Barack Hussein Obama is no longer POTUS.\u00a0 The Fake News media, Democrat virtually to a man and woman, is tireless in its demonization of President Donald J. Trump.<\/p>\n
Thus, it is all too easy to think that Obama is no longer relevant.<\/p>\n
But, considering that Obama and his supporters want for nothing more than to protect his \u201clegacy,\u201d it is indeed critical that Americans of all political stripes never forget the real Obama presidency\u2014as opposed to the fiction that the Fake Newsies will labor indefatigably to ensconce in the American imagination.<\/p>\n
Consider foreign policy: Obama\u2019s supporters and opponents alike would have us think that Obama was dovish in this regard.<\/p>\n
Recall that, while campaigning for the presidency in 2007, after the Iraq War was recognized for the disaster that it undoubtedly was, Obama billed himself as a \u201cpeace\u201d candidate. He assured the electorate that he would have voted against the war, had he been in Congress four years earlier.<\/p>\n
And then, shortly after his inauguration in \u201909, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.<\/p>\n
Over the span of his eight years in office, however, the \u201cpeace\u201d candidate proved himself to be the most pro-war President in American history:<\/p>\n
By the end of Obama\u2019s second term, he had ordered 100,000 airstrikes on seven countries.\u00a0 The peace President far exceeded his warmongering predecessor, George W. Bush, who leveled \u201conly\u201d 70,000 bombs and missiles on five countries during his eight years in office.<\/p>\n
President Obama presided over a ten-fold increase<\/a> in drone strikes, killing thousands and thousands. Among this number are included four Americans<\/a>.\u00a0 For this last, the ACLU (hardly a right-wing organization) charged<\/a> the President with violating the United States Constitution. Ralph Nader\u2014again, no conservative or reactionary\u2014blasted<\/a> Obama for being no different than Bush insofar as he self-regarded as \u201csecret prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner\u201d with \u201cthe unilateral right\u2026to destroy anybody, anywhere in the world, including American citizens, suspected to be engaged in alleged terrorist activities [.]\u201d<\/p>\n Obama\u2019s Military Budget for FY2017 was larger<\/a> than that of any other President, and it exceeded that of Bush II\u2019s by nearly $30 million. \u00a0No post-WWII POTUS had increased the military budget to the extent that Obama had.\u00a0 On average, the 44th<\/sup> POTUS had spent about<\/a> $653.6 billion annually\u2014an average of 18.7 billion more than what Bush II had authorized.<\/p>\n Nor do these numbers ignore the rate of inflation. Nicolas J.S. Davies writes:<\/p>\n \u201cIn historical terms, after adjusting for inflation, Obama\u2019s military spending has been 56 percent higher than Clinton\u2019s, 16 percent higher than Reagan\u2019s, and 42 percent more than the US Cold War average.\u201d The latter point is particularly telling in that, as Davies reminds us, exorbitant military budgets during the Cold War period were justifiable inasmuch as America had \u201ca real peer competitor\u201d in the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n Contemporary Russia, in glaring contrast, spends only ten percent<\/a><\/em> of what America spent on the military during Obama\u2019s tenure.<\/p>\n Davies also reminds us that Obama presided over \u201ca massive expansion of US special operations forces, now deployed to 138 different countries [.]\u201d\u00a0 At the time that he first took office, these forces were in 60<\/em> countries.\u00a0 \u201cKill or capture\u201d raids increased<\/a> astronomically under Obama, from 90 in November of 2009 to 600 per month by the summer of 2010 and 1,000 in April of 2011.<\/p>\n Obama\u2019s covert forces have claimed the lives of \u201chundreds of academics and other professionals and community leaders\u201d in Iraq.<\/p>\n Some estimates are that over 2 million lives have been extinguished in America\u2019s post-9\/11 wars.\u00a0 Obama, of course, is not responsible for all of them. But given the foregoing truths, it goes without saying that he has the blood of untold thousands on his hands.\u00a0 Some of this blood is that of terrorists and jihadists, for sure.\u00a0 However, much of it is that of those who comprise the \u201ccivilian support mechanism,\u201d those who provide supplies for guerillas, and those who simply didn\u2019t want America in their country.<\/p>\n Although Obama dropped fewer bombs and missiles on Afghanistan than did Bush (26,000 and 37,000, respectively), the man who declared victory in Iraq by withdrawing ground troops and creating the vacuum for ISIS to fill, dropped an astronomical 41,000 bombs and missiles on Mesopotamia just between 2014 and 2016 alone.\u00a0 Bush, though, over a five year period, dropped about 8,000 fewer instruments of death.<\/p>\n Davies reminds us that Obama dropped nearly 25,000 bombs and missile upon Syria, \u201c7,700 in NATO and its Arab monarchist allies\u2019 bombing of Libya in 2011, another 496 strikes in Libya in 2016, and at least 547 drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.\u201d<\/p>\n For his launching of military operations in Libya, members of Congress brought a bipartisan lawsuit<\/a> against Obama.\u00a0 This effort was led by Democrat Dennis Kucinich and Republican Walter Jones. Kucinich said: \u201cThis is not an academic question.\u00a0 This is about stopping a war now.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2010, following in the footsteps of his predecessor, Obama gave a no-bid contract<\/a> to the now infamous defense contractor, Halliburton.<\/p>\n In 2011, Obama extended<\/a> Bush\u2019s \u201cPatriot Act.\u201d\u00a0 This same year, Obama once again came under fire by the ACLU for having signed a bill<\/a> that would carry on the Bush administration\u2019s practice of indefinitely detaining American citizens suspected of, but not charged with, having committed any criminal activities.<\/p>\n In 2009, under the pretext of \u201cnational security,\u201d Obama resorted<\/a> to the same legal<\/a> and moral rationales of which Bush availed himself when seeking to extend the NSA\u2019s practice of conducting warrantless surveillance of Americans.<\/p>\n And let us never forget that Obama, despite having assured his supporters on the campaign trail that, \u201cAs president, Barack Obama will close the detention facility at Guantanamo,\u201d failed to do any such thing.<\/p>\n