Joshua+H’s+2017+OpEd+Article

Donald Trump is worthy of our criticism, and Barack Obama is too.

In the months of January and February, and the early days of March, one of the hugely central political focuses was on the debate over immigration policy, and whether or not ICE and the National Guard should engage in mass deportations. The rhetoric of President Donald Trump against these immigrants has inspired a lot of anger against ICE and deportations, which is justifiable considering the frequently racist intent behind deportations. Obviously, Trump spreads xenophobic racism across the country, inspiring the rage of misinformed whites, but where was the outrage against deportations during the eight years of the Obama administration? All over Twitter and other social media, there is this omnipresent, and increasingly sappy praise of Barack Obama, because of this unwarranted form of nostalgia about a presidency they haven’t really looked into. If you analyze many of the policies and views of Trump and Obama, you’ll find a lot more similarities than you’d expect, and there are a great many flaws that can be easily found. Even though Trump is a jingoistic nationalist and a racist (and a sexist, and many other very despicable qualities) this shouldn’t change the numerous problems with Barack Obama. Obama in his own presidential terms acted as the ‘friendly’ and reputable imperialist, when he like Bush and Clinton before him, acted for the interests of empire, and capitalist interests that seek to enrich themselves at the expense of the American people and the world at large.

During the Obama Presidency from 2009 to 2015, a total of more than 2.5 million people were deported from the United States (According to US Customs and Border Protection), whether they had criminal offences or not. During those eight years, there was a huge expansion in immigrant detention centers, where men, women, and children are being held in disgusting and cramped conditions for months without trial or charge. In these centers, whole families have to live in large rooms, with trash and filth ever present, this is no place to put families, and people who simply came for a better life. These abominable centers lie across states all over America, whether they be Government or privately owned. In particular there was a rise of [|__private detention centers__] under the Obama administration, particularly the Corrections Corporations of America and their cruel detention of immigrants. Many of these people were sent back to countries such as Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, countries which face high poverty and the constant risk of gang violence or [|__police violence__]. There are numerous incidents of children and adults who are deported back to these countries [|__only to be killed__] or stuck in a brutal cycle of poverty. This is a record on immigration which is unprecedented even after Bush and his dreaded policy on immigration, in which in his presidency actually resulted in half a million deported people less than Obama. This gave Obama the record of president with the most deportations of any president, along with an unprecedented rise in cruel private detention centers, I guess Trump wants to compete with that legacy. With Obama’s domestic problems, it goes far beyond immigration. In 2008, the biggest economic crisis since the depression was in full swing as Obama was sworn into the office of the Presidency, with promises to solve the economic crisis with his policies. Every month nearly a million people were being laid off work, and homes were being foreclosed across the country, with [|__poverty increasing and quality of life decreasing__] for millions of people. A key issue was missing from the economic agenda for the first term, actually arresting the bankers and CEOs responsible for the 2008 crisis. Instead of arresting these bankers and CEOs, the economic bailout financially backed the banks and Wall Street companies which started the crisis in the first place. This was all on the tax dollars of the people that they were slamming into poverty, unemployment, and homelessness. In cities across America, the crimes of the mortgage loan industry are being shown in plain sight to the American people, as [|__homelessness is on the rise__] and the problems of homelessness that follow this ensue immediately. As more people became homeless, or worked for lower and lower wages because of the economic crisis, the bankers became even wealthier at the expense of millions of people. Hell, Obama gave them all 8 trillion dollars, if that doesn’t spit in the face of the workers who can’t feed their families, I don’t know what does. The economy is of course still affected by the deeds of the housing market and wall street, not just in America but the economies of Europe and to an extent Asia. This enabled opportunists like Trump and the alt right to move in onto the American working class ‘like a bitch’, as Trump himself would say. Trump and the alt right could then convince workers that it wasn’t the capitalist class causing their problems, rather immigrants and foreigners, tricking them into reactionary racism.

