| | | Come down off Planet Prozac
latimes.com
Before he took office in 2008, Barack Obama vowed to end America’s grueling conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. During his second term, he pledged to take the country off what he called a permanent war footing.
“Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue,” he said in May 2013. “But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. It’s what our democracy demands.”
But Obama leaves a very different legacy as he prepares to hand his commander-in-chief responsibilities to Donald Trump.
U.S. military forces have been at war for all eight years of Obama’s tenure, the first two-term president with that distinction. He launched airstrikes or military raids in at least seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.
Yet the U.S. faces more threats in more places than at any time since the Cold War, according to U.S. intelligence. For the first time in decades, there is at least the potential of an armed clash with America’s largest adversaries, Russia and China.
Obama slashed the number of U.S. troops in war zones from 150,000 to 14,000, and stopped the flow of American soldiers coming home in body bags. He also used diplomacy, not war, to defuse a tense nuclear standoff with Iran.
But he vastly expanded the role of elite commando units and the use of new technology, including armed drones and cyber weapons.
“The whole concept of war has changed under Obama,” said Jon Alterman, Middle East specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonprofit think tank in Washington.
Obama “got the country out of ‘war,’ at least as we used to see it,” Alterman said. “We’re now wrapped up in all these different conflicts, at a low level and with no end in sight.”
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Obama And His Seven Wars
21 Mar 2011  freesociety
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Since becoming President, we have seen no “hope” whatsoever coming from Obama, and the elitist, insider-club, corrupt beltway policies that he happily advances.
But we have seen the audacity of a lot of Bombs, and SEVEN WARS!
That’s right:
- 1. We’ve been at War in Afghanistan for almost a full decade.
- 2. We’ve been at War in Iraq for nearly as long.
- 3. We’re at War in Pakistan.
- 4. We’re at War in Yemen.
- 5. We have ongoing CIA and Naval destablization War Games staged in Iran.
- 6. We have ongoing CIA hostilities, in coordination with Columbia, against Venezuela.
- 7. We’re at War, and dropping bombs in Libya.
That’s SEVEN…count ’em…SEVEN frickkin Wars, folks!
All of them are undeclared Wars, in violation of the War Powers Act, and are Unconstitutional. Three years into Obama’s presidency, we have approximately double the number of Unconsitutional Wars going on than we did during the Bush-Cheney years. And that’s twice as bad.
More innocent people slaughtered. More wasteful Military spending. More circular logic (we can’t leave because otherwise…) as we plunge our Country into incalculable National Debt, and destroy the purchasing power of the U.S. Dollar for Americans.
The United States has over 800 Military Bases, in over 130 Countries around the planet. And we Americans are forced to pay for all of that (we don’t get to have any choice) — and then must give up our Social Security to keep it all going on.
For many decades now, Presidents have started and committed acts of War without a formal declaration of War. Ever since the Federal Reserve Central Bank Monopoly came into existence in 1913 (designed after the corrupt Rothschilds Bank of England), our longstanding, foresworn enemy The British, suddenly became “our friend“, and The United States started going overseas and fighting all of Europe’s dirty Imperial Wars for them — beginning with WWI — with American citizens paying the bills, coffins coming home, and seeing the purchasing power of their U.S. Dollar destroyed.
I don’t know why so many Americans put up with it. War after War after War after War. Lies after Lies after Lies after Lies. Trillions of dollars wasted, and Millions of innocent people slaughtered.
Obama may claim to have “taught” Constitutional Law somewhere, but everyday of his life he proves over and over that this so-called “teacher” was, in fact, an F student.
If it was wrong, and was an Impeachable offense for George W. Bush to commit our Nation into illegal, Unconstitutional Wars, then the same principle must apply to Barack Insane Obama.
This madness must stop.
“Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. In war, the public treasuries are to be unlocked. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. No Nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual Warfare.”
–James Madison
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