The Obama Foreign Policy Legacy
President Obama is finishing his presidency with a mic-drop. In some ways, it's historically well-deserved. His domestic accomplishments are exceptional. In some ways, though, this president has been a historic disappointment.
Obama has proven to be LBJ Lite. Johnson passed the Great Society in the face of implacable congressional opposition. This included a Civil Rights Act, a Voting Rights Act, and a score of medical, educational, fiscal, and other 'public good' measures that nobody will ever touch. Mainly because, thanks to Johnson, no America in the future will need as much as the America that Johnson faced when he became president in 1963.
Obama was able to barely stave off the Bush Depression in 2008, with a minimal stimulus package to save the earth economy. Unlike Johnson, he did too little - and the little he did helped mostly those who needed the least amount of help. Wall Street was bailed out while millions of Americans were underwater. But the lows of the 1930's were avoided, for which we're all grateful.
And Obama passed a watered-down health care initiative. It was nothing like what he'd campaigned on, but it was a mildly progressive bill that will end up saving millions of people from a slow grisly impoverished death. So that's pretty good.
The rest of the economy rebounded. Sustained growth isn't half of what Johnson brought, but it was a more-than-sold result based on what there was to work with. The Republican party became a full-time obstruction from day one, which was a drag to be sure. The difference between the scorched-earth Republicans of 2010 and those of 1964 has been that in the 1960's the opposition was focussed on maintaining segregation and burning Johnson - but still honored the traditions of the institution that they served.
The Republican party since 2001 has been a more open joke than any political movement in history - certainly in American history. And, in opposition since 2008, they've crossed every line and broken every rule in their racist - yes racist - assault on the prerogatives of a sitting president. Their stated goal was to stop any Obama accomplishment. Is that what Congress was supposed to do?
So this president can be pleased with the advances he's made here at home.
The problem comes when we look at foreign policy. Here, we get into trouble. That's Legacy-threatening trouble.
Not with the big-ticket items we used to worry about. Russia is increasingly hostile, but for the past eight years our relationship has been cool enough that we haven't seriously considered firing nuclear weapons at them. Hey - progress is where you find it.
China has become hooked on the crack-cocaine of capitalism. The money is a sweeeeet sugar. First taste is free. Their economy is threatening to come to a screeching halt pretty soon, but we can buy our rubber dog crap from India, so no worries. They're trying to take over the South China Sea by creating artificial islands there - "possession is nine-tenths of the law" - which will be an issue for the next president- let's say Trump. Fortunately the US has a lot more friends in the area than China does. Hell, the North Koreans don't even like the Chinese (and the feeling is mutual).
We're good with people on the continents of South America, Australia - hell even Antarctica.
The Legacy dies with the 'war on terror.' Obama chose to escalate rather than decommission it. You can't, as they say, fight a war against a noun. 'Terror' (more properly 'terrorism') is a series of violent actions (and threats of actions) with a variety of purposes, but mostly intended to scare people into doing things they wouldn't otherwise do.
For eight years of the W. Bush administration, the terrorists won every round. If there was a stupid violent racist inflammatory immoral act the US could do, they did it. Illegal spying? Where do we sign up? Bombing, invasion, torture - bring it on! Osama bin Laden had pinned his filthy 9-11 dreams on the Washington Dumb Guys acting in character. He got his wish. There has been no more venal ego-driven know-nothing delusional groupthinking nothinking lowest-common-denominator billionaire-funded earth-despoiling immoral presidential administration in US history.
The W. Bush crew had the ethics of Satan's personal drug dealer.
Obama campaigned and won twice on a 'hopey-changey' platform to make that shit stop. He didn't.
The Guantanamo prison still operates, incarcerating humans forever without charging them and without any recognizable legal due process. Up your Habeas Corpus. Don't think that's in the constitution, either. We claim to have stopped torturing and rendition (where we send the poor SOB off to be tortured by some of our buddies who don't mind doing that sort of thing). But we never put that into law. The next president - let's say Trump - can reverse that decision by, well, deciding to.
Time was, before the W. Bush zombies (did you know "W" Bush stands for: Walker! Coincidence???), to eavesdrop on a person - read their mail, listen to their phone calls, etc. - you needed to convince a US Judge - hired (appointed, confirmed, elected, whatever) by the judicial system and empowered to dispense justice on the part of the United States of America - that you needed to do so for a good reason. Unless you were Hoover. But I digress.
Now you don't need anything. The NSA, CIA, FBI - whatever letters are on the go - can just read the stuff. And if they don't like what they read, you're gone baby. No court challenges - courts are for justice, and there's none of that going on here. There are no more civil rights or right to privacy. The feds get it, and the feds read it. Walker Bush started it, Obama has grown it exponentially.
But back when you needed a judge's order to kill people and read their mail, you also needed a reason to kill those people, because you weren't at war with them. We used to be at war with Japan and we killed a lot of Japanese people. Try killing a few nowadays - they'll lock you up!