There were also the problems regarding Obama’s crackdown on those he deemed threats to US security. When he was campaigning for Presidency in 2007, Obama promised a new era of government transparency, in response to the terrible legacy of atrocity during the Bush era. What Obama did instead was an unprecedented war on whistleblowers. The biggest incident in this crackdown was the arrest and subsequent imprisonment of Chelsea Manning in 2013, who was responsible for the leak of thousands of classified government files. Some of the files she leaked showed the US engaging in blatant war crimes such as the [|__2007 Baghdad Massacre__], the leak of classified information regarding Guantanamo Bay, as well as the leak of over 200k Diplomatic cables dating from 1966 on and thousands of other government files. Manning, who was kept in solitary confinement for years even after her suicide attempt from the harassment and bullying she received from guards. Guantanamo Bay was the other glaring problem in Obama’s broken promises. Guantanamo Bay was and is the site of constant atrocity by the US government, and Obama heard the cries of Americans across the country and wanted to close the infamous prison. Closing the prison was one of his main campaign promises, and one of his first signed executive orders as well, so why is it still open for guards to torture prisoners? This is in spite of a Democratic majority congress and executive branch. This allows Trump to continue the heinous prison’s existence as Obama was ineffective at closing the prison. Obama also continued the Bush legacy of the ‘War on Terror’ in his massive expansion of the National Security Agency throughout his presidency and right before he left his office. Data collection centers for the NSA were expanded allowing the scope of their operations to flourish. He also signed an executive order expanding NSA data collection power to an even higher degree. This allows the NSA to have less restriction on their data collection, and essentially it allows these agencies to allow the privacy of data only after it has been tampered with by these agencies (Section 2.3 of Executive Order 12333.). After all of this, you may be saying, well Obama is at least socially aware! Wrong again! On the issue of the murder of (predominantly) African American people by Police, Obama did have a lot of powerful and symbolic words to say in response to the issue. When Trayvon Martin was murdered by a neighborhood watchman in Florida, Obama said that “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”. These are of course very emotional words coming from a father and a black man, however the problem is that these sentiments (along with responses to other police murders) are only symbolic. During the course of the administration, there was never any sweeping legislation on the huge issue that is police murders of innocents by the administration, the only slight (and I mean slight!) changes were some minor local changes. Not only is there this but there was the continual violence against the Lakota Sioux nation at the Standing Rock camp. The pipeline that goes through sovereign indigenous territory and violates land treaty and is now expected to be constructed after it was being resisted (justifiably!). Of course since police are willing to serve the interests of capital rather than the oppressed this led to police violence in the Standing Rock camp. They were targeting the protesters with violence that got so bad a [|__woman’s arm needs to be amputated__], a pregnant woman was attacked with an attack dog, protesters were shot at with rubber bullets, and protesters were sprayed with water at night in sub-freezing temperatures, and they did not have weapons. While this was all happening, Obama in the last weeks of his presidency said that he would give the pipeline decision “a few weeks”, leaving the protesters (literally) to the dogs. After weeks of protesters being maimed and arrested, the pipeline was finally denied, and this decision was quickly reversed by President Trump, who cares about Native lives even less than Obama does. This precedent allowed Trump to approve the environmentally hazardous pipeline and to destroy the protest camp in typical violent fashion. Now all of this was simply the domestic policies, and there’s a whole treasure trove of horrific atrocities committed during the Obama administration in regards to foreign policy, many of which actually pave the way for President Trump to commit more atrocities worldwide. The administration and the State department gave the Ukrainian Government weapons for its use against the Russian backed separatists, not only is Obama sparking and promoting another NATO conflict, but he is literally [|__supporting Nazis__]. The Ukrainian National Guard has what is known as the “Azov Battalion”, made up of Hitler heiling Neo-Nazis, that fight in the name of Ukraine. They gain their nationalist inspiration from Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian Nationalist who was responsible for the targeted murder of ethnic Jews and Poles during World War Two. Obama decided that even though giving Ukraine these weapons would mean guns falling into the hands of neo nazis, this was still a good decision. Obama supports plenty of other problematic movements as well. Another such one is Obama’s support of the Bush era policy on American-Venezuelan relations. In 2002, the Bush administration funded a coup attempt against the democratically supported government of Venezuela in order for a more US friendly government to take over. That failed, and the Obama administration still supported “regime change” in Venezuela. This is a blatantly imperialistic attack on a democratic government, and the American government does not believe in Venezuela’s self determination as a people because of this interference. The same of course will happen with the Trump administration, seeing as Trump, who hired people with anti Venezuelan agendas, will want to see further expansion of US interests in the community of nations. Across the world in Myanmar (Burma), Obama supported the election of Aung San Suu Kyi, who was promised to introduce a new era of democracy to the authoritarian Burmese government. Instead, her government was making news for the atrocities it commits against people. The Burmese army was[| __burning down ethnic Rohingya villages and committing mass murder and rape__]while the President that Obama declared his massive support for was sitting idly by as this is happening. Some of the even worse problems of foreign policy came as a result of the Arab Spring movements. The Arab Spring affected virtually every country in the Arab world, particularly Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. During the crucial years of the Spring (2011-2013) the US State Department was heavily involved in supporting these uprisings for US interests. In 2011, the government led by Hosni Mubarak was overthrown after millions marched in the streets of Cairo demanding the overthrow of his government. The revolution came and went, and the new government led by Abdel Fatteh el-Sisi, which is openly pro American. The American State department supports el-Sisi, despite his questionable at best record on human rights in Egypt. Sisi is responsible for the expulsion of thousands in the Sinai peninsula, the military trial of civilians, arbitrary detentions, and other offences which drew the ire of human rights organizations in Egypt and worldwide. This of course had no bearing on the stance that Obama and (at the time) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had on Sisi, because Egypt could be and is used as a client state for America’s imperialistic objectives in the Middle East.

