Palestine was revealed as farce the second Israel decided to re-destroy the Gaza Strip: Obama gave crucial support to Israel in committing its numerous war crimes. Obama is aided and abetted in his reckless actions by a media that cheerleads the government’s every move. As a result, the realities of U.S. foreign policy—and the very real dangers they present—are largely hidden from the American public. (Cooke)

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3. Climate agreements

The two climate conferences during the Obama administration, Copenhagen in 2009 and Paris in 2015, have produced no binding restrictions on carbon emissions (at the insistence of the US), and the Copenhagen conference produced no targets at all. (Grant)

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4. The Drone War and Assassination

Obama has invented and established (probably from now on) a global drone war and assassination program that Noam Chomsky has described as ‘the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times’. It has no time frame, no boundaries, no legal or judicial review, and no limitations regarding the people to be murdered. People are being killed who are not in a war zone; they’re killed in cars, in their houses, while they’re working, driving with their children, at funerals, rescuing people. (Greenwald) Obama has codified assassination as a central official component of American foreign policy. He has implemented policies that a Republican probably could not have implemented because he would not have received the support Obama has received from self-identified liberal Democrats. (Scahill) “What I can tell you is that, to me, one person who worked within this massive thing, it’s frightening.” (Lisa Ling, former drone system technical sergeant)

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5. Iraq

Obama did withdraw US troops from Iraq as promised but another terrorist group took over significant parts of that country rendering US operations and a billion-dollar investment in Iraq practically useless. Events in Iraq under Obama suggest that the destruction of that country and the killing of at least two million of its people (including 750,000 children) since 1990 was without a positive purpose or an effective strategy for its conclusion. In 2015 Obama began another escalation of US troops in Iraq. (Golinger)

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6. Afghanistan

In Afghanistan Obama increased the US military presence and brought the total war budget to well over one billion dollars, making it the longest US military conflict and one of the most costly. Obama has overseen two escalations of the Afghan War, the first one tripled the size of the war he inherited, the second one doubled that. (Swanson)

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7. Libya

The US bombing of Libya under Obama destroyed a functioning society (which previously had the highest standard of living on the continent), created a failed state, sharply escalated the level of atrocities, left power in the hands of warring militias, opened the door for ISIS to establish a base, spread jihadis and heavy weapons all through Africa and into the Middle East destabilizing neighboring countries and empowering the Islamic extremists that Obama allied with against Gaddafi. (Chomsky) Even Obama now says that overthrowing the government in Libya “didn’t work”. (JL)

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8. Honduras

“Obama supervised a right-wing military coup in Honduras, overthrowing a [democratically elected] reformist president. The US was almost alone in legitimizing the coup, claiming that the elections under the coup regime were legitimate. Honduras, always a very poor, repressed society, became a total horror chamber. Huge flow of refugees, we throw them back at the border, back to the violence which we helped create.” (Chomsky)

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9. Syria

Obama has brought total war to Syria, where at least a quarter million people have perished and millions have become homeless and largely unwelcome refugees. He has funded and armed Syrian warlords and terrorists determined to destroy the country. Obama’s dedication to regime change in Syria is partially due to his dedication to the two biggest pariah nations in the world—Saudi Arabia and Israel. His silence over Israel’s repeated bombings of Syria only encourages an extremely dangerous regional conflagration. Equally reckless is that Obama’s Syrian proxy war has relied on thousands of Islamic extremists from neighboring countries. US funding, training, and tolerating these extremists created the ideal conditions for a group like ISIS to rise from obscurity into a regional colossus. To date the Obama administration has proposed no peace plan for Syria outside of “regime change.” When the Russian government recently organized a major peace conference to address the war in Syria, the US-led Syrian National Coalition boycotted the talks. (Cooke)

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10. Ukraine/Russia

In Ukraine the US is engaged in what is becoming a full-fledged proxy war with Russia. US media has ignored a leaked audio of Obama’s Under Secretary of State exposing the US’s direct leadership role in a coup that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected government. Obama has given crucial military and economic support to the new anti-Russian Ukrainian government. Ukraine shares a large chunk of Russia’s border; former USSR president Mikhail Gorbachev fears that the 5,000 dead Ukrainians and 1.5 million refugees could be the detonator for a larger war between the two fully nuclear countries (Russia and the US). Meanwhile, the US media completely ignores this very real threat, giving valuable political cover to Obama’s reckless actions. (Cooke)