But no judge or jury is needed if you're a brown person in the Middle East. No judge is looking out for you or your friends or family. Drones don't know you or them. Drones don't care. The Obama Legacy is and will always be the drone program that has been a blight on the world. Obama himself personally picks targets who are tracked by drones via satellites and signalled by a base in Germany, and when we find them (or someone who looks like them or is borrowing their cell phone) we kill them and anyone who is unfortunately close enough to not survive the detonation of large American explosives.
We intercept communications without cause. We target people we can barely identify - sometimes even US citizens. We kill them and their neighborhoods. We have a 'secret' drone base in Central Africa to kill people at or near Boko Haram locations. We're moving more troops and assets back into the places Obama swore to leave - like Afghanistan and Iraq. And then we wonder why people in Yemen and Libya and Syria and Iraq and all points in between want to join organizations dedicated to killing Americans.
They hate us for our freedom!
Obama never reconciled all this with us. Why would a constitutional scholar step so far out of bounds? Why would he ever think an American president was empowered to use the American military to murder at will? Even with the convoluted legal opinions they've apparently produced to justify at least some of this activity, how could someone who claims to cherish the spirit of - and swore an oath to "preserve, protect, and defend" - the constitution prosecute this offensive?
In our name, Obama has takes thousands of lives all over the world. And the more effort and time and money is put into the drone war, the worse we make it for the US. Worse: there is no endgame. Obama will leave office having escalated a spy and assassination program globally that has no exit.
What do we do? Just stop?
And we're not the only ones with drones anymore. ISIS and other bad actors all over the place are developing and flying their own drone air forces.
Look: as long as people have lived they've developed weapons. And as long as they've developed weapons, they've used them. Couldn't we get past that once? The US likes to think of themselves as an advanced civilization. Could they - under the Obama administration - restrain themselves once?
When we developed the capability to listen to eneryone's phone calls and read the world's email, it was important not to immediately use that power to hunt and kill them. Same with the drones. That technology was bound to develop quickly - did we have to immediately use it to end the lives of other humans?
By using unmanned aircraft to kill people, we do worse than just murder. We fight without risk. We hit them without a chance of retaliation. Hell - they don't even know who killed them. Isn't that the height of cowardice? Shouldn't we, at the minimum, have the guts to put our people close enough to the target to positively identify them? How is it that the US president can now approve an execution based on blurry photos of someone whose identity he cannot prove and, even when we know their identity for certain, cannot prove guilt of any offense in a court of law?
That's Obama's Legacy. The next president - let's say Trump - will either continue it, expand it, or cancel it. In any case, Obama is sadly 'next in line' for the prosecution of American Presidential War Criminals.
Obama has proven to be LBJ Lite. Johnson passed the Great Society in the face of implacable congressional opposition. This included a Civil Rights Act, a Voting Rights Act, and a score of medical, educational, fiscal, and other 'public good' measures that nobody will ever touch. Mainly because, thanks to Johnson, no America in the future will need as much as the America that Johnson faced when he became president in 1963.
Obama was able to barely stave off the Bush Depression in 2008, with a minimal stimulus package to save the earth economy. Unlike Johnson, he did too little - and the little he did helped mostly those who needed the least amount of help. Wall Street was bailed out while millions of Americans were underwater. But the lows of the 1930's were avoided, for which we're all grateful.
And Obama passed a watered-down health care initiative. It was nothing like what he'd campaigned on, but it was a mildly progressive bill that will end up saving millions of people from a slow grisly impoverished death. So that's pretty good.
The rest of the economy rebounded. Sustained growth isn't half of what Johnson brought, but it was a more-than-sold result based on what there was to work with. The Republican party became a full-time obstruction from day one, which was a drag to be sure. The difference between the scorched-earth Republicans of 2010 and those of 1964 has been that in the 1960's the opposition was focussed on maintaining segregation and burning Johnson - but still honored the traditions of the institution that they served.
The Republican party since 2001 has been a more open joke than any political movement in history - certainly in American history. And, in opposition since 2008, they've crossed every line and broken every rule in their racist - yes racist - assault on the prerogatives of a sitting president. Their stated goal was to stop any Obama accomplishment. Is that what Congress was supposed to do?
So this president can be pleased with the advances he's made here at home.
The problem comes when we look at foreign policy. Here, we get into trouble. That's Legacy-threatening trouble.
Not with the big-ticket items we used to worry about. Russia is increasingly hostile, but for the past eight years our relationship has been cool enough that we haven't seriously considered firing nuclear weapons at them. Hey - progress is where you find it.
China has become hooked on the crack-cocaine of capitalism. The money is a sweeeeet sugar. First taste is free. Their economy is threatening to come to a screeching halt pretty soon, but we can buy our rubber dog crap from India, so no worries. They're trying to take over the South China Sea by creating artificial islands there - "possession is nine-tenths of the law" - which will be an issue for the next president- let's say Trump. Fortunately the US has a lot more friends in the area than China does. Hell, the North Koreans don't even like the Chinese (and the feeling is mutual).