Then came the much more brutal conflict in Libya, where the Arab Spring reached the boiling point of civil war, and the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. Gaddafi’s government, with it’s many flaws and many strengths was nevertheless a stable government in the Arab world. Libya had at one point been one of the most admired states in all of Africa, with its average quality of life being much higher than many parts of the region. Farm start ups were hugely supported by the government, newlyweds paid 60k Dinar (50k USD), and there were no electricity bills. This of course doesn’t mean Gaddafi was anywhere near perfect, but this could never justify the horrific intervention America and the west participated in. Obama told the American public of massacres done by Gaddafi’s forces even though three percent of the wounded people in Misurata-the supposed massacre site-were women, hardly a targeting of civilians. Doesn't that remind you of a certain war that happened eight years before 2011? There were stories (which of course were completely false) of the actions of Gaddafi’s troops, such as the lie that Gaddafi soldiers were given Viagra in order to rape civilians after capturing towns. NATO forces spilt blood on Libyan soil, first by performing air strikes on Libya after Clinton and others in the State department established a no fly zone with NATO. Civilians were killed in the airstrikes across Libya as NATO was ripping the country apart, as well as the United States government giving bounties of weapons to rebels fighting against the government. The rebels which the US State Department and NATO had armed were committing heinous atrocities across Libya, in particular [|__targeting black people to lynch__], and you think Obama and Clinton cares about Africans? In one town alone, 70-80 Chadian workers [|__were lynched__] with shears and axes for being accused of being mercenaries for Gaddafi. A bigger incident happened in the town of Tawergha, which used to have a population of around twenty five thousand people, most of whom were black. The anti Gaddafi forces entered the town in what has been described as an ethnic cleansing, with killings frequently occurring and numerous houses destroyed. Many other of these formerly anti-Gaddafitroops were strongly linked to Islamic extremist organizations such as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). The chaos allowed not only groups such as the LIFG to rise, but ISIS as well. Ironically, the rise of ISIS in Libya is being stomped out by Gaddafi loyalists, even though Gaddafi was seen as one of America’s greatest enemies. To this day Libya has no unified government body, allowing the NATO imperialists, including Obama and Clinton and their running dogs to systematically divide the vast resources of Libya. This chaos and atrocity has led many [|__former revolutionaries to guilt and regret__] about overthrowing Gaddafi’s government because the lower quality of life from the chaos that arose.