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11. Somalia

In February 2008 the Bush administration effectively criminalized humanitarian relief in south-central Somalia by designating Al Shabaab a foreign terrorist organization, with the result that organizations providing aid to Somalia could face prosecution under US law. Despite the fact that U.S. aid restrictions violate international law and despite the near-famine conditions in Somalia, the Obama administration zealously carried forward its predecessor's criminalization of humanitarian relief, resulting in aid agencies pulling out of the region altogether at a time when Somalia was on the “brink of famine”. From 2008 to 2011, U.S. aid to Somalia plummeted. The combination of the funding decline, U.S. aid restrictions, and Al Shabaab's increasingly hostile stance towards western aid agencies took the population off life-support and Somalia went over the brink in the spring of 2011 when the Horn of Africa was hit with its worst drought in 60 years. A 2013 mortality study estimated that 260,000 people have died in southern and central Somalia as a result of the 2011 food crisis and famine, 133,000 of whom were children under the age of five. (Roblin)

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12. Yemen

The U.S. involvement in the Yemen crisis can be summed up in four words: allegiance to Saudi Arabia. Obama is supplying intelligence, bombs (including cluster bombs, banned in 115 countries) and warships to assist Saudi Arabia in its indiscriminate bombing and illegal blockade of Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world. Millions have been forced out of their homes and left without water or electricity, as the country’s infrastructure is destroyed. According to the UN, “20 million people, or 80% of the population, are estimated to be going hungry” and a third of the population is in need of medical care, but the Saudi/US blockade is preventing the import of food, medicine, and humanitarian aid. (Benjamin)

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13. Israel

During the Obama administration the following events occurred:

1) Israel attacked Gaza twice: in 2009 Israeli bombs killed 1400 Gazans and, in the summer of 2014, Israel bombed Gaza 6000 times in 51 days, killing 2250 more.

2) In 2012 Obama justified the death and destruction by saying, "There's no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders. We are fully supportive of Israel's right to defend itself."

3) Funding of weapons to Israel increased by approximately 50 percent, to $4.5 billion per year, more than half of total US military aid.  

4) The UN General Assembly voted 43 times to condemn the conduct of Israel.  The average of the 43 votes was: 152 yes, 6 no.  The US, at the direction of Obama, voted no 43 times.  (JL) 

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14. Weapons sales

The Obama administration has approved more arms sales than any other US administration since WWII. In his first five years, Obama approved weapons deals exceeding by $30 billion those of the Bush administration in its full eight years. The majority of the Obama administration’s arms sales—over 60 percent—have gone to the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, with Saudi Arabia topping the list at $46 billion in new agreements. This is particularly troubling given the complex array of conflicts raging throughout the region.  (Hartung)

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15. Nuclear non-proliferation

In May 2015, the Obama administration voted to block adoption of the Nuclear Non- proliferation Review Conference’s consensus statement, shaking the foundations of the NPT. The statement called for the convening of a conference within six months to prepare the way for a Middle East nuclear weapons free zone and it called for all parties (i.e. the US) to fulfill previous promises to begin the creation of the zone. The US veto leaves the world without even a minimal agreement as to how to reduce and eventually eliminate the risk of nuclear annihilation. The US opposes a Middle East without nuclear weapons because it wants Israel to maintain its nuclear advantage over its neighbors. (Pilger)

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16. The new Cold War

A quarter century after the end of the Cold War and decades after the signing of landmark nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements, the U.S. and Russian governments are again engaged in a potentially disastrous nuclear arms race. The two countries currently have 15,000 nuclear weapons between them, including 1,800 on high alert, ready to be launched within minutes against the populations of both nations.