We're good with people on the continents of South America, Australia - hell even Antarctica.
The Legacy dies with the 'war on terror.' Obama chose to escalate rather than decommission it. You can't, as they say, fight a war against a noun. 'Terror' (more properly 'terrorism') is a series of violent actions (and threats of actions) with a variety of purposes, but mostly intended to scare people into doing things they wouldn't otherwise do.
For eight years of the W. Bush administration, the terrorists won every round. If there was a stupid violent racist inflammatory immoral act the US could do, they did it. Illegal spying? Where do we sign up? Bombing, invasion, torture - bring it on! Osama bin Laden had pinned his filthy 9-11 dreams on the Washington Dumb Guys acting in character. He got his wish. There has been no more venal ego-driven know-nothing delusional groupthinking nothinking lowest-common-denominator billionaire-funded earth-despoiling immoral presidential administration in US history.
The W. Bush crew had the ethics of Satan's personal drug dealer.
Obama campaigned and won twice on a 'hopey-changey' platform to make that shit stop. He didn't.
The Guantanamo prison still operates, incarcerating humans forever without charging them and without any recognizable legal due process. Up your Habeas Corpus. Don't think that's in the constitution, either. We claim to have stopped torturing and rendition (where we send the poor SOB off to be tortured by some of our buddies who don't mind doing that sort of thing). But we never put that into law. The next president - let's say Trump - can reverse that decision by, well, deciding to.
Time was, before the W. Bush zombies (did you know "W" Bush stands for: Walker! Coincidence???), to eavesdrop on a person - read their mail, listen to their phone calls, etc. - you needed to convince a US Judge - hired (appointed, confirmed, elected, whatever) by the judicial system and empowered to dispense justice on the part of the United States of America - that you needed to do so for a good reason. Unless you were Hoover. But I digress.
Now you don't need anything. The NSA, CIA, FBI - whatever letters are on the go - can just read the stuff. And if they don't like what they read, you're gone baby. No court challenges - courts are for justice, and there's none of that going on here. There are no more civil rights or right to privacy. The feds get it, and the feds read it. Walker Bush started it, Obama has grown it exponentially.
But back when you needed a judge's order to kill people and read their mail, you also needed a reason to kill those people, because you weren't at war with them. We used to be at war with Japan and we killed a lot of Japanese people. Try killing a few nowadays - they'll lock you up!
But no judge or jury is needed if you're a brown person in the Middle East. No judge is looking out for you or your friends or family. Drones don't know you or them. Drones don't care. The Obama Legacy is and will always be the drone program that has been a blight on the world. Obama himself personally picks targets who are tracked by drones via satellites and signalled by a base in Germany, and when we find them (or someone who looks like them or is borrowing their cell phone) we kill them and anyone who is unfortunately close enough to not survive the detonation of large American explosives.
We intercept communications without cause. We target people we can barely identify - sometimes even US citizens. We kill them and their neighborhoods. We have a 'secret' drone base in Central Africa to kill people at or near Boko Haram locations. We're moving more troops and assets back into the places Obama swore to leave - like Afghanistan and Iraq. And then we wonder why people in Yemen and Libya and Syria and Iraq and all points in between want to join organizations dedicated to killing Americans.
They hate us for our freedom!
Obama never reconciled all this with us. Why would a constitutional scholar step so far out of bounds? Why would he ever think an American president was empowered to use the American military to murder at will? Even with the convoluted legal opinions they've apparently produced to justify at least some of this activity, how could someone who claims to cherish the spirit of - and swore an oath to "preserve, protect, and defend" - the constitution prosecute this offensive?
In our name, Obama has takes thousands of lives all over the world. And the more effort and time and money is put into the drone war, the worse we make it for the US. Worse: there is no endgame. Obama will leave office having escalated a spy and assassination program globally that has no exit.
What do we do? Just stop?
And we're not the only ones with drones anymore. ISIS and other bad actors all over the place are developing and flying their own drone air forces.
Look: as long as people have lived they've developed weapons. And as long as they've developed weapons, they've used them. Couldn't we get past that once? The US likes to think of themselves as an advanced civilization. Could they - under the Obama administration - restrain themselves once?
When we developed the capability to listen to eneryone's phone calls and read the world's email, it was important not to immediately use that power to hunt and kill them. Same with the drones. That technology was bound to develop quickly - did we have to immediately use it to end the lives of other humans?
By using unmanned aircraft to kill people, we do worse than just murder. We fight without risk. We hit them without a chance of retaliation. Hell - they don't even know who killed them. Isn't that the height of cowardice? Shouldn't we, at the minimum, have the guts to put our people close enough to the target to positively identify them? How is it that the US president can now approve an execution based on blurry photos of someone whose identity he cannot prove and, even when we know their identity for certain, cannot prove guilt of any offense in a court of law?
That's Obama's Legacy. The next president - let's say Trump - will either continue it, expand it, or cancel it. In any case, Obama is sadly 'next in line' for the prosecution of American Presidential War Criminals.
posted by fiduciary at 1:22 PM
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