One of the more recent developments was with the frequent arming of rebels in Syria, which was the biggest catalysts for a conflict spurring a post-world war two esque refugee situation. When Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad infamously shot on protesters in Damascus, this caused the formation of the Syrian National Council which led to the civil war and the mobilization of the Free Syrian Army. The United States government at first supplied non lethal aid to the Free Syrian Army after Obama and the State Department took a public stance against the Assad government for alleged military aggression on civilians in Damascus after the war began. After Assad allegedly used chemical weapons on FSA targets, Obama said that this violated his “red line”, where he would apply force if chemical weapons were used he would then act against the Assad government. While Obama did not flat out invade Syria or do airstrikes against the Government, he supplied weapons to the FSA with catastrophic results in the humanitarian sense. The FSA is guilty of numerous war crimes across Syria, notably on civilians and detainees. [|__One infamous incident__] which according to Iraqi border guards, FSA soldiers detained 23 Syrian Army soldiers, and proceeded to cut off the arms and legs of the officer leading the soldiers, and executed the rest of the soldiers nears the border. There are numerous other incidents of FSA soldiers shooting civilians and prisoners of war which they have detained. The FSA is also known for their persecution of Syrian Christians and Alawites, killing many and driving many to flee. One of the bigger and more recent war crimes they committed was during the Aleppo offensive. FSA soldiers deliberately targeted the civilians of Sheikh Masquood, a predominantly Kurdish neighborhood in North Aleppo, as well as other nearby streets, where homes, markets, and mosques were hit with civilian deaths occurring. Amnesty International [|__considered this a war crime__], adding to an already very long list of crimes racked up by these armed groups. Not only is it FSA soldiers getting these weapons and committing war crimes, but they end up in the hands of all sorts of rogue groups in Syria. Groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic Front who have strong connections with ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the FSA and are also in Syria terrorizing civilians. They, like the FSA fight with US made weapons, and commit atrocities with said weapons. Then came the rise of the power of the Islamic State, who were originally funded by the US State Department in order to fight the Assad government, despite the government knowing their extremist Wahhabist ideology. It doesn’t need to be explained to anyone not living under a rock that they commit atrocity after atrocity. The Islamic State fights with weapons given to them by America, drives cars given to them by America, or American guns they found after the Iraqi government fled the Islamic State’s path. With American weapons, the Islamic state has cast a reign of terror over Iraq and Syria, in a repetition of American imperialist policy that has led to the rise of Al Qaeda in the past (see Operation Cyclone, 1979). America of course is not the only one funding the Islamic State, they have also been funded by countries with extremely close relationships to America, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. All three of these countries have US military bases, and all three have strong economic ties with America, especially Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia in particular has exported their ideology of Wahhabism, an extremist and ultra conservative form of Sunni Islam which has its origins in Saudi Arabia, and is the predominant ideology in the Islamic State. Not only do these US imperial client states ideologically motivate ISIS, but they supply them with weapons. Where do Saudi Arabia and [|__Qatar__] get their weapons from? The United States of course. The Obama Administration in it’s last year [|__signed a $115 Billion weapons deal with Saudi Arabia__], the one giving weapons to ISIS and committing its own atrocities in Yemen. The Obama Administration has been dealing favorably with this theocratic monarchy along with presidents past and (100% most likely) in the future as well for the purpose of striking oil deals, to continue the consumption of a substance ruining our planet and enriching terrorist funding homophobes. American weapons going to Saudi Arabia do not just go to the Islamic State, they go to fund a widely condemned and horrific war against the nation of Yemen. Armed with Obama approved guns and missiles, Saudi Arabia has launched a reign of terror across all aspects of civilian life. They have bombed farms, infrastructure, cities, and gatherings of civilians, literally starving the country into submission thereby promoting even more extremism in an already poverty and war stricken country. As a result of Saudi bloodshed, [|__460k children in Yemen face severe malnutrition__], with millions more suffering from hunger in the country. One of the worst incidents came last year when a back to back Saudi airstrike killed over 140 people who were attending a funeral in Sana’a, and 500 other people were injured. Another incident happened when a Saudi airstrike killed 130 people at a wedding in 2015. Obama continued to allow arms deals with a country so blatantly violating the basic human rights of its own people and the people of Yemen which they have been and are actively brutalizing. The Obama Administration was actually worried that because of Saudi Arabia’s war crimes, the US would be listed as a co-belligerent and thereby actively assisting war crimes by supplying these weapons. In spite of this, the State department struck weapons deals with the Saudis anyways.