Although, in early 2009, President Barack Obama announced his “commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” the Obama administration has moved well along toward implementing a plan for U.S. nuclear “modernization.”
The Obama plan calls for ten years of massive renovation of U.S. nuclear weapons plants and laboratories, then the building of 12 new nuclear missile-firing submarines, up to 100 new nuclear bombers, and 400 land-based nuclear missiles, at a cost of approximately $1 trillion over the next thirty years. The Russian government seems determined to match that. Moscow is building, at great expense, new generations of giant ballistic missile submarines, as well as nuclear attack submarines that are reportedly equal or superior to their US counterparts in performance and stealth. Armed with nuclear-capable cruise missiles, they periodically make forays across the Atlantic, heading for the U.S. coast. (Wittner) At a time when even Henry Kissinger and George Shulz are calling for elimination of nuclear weapons, the Obama administration has built more nuclear weapons, more nuclear warheads, more nuclear delivery systems, more nuclear factories. No American president has built more nuclear warheads than Obama. (Pilger) The disastrous, downhill slide of both the United States and Russia into a vastly expensive nuclear arms race will consume the funding of critical social programs (e.g. health, education), possibly bankrupt both countries, encourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons in other nations, and—unless checked—seems likely to lead, sooner or later, to a nuclear catastrophe of immense proportions. (Wittner)

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17. Torture, rendition, indefinite detention

Obama outlawed some especially shocking forms of torture — water boarding, for example — but other types of torture were not labeled “torture” and therefore they continue (they are included in the Military’s updated Field Manual). These include extended solitary confinement, stress positions (shackling prisoners in painful positions for extended periods of time), close confinement, environmental manipulation (temperature, sound, light), sleep deprivation (used in combination with 20-hour interrogation sessions), sensory deprivation (described in Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine), extraordinary rendition (flying a prisoner to a country where torture is routinely practiced), and indefinite detention (no due process). Obama, like Bush, has sought to undermine the legal rights of those detained and the victims of torture who seek accountability. Obama continues to refuse to release pictures (evidence) of detainee abuse, preventing Americans from really understanding what their government is guilty of. Obama has also refused detainees in so-called “black sites” (U.S. Bagram Air Base, for example) access to attorneys or courts. (Cooke)

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18. Cuba

Obama says “we have tried for 50 years to bring democracy and freedom to Cuba”. In fact, the US tried for 50 years to bring terror, violence and destruction to Cuba, not just the terrorist war but the crushing embargo. Obama took a the smallest possible step toward normalizing relations: he allowed mutual establishment of embassies (the US embargo of Cuba remains in place). He took this step not because he is concerned about Cuba, but because the US has become increasingly isolated from the rest of the hemisphere on two issues: 1, the drug war (the US supplies the major market for drugs and it supplies the weapons for all sides, Latin America provides the victims) and 2, Cuba (the last annual UN vote to end the embargo was 180 yes, everyone, to 2 no, the US and Israel). (Chomsky)

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19. Venezuela

Obama has orchestrated the subversion of Venezuela, a country that freely gave aid to many of Latin America’s most impoverished people. The day after Obama’s speech on the failure of the economic embargo of Cuba, he signed bills imposing sanctions on both Venezuela and Russia. His idea is to isolate those two countries, to try to stifle Russia’s expanding relations with Latin America and to neutralize Venezuela’s regional influence. The Venezuela sanctions bill reaffirms the US commitment to support the anti-government movement in Venezuela and authorizes a full-on propaganda war against the Venezuelan government, all reminiscent of the failed policy in Cuba. Latin American nations have overwhelmingly condemned US sanctions on Venezuela and called for them to be removed. (Golinger)

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20. Guantanamo

Candidate Obama promised to close Guantanamo (by which he meant to relocate the prisoners to a prison not called Guantanamo), but, eight years later, Guantanamo is still open. The Washington Post announced in 2010 that the Obama administration will detain 50 Guantanamo inmates “indefinitely,” without any legal charges or chance of a trial. This act is consistent with earlier statements made by Obama, when he stated that “some detainees are too dangerous to be released.” Of course, there does not exist any evidence to prove that these detainees are dangerous, otherwise they would be prosecuted in a legal court. The article reports that these detainees are “un- prosecutable because officials fear trials...could challenge evidence obtained through coercion [torture].” The Washington Post article also reports that 35 additional Guantanamo inmates will be tried in Federal or Military courts. In the latter courts, far less evidence—if any—is needed, and the military jury can be handpicked to deliver the preferred outcome. (Cooke)

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Part 2. Domestic Policy

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21. Obamacare

Like a public transportation system that provides no public transportation but instead forces people to buy cars from US car companies, the Affordable Care Act is neither a health care plan nor a health insurance plan. It is, instead, a publicly-funded marketing program for private health insurers that forces the public to buy the policies of private companies, policies privately managed and controlled to maximize profit. The system siphons hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare to help pay the cost of Obamacare; Obama has shifted money previously paid to doctors and hospitals to pay for the ACA, shifted it into the pockets of private health insurance companies. It’s a boondoggle, designed by Obama and health insurance lobbyists to prevent movement toward the only effective and efficient system, single-payer healthcare, which a majority of people want, and instead to save private health insurance companies by forcing people to buy their products, which people rightfully despise. It solves neither of the two major healthcare problems: the enormous cost of healthcare and the millions who have inadequate coverage or none at all. Obamacare is not a solution to the healthcare crisis in America, but a new obstacle to solving that crisis. (The Polemicist)

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22. The TPP

(The TPP is listed under domestic policy because its threat to the US legal system is its most significant problem.) As a candidate in 2008 Obama proclaimed he would not support free trade agreements. As President he’s been an unambiguous advocate and agent of free trade agreements. Obama has urged Congress to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in order to “open markets, protect workers and the environment, and advance American leadership in Asia.”  Written in secret by lawyers and lobbyists for giant multinational corporations, the TPP, like NAFTA, will cost Americans millions of jobs, but the most sinister aspect of the TPP is not about trade. Its about absurdly elevating the legal authority of corporations (for the first time) above those of sovereign nations and their populations. Of critical and dark significance, the TPP constructs a new legal structure that transcends the existing, nation-based system of laws and regulations; it is the privatization of national government. It would allow corporations to challenge and overturn national laws (safety laws, labor laws, environmental laws, tax laws, financial laws) that reduce their profits or interfere with their exploitation of people and countries. It would require governments to reimburse corporations for loss of anticipated profits due to laws passed, regardless of the reason (child safety, environmental protection, consumer protection) and regardless of the government (local, state, or federal). The TPP would mark the beginning of the end of democratic government, of sovereign nations, of legal systems rooted in a constitutional law, of laws constructed for the benefit of society. That is a hard sell for politicians facing election. That’s why the TPP, pushed forward by a lame-duck President, is opposed by all the presidential candidates (including his Secretary of State). It is also why Obama and the corporate media have worked so diligently to keep the content and significance of the TPP completely hidden from the American public.  (Street)

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23. Rights of Americans

In 2012 Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It gives the US military the power to arrest American citizens and detain them indefinitely without charge, trial, or any other form of due process of law. The Obama administration continues to fight a legal battle in federal court to prevent that law from being declared unconstitutional. Obama has maintained the power to secretly kidnap, imprison, rendition, or torture, and he has formalized the power to lawlessly imprison in an executive order. Obama has publicly announced that he has given himself the power to include Americans as targets of his assassination program and he has authorized the murder by drone of three American citizens, including a 16 year-old, all with no judicial review. (Stableford) Note: Five of the ten Bill of Rights amendments address the rights of people (the text is never limited to Americans) with regard to judicial process. The Fifth Amendment declares that “No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law”.

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24. Climate and oil

A 2012 report estimates proven oil and gas reserves at five times the amount that can be burned without exceeding 2 degrees Celsius, the number specified in the Copenhagen accord to avoid long-term catastrophe (many experts think the real number may be one degree Celsius). The US is responsible for about one-third of total carbon emissions. Instead of developing strategies for keeping reserves in the ground, Obama has committed the US to full development of our proven reserves and exploration for more. (McKibben) Obama has added enough new oil and gas pipelines to encircle the Earth, directed his administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 states, quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high, launched a catastrophic Arctic drilling strategy, opened the California coast to fracking operations, secretly negotiated the harmful Trans-Pacific Partnership, developed new industry-friendly fracking regulations designed to discourage environmental lawsuits, and proudly declared “As long as I’m President, we’re going to keep on encouraging oil development and infrastructure. Producing more oil and gas here at home has been, and will continue to be, a critical part of an all-of–the-above energy strategy.” (Grant)

