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Plus The Infinite Other Things
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
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this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
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Once again I ask you not to glorify war criminals.
Yes, but also humans stupid and must have good and bad, so if obama better, obama good.
Eat My Ass, Obama was the best President since Jimmy Carter.
true, but that is a painfully low bar to clear.
True. And it's fucking embarrassing.
Your ass would do way worse than either.
That's not exactly a high bar, and arguably not even true.
I'd certainly argue that Obama caused immeasurable damage to America through the promises he reneged on and the things he didn't do. He'd have been a fine president in saner times, but as America's last shot at stopping fascism at the ballot box he was wholly inadequate.
No rebuttal for the war criminal thing, I see.
The only credible war criminal accusation towards Obama that comes to mind is the practice of 'double-tapping' which, at the very least, is something that Obama deserves a trial in the Hague for, even if I wouldn't necessarily bet on the outcome even with an impartial court.
Every other major accusation I've seen stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of 'war crime' as 'anything that's bad'.
Okay let's see:
Everything about the drone strikes other than double-tapping. See: all those weddings he bombed.
Supporting Saudi Arabia's war crime-riddled intervention in Yemen.
Everything to do with Guantanamo bay.
Everything to do with Israel.
He gets tons of flak for his heavy use of drone attacks - which is completely valid - but people usually ignore that:
In the land of the blind, the one eyed is king...
Maybe that's true, but even so that's no excuse to glorify him. Obama was a step towards, not away from, fascism, and a decisive one at that.
Glorifying maybe is a strong word, but assuming war crimes as a constant of American history basically, we can appreciate the good things he did, specially in the context of bush before him and trump after him. Yes, it's praising someone for not shitting his pants, but we are at that level unfortunately.
I mean, Obama did shit his pants, hard. He did do some good things, but he failed the test given to him by history same as Biden by not ending the War on Terror after the death of Bin Laden. America was going to have to reckon with the rot at the heart of its society sooner or later, but that rot was rapidly metastatizing fast through the War on Terror, and Obama had a golden opportunity to stop that but he didn't. Compared to this one gigantic failure, all his successes (and most of his other failures) are footnotes. I view him the same as Biden: Someone who would've been a good or good-ish president in saner times, but who was woefully inadequate for the hour. The consequences of his failure weren't as immediate as Biden's so it's harder to notice, but Obama shitting his pants is why we're living through Trump 2 right now.
Youre right in that war crimes are a constant in american history, but America desperately needed Obama to be the peace president he'd said he'd be.
In what way did you want him to 'end' the 'War on Terror', itself an immensely nebulous term for a broad range of foreign policy issues regarding non-state actors?
Perhaps nonintervention against ISIS? Or giving Afghanistan over to the Taliban ten years ahead of time? What form of 'ending' the War on Terror are we looking at? What 'golden opportunity' did he have?
Obama was an insufficient solution to America's post-Bush problems. But the urge to counter the hagiography of some liberals about Obama with a broad-spectrum condemnation of the Obama's administration's policies is not really a reasonable response.
You replied to me in another comment asking how Obama was a step towards fascism, so consider this a response to that too.
Stop fighting and bombing people in the Middle East for the sake of American imperialist ambitions, undo authoritarian post-9/11 legislation (see: ICE), return American society and politics to normalcy and not contribute to the expansion of executive power.
Anti-ISIS intervention is more complicated, not the least because it started more than two full years after the death of Bin Laden, but Afghanistan? Absolutely, unequivocally yes. Afghanistan was never America's to "give over" to anyone.
Again, the death of Bin Laden. There was absolutely no reason for the war in Afghanistan to turn into an anti-Taliban crusade; he absolutely could and should have said "our job here is done" and left. Not doing so, alongside his expansion of the war on terror into new fronts, protected fascism in America from what should've been a leftward swing following Bush's presidency.
Insufficient is an understatement. American fascism (what will go on to become MAGA) grew through two main vectors: war and economic uncertainty. Obama did basically nothing to address the former and only took halfhearted measures to address the latter. He did some good things, but in the face of what he paved the way for, his accomplishments are about as important as whatever Hindenburg was up to before appointing Hitler as chancellor.
Ok, so let me appreciate him for shitting his pants less than the guys before and after him. Yes, he didn't stop it, arguably accelerated a bit, but the other guys where pedal to the metal while punching you in the face. Obamacare was bad, but it was better than injecting bleach. Droning weddings was bad, but better than ethnic cleansing. Not prosecuting Cheney was bad, but better than selling pardons for 2M a pop. You get the idea.
How was he a step towards fascism?
I bet you were a genocide Joe voter.
Go back to hexbear you fascist cuck.
Well I'm not American so voting for anyone would've been a pretty egregious case of election fraud, but why so?