The US government doesn’t of course just give weapons to Saudi Arabia, it also gives weapons to the Israeli military, who both have an extremely tense relationship with each other. The Obama administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a complicated relationship to add to an already complicated situation. The Obama administration made a $38 Billion deal with Israel over the next decade for the purpose of military aid, even though many Israelis don’t want this. This was after the widely controversial conflict that happened between Palestine and Israel in 2014, in which Israel was frequently condemned for attacks on civilian targets. Israel began their attacks for the purpose retrieving three Israelis who were kidnapped by the Hamas militia into the Gaza Strip. With the use of US weapons, Israelis killed civilians in the Gaza strip, and destroyed infrastructure in the city. On the beach of Gaza city, an Israeli missile killed four boys playing hide and seek on the beach, and according to the journalists nearby, there were no militants on the beach. Conveniently, when Israel’s military police conducted an internal investigation, they said how they killed four civilians is [|__perfectly legal__]! Israel also systematically destroyed huge portions of Gaza’s housing and infrastructure. Infamously, they used the tactic of warning Palestinians one minute before they would bomb an apartment building (we’ll be slightly nice before we bomb everything you own!). They didn’t just use regular bombs, but chemical weapons such as [|__white phosphorus on civilian areas__], which is a blatant criminal action. Things got so bad during the war that even Obama condemned some of the actions of Netanyahu, but this was merely symbolic as the military aid deals to Israel keep flowing, to kill more civilians. The bombing of the Gaza Strip resulted in the destruction of the civilian economy and infrastructure, leading to [|__water shortages__], starvation, and unemployment. Combine this with an internal refugee crisis, and then people flood into extremist groups like Hamas, which currently has control over Gaza. After this disgusting destruction of much of a city, it was revealed that the three kidnapped Israelis were already dead during the war, and the Israelis knew this, but they used this to cement their domination over Palestine. Yemen and the State Department were also in the news years ago over the drone bombing of a US citizen who had taken residence there. His name was Anwar al-Awlaki who was a Yemeni-American imam from New Mexico, and was involved with Al-Qaeda. He was in Yemen when Barack Obama signed an order to perform a drone strike on him, which killed him. This of course spurred huge complications, as Obama had signed the death warrant of a US citizen, in an extrajudicial manner on Yemeni sovereign territory. Two weeks later his 16 year old son, Abdulrahman, was similarly killed in Yemen by another drone strike signed by Obama. Not only did Obama sign a death warrant on Yemen’s sovereign territory, but he murdered this 16 year old with the reasoning that eventually he would turn to radicalism due to the death of his father. Abdulrahman could have been me or anyone else in this class, a 16 year old killed eating dinner, and Obama made him pay for the deeds of his father. This violates essential principles of justice and law, since Abdulrahman had committed no crime, he was punished in a “[|__guilt-by-association__]” style death sentence, one the American press would have no shame in condemning North Korea if they did the same thing. There is an additional dimension of hypocrisy on Obama’s part in this regard. The reason why al-Awlaki was assassinated by Obama was because of his connections with Al-Qaeda, however the Obama administration gave weapons to Al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria and gives weapons to Saudi Arabia who actively assists them. Obama’s capacity to drone strike innocent civilians was hardly limited to Yemen, it was his drone striking in Pakistan that was arguably one of the most controversial actions of his presidency. Drone strikes in Pakistan of course did not start with Obama, George Bush performed 57 drone strikes there, while Obama performed roughly ten times that, with his 563 drone strikes on Pakistani sovereign territory. These drone strikes were notorious for killing numerous civilians across the country. The US government in fact admitted that their drone strikes were killing not just terrorists, but innocent men, women, and children. However, their estimate of amount of civilians killed was clearly damage control on their part, as Obama said the strikes caused “64-116” civilian casualties, when in typical US government fashion, the reality of innocents killed is far higher than this. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the amount of civilians could actually range up to 800 civilians, far higher than 64 -116 people as Obama had claimed. The human cost of this disgusting, as it has significantly impacted children and other civilians, and led them to live more fearful lives. One 13 year old boy, [|__Zubair__], from Pakistan said he doesn’t want to go outside when the skies are blue because drones fly when the skies are blue. Zubair is not alone in the civilians from Pakistan who have to live in constant fear of being killed by Obama’s unmanned weapons of war. When Nobel Prize winner and [|__socialist__] activist Malala Yousafzai met with Obama at the White House, she expressed her concerns over drones. She told Obama that drones would increase anti American sentiments, which in northern Pakistan means joining groups like the Taliban. Through his actions, Obama ignored this valid concern completely by simply continuing this war. President Trump will [|__now be able to use the legal formula and precedent__] created by Obama in order to continue the drone strikes in Pakistan. So when I see tweets of pictures Obama out vacationing and people saying “wow I miss Obama so much!” I cannot morally abide by that. Obama is essentially the imperialist who after deporting a family to their death, or signing a Saudi weapons deal, or blowing up a market square in Syria, takes a break to listen to some Kendrick Lamar. People tend to think he’s so much different from the other imperialists because he’s cool and relatable. So when you see or hear someone saying “Obama would have-” think about his actions, and think about how many people have been brutalized in an imperialist legacy to go along with the other imperialists, George Bush, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump and many more.