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25. Immigration

President Obama has initiated and expanded a harsher immigration enforcement regime than any other President in American history. The Obama administration has deported 2.5 million illegal immigrants (1.18 million of them from the country’s interior) compared to the Bush administration’s 2 million deported (.55 million from the interior). The chance that an illegal immigrant will be deported under the Obama administration is an average of 1.48 percent per year compared to 0.83 percent under the Bush administration. The Obama administration has issued 15.5 times as many immigration-related fines against employers and 8.3 times as many arrests for violating immigration laws as his predecessor. (Nowrasteh)

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26. Mexican interception program

In 2014, after a surge of Central Americans—including 50,000 unaccompanied children—crossed into the U.S., Obama spoke with Peña Nieto, President of Mexico, “to develop concrete proposals” to address the crisis. Nieto was pressured and bribed to intercept refugees near the southern border of Mexico—people fleeing gangs in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala—and send them home. Washington committed $86 million to support the program. Although Obama portrayed his action as an effort to address a humanitarian crisis, he made the crisis worse: the old routes minors took across Mexico were perilous, but the new ones adopted to avoid checkpoints are even more dangerous. In the last five years, Mexico and the U.S. have deported 800,000 people to Central America, including 40,000 children. Last year, Mexico deported more than five times as many unaccompanied children as it had five years earlier, and the Obama administration heralds this as a success. (Kristof)

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27. Mass surveillance

As a candidate for the Senate in 2003 Obama condemned the Patriot Act. As President, in 2011, Obama signed an extension of the Patriot Act. And in 2016 Obama signed a replacement for the Patriot Act called the USA Freedom Act. The Freedom Act continues the mass surveillance of the Patriot Act, the new wording of the Freedom Act could be interpreted by the executive branch as authorizing activities the US Court of Appeals previously found to be unlawful, and, unlike the Patriot Act which had to be periodically reviewed and re-legislated, the USA Freedom Act is permanent. (Lopez)

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28. Secret meetings

Obama promised to reveal White House visitor logs. He didn’t. In response to outrage over his refusal to reveal the names of health insurance and drug company executives he had met with and cut deals with on the health insurance reform bill, he announced that he would release the names going forward, but not those in the past. But he also said that, even going forward, he would withhold some of the names. White House staff then began regularly meeting lobbyists just off White House grounds in order to avoid the White House visitor logs altogether. (Edmonds and Rowley)

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29. Executive privilege

Obama has invoked “state secrets privilege” to quash legal inquiries into secret illegalities more often than any predecessor. His administration has used executive privilege to shut down lawsuits involving the NSA’s illegal wiretapping (Jewel vs. NSA and Shubert vs. Obama), extraordinary rendition and assassination (Anwar al-Aulaqi), and illegal torture (Binyam Mohamed). (Edmonds and Rowley)

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30. Bush administration crimes

Obama has sent representatives to aggressively pressure Spain, England, and Germany to shut down investigations that could have exposed the crimes of the Bush administration, just as he has instructed the US Department of Justice to avoid such matters. This includes his refusal to allow prosecutions of the CIA for torture, following a public letter from 8 previous heads of the CIA informing him that it would be better to not enforce laws against torture. (Edmonds and Rowley)

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31. Whistleblowers

As a candidate for President, Obama promised to protect and reward government whistleblowers. As President, Obama has amassed the worst record in US history for persecuting, prosecuting, and jailing government whistleblowers. The federal government has used the 1917 Espionage Act eleven times to prosecute government workers who shared classified information with journalists. Of those eleven total cases, seven have taken place while Barack Obama has been president. The Obama administration has secured 589 months of prison time for national security leakers, versus only 24 months total jail time for everyone else since the American Revolution, twenty-five times more jail time than all previous administrations combined. (Rottman)