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'''Barack Hussein Obama II''', born August 4, 1961, is an [[America|American]] politician and attorney who served as the 44th [[president of the United States]] from 2009 to 2017, and previously as a [[U.S. senator]] from [[Illinois]] from 2005 to 2008 and an [[Illinois]] state senator from 1997 to 2004. He is member of the [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]] and the first [[African-Americans|African-American]] president of the United States.
Obama received a [[Nobel Peace Prize]] in 2009 and generally has an image among many as being a "cool black guy" because of his public appearance and things like legalizing [[same-sex marriage]], but whatever positives he may be thought to have are severely outweighed by his negatives. He was seen as kind of an outsider, a person other than an elderly white man man who rode the anti-war/anti-Bush/anti-Republican wave in 2008 but who had failed miserably to deliver on its hopes, radicalising much of a generation to never trust liberals like him again, and even giving much of the impulse that elected [[Donald Trump]].
His negatives include:
*His terrible appointments to office:
**He filled his cabinet with [[Wall Street]] executives, then supporting their bailout as well as the bailout of big banks and corporations at the expense of the people during the [[2008 financial crisis]]
**His FDA appointee was literally a [[Monsanto]] executive
*[[Foreclosure|Foreclosing]] on homeowners instead of bailing them out
*Cracking down on the [[Occupy Wall Street]] movement
*Continuing the [[War on Terror]] and the [[War on Drugs]]
*Persecution of [[whistleblower|whistleblowers]]<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/16/whistleblowers-double-standard-obama-david-petraeus-chelsea-manning https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/16/whistleblowers-double-standard-obama-david-petraeus-chelsea-manning]</ref>
*Normalizing and expanding upon the massive [[surveillance state]] developed under [[George Bush]]
*Neglecting the water crisis in [[Flint, Michigan]] (which is also a majority black city; this being extra bad because many black people thought that Obama would do better for them than non-black presidents)
*Opening up the [[arctic|Arctic]] for drilling twice, along with issuing a myriad of executive orders for individual pipeline segment construction which complete the entire Alberta tar sands-to-Gulf Coast pipeline. All this in spite of that phony cynical veto of the [[Keystone XL]] segment.<ref>[https://www.opednews.com/populum/page.php?f=Obama-s-Keystone-XL-Veto-J-by-Joan-Brunwasser-Activism-Environmental_Climate_Environment-Policy_Environment-Ecology-151208-692.html Obama's Keystone XL Pipeline Veto Just Smoke and Mirrors?]</ref>
*Getting everyone's hopes up about prosecuting the Bush administration for [[war crimes under George Bush|war crimes]] and holding Wall Street accountable for the financial crisis, but ended up "turning the page"
*Oversaw the biggest transfer of wealth to the [[bourgeoisie|capitalist class]] in history{{cn}}
*Deporting a record number of refugees<ref>[https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/11/08/immi-n08.html Deporter-in-Chief: The legacy of Obama]</ref>
*Passing Republican healthcare reform written by the Heritage Foundation
*Making [[Bush tax cuts|Bush's tax cuts]] permanent after campaigning on returning back to Clinton's tax rates
*Going out of his way to help kill [[Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign|Bernie's campaign in 2020]] and hand the nomination to [[Joe Biden]], