I have spoken kind words about former US President Barack Obama in the past. Not overly kind words — just the “you are not as bad as Bush or Trump” kind. If I am truly and brutally honest and take into account the whole picture rather than the fragments used by the imperial media (corporate, mainstream, establishment media), I don’t think I have any kind words. Quite the opposite frankly, especially given his recent utterances deriding the left. The more an intellectually honest and empathically driven person learns about Obama, the less they should like him.

Let me preface this by saying I am from Sweden, a country which has a much healthier left-right paradigm than the US does. The right still sucks and wants to privatize everything and kick out brown people, and the left has by and large lost its teeth. But at least we have an established left, which the US sadly does not (unless Bernie Sanders and the political movement he started succeed). Sweden is a much more social democratic nation than America. However, we — like the rest of the industrialized world — have a western bias; in other words, narratives presented in US imperial media have an impact even here, although perhaps not as infused with nativist dogma. My point is that even in progressive Sweden, the general view of Obama has been favorable.

The best way to describe western attitudes toward Obama is probably to say he is a statesman sandwiched between two stinking turds (Dubya and Dum-dum). He is viewed both as a progressive (not to mention a progressive achievement in being the first US President to be black) and a “reasonable centrist,” even though progressive and centrist should be mutually exclusive. After George W. Bush, who was seen as a clown and (at least in some circles) a war criminal, Barack Obama felt like a breath of fresh air. After Obama, Trump feels like a gut punch. This is true even outside the United States of America, because American policies have an impact on us all, whether the economy is crashed, sovereign governments are overthrown, or entire regions are destabilized.

In the article “On Trump and the alt-right tragedy” (January 25, 2017), which I wrote about Donald Trump being sworn into office, I said that “it is sad to see Obama step down only to be replaced by a neo-fascist sympathizer.” I still stand by that statement. Trump is definitely much worse, and it was difficult to watch, even from afar, all the racist hatred Obama had to endure from the Republicans and Trump (the birther conspiracy theory, for example). What I feel I have to rescind, however, is when I said that even though Obama and I “are not fully aligned politically,” I still “respect [him].” I am no longer comfortable saying it, because I really don’t have much respect for him or any other US President who has been in office these last few decades, if ever. I know I’ll probably get in trouble with a lot of establishment-minded centrists for this, but I have to state my opinion as plainly and honestly as I can: Obama is a piece of shit.

Why do I say this? Well, I do because Obama was just the illusion of progress and change without any actual progress or change. This is especially damning given that he ran on the premise of change and hope tinged with a flavor similar to the left-wing populism of Bernie Sanders but failed utterly to govern as such. He governed instead as a defender of the status quo with the same warmongering imperialism and anti-worker scorn as any other establishment elite. The only change under Obama was trims around the edges and incremental steps which amounted to very little; he didn’t fix healthcare or end the wars. People often try to blame this on Republican obstructionism, but Obama squandered a Democratic super majority without pushing through anything which would have actually helped the American people or the world, such as Medicare for All or ending the wars. He and the corporatist Democrats had their chance, but they did nothing about it, because they didn’t (and still don’t) want to do anything about it.

Obama’s biggest achievement is Obamacare, something which originated from a conservative think tank as a Republican alternative to socialized healthcare. Perhaps it was a slight improvement to the status quo, but it didn’t fix any of the fundamental problems — incomplete coverage, deaths from lack of healthcare (forty-five thousand each year), personal bankruptcy from crushing medical debt (five hundred thousand each year), and a stratified system in which the haves receive better care than the have-nots, to mention a few problems. The Republicans tried to portray Obamacare as introducing death panels to the healthcare system, but the problem is that the death panels were already there and Obamacare did not remove them. Insurance companies fight tooth and nail NOT to provide healthcare to the people they supposedly cover. They will use any loophole they can find to let you die, because they make more money that way. No private system can ever fix that. All Obama did with Obamacare was to try to appease voters, not fix the problem, which is the entire system of gating healthcare behind the paywall of greedy corporations.

US interventionism has been an unmitigated disaster. It is dubious that the US has ever “intervened” (invaded) anywhere with good intentions. The countries which they invade just happen to have oil or be important for the geopolitical dominance of the US empire, which in and of itself is immoral. The concept of empire is sold as American exceptionalism — which is the faulty notion that, no matter what, America is the good guy — and fearmongering about Russia, as if Russian imperialism and aggression in any way, shape, or form justify the same behavior from the United States of America. To put this into perspective, if roles were reversed, would it be okay for, say, Iran to establish an empire and invade the US in order to secure Iranian interests or as part of a global chess game with another super power? I think most Americans are going to answer “no.” So, why is it okay for the US to do that to other countries? It isn’t, and it was just as wrong under Obama as it was under George W. Bush and as it still is under Trump.

See my article “Donald Trump: Charlatan war hawk in antiwar clothing” (October 20, 2019) for more on Trump.

While in office, Obama continued and started wars of aggression as part of the disastrous war on terror and expanded the use of drones to murder people under the pretense of so-called national security. His use of drone strikes — and the thousands of civilian deaths which are a direct result of this policy — makes him a war criminal, never mind the illegal occupations and wars. Instead of dismantling the US empire which serves the interests of corporations, he expanded it. Instead of ending the wars which have killed hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of people, he perpetuated and escalated them. I cannot stress enough that I consider not only George W. Bush and Donald Trump to be war criminals, but Barack Obama, too. It is an utter disgrace that a man with as much blood on his hands as Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. It is a disgrace that he still is as respected as he is. This is surely because he is well-spoken, polite, and offers the optics of progress without the annoyance of actual progress, something which appeals to comfortable people who don’t need any systemic change because they already have theirs.

On top of his legacy of inadequate trims around the edges of a deeply corrupt and inhumane system, Obama has also interjected with really bad takes lately. He has become one of the comfortable elites who don’t see a need for change in a world torn apart by war and ravaged by poverty and famine. He is not on the side of progress, because it threatens to leave him behind and diminish his legacy. Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All bill — which provides universal coverage and better care for lower costs and ends the death panels of insurance companies, the unnecessary deaths of forty-five thousand Americans every year, and the devastating medical debt under which ordinary people are crushed — would dwarf Obama’s crowning achievement, Obamacare. A true progressive vision for foreign policy — which sees an end to the American empire and emphasizes diplomacy over drone strikes — would cast a very large shadow over Obama’s ill-gotten Nobel Peace Prize.

The Hill reported this Tuesday (November 26, 2019) that “Obama privately said he would speak up to stop [Bernie] Sanders.” This follows a November 15 speech in front of wealthy elites and Democratic donors in Washington, during which Obama warned about going “too far left,” an obvious jab at Bernie Sanders. Even earlier, he held a speech at the Obama Foundation, during which he derided “purity” tests, call-out culture, and “woke” politics. He said, “The world is messy. There are ambiguities,” a thinly veiled defense and rationalization of his war crimes and wars of aggression. The purity tests he and other centrists complain about are things such as supporting healthcare as a human right through Medicare for All or opposing the wholesale slaughter of brown people in the Middle East through the US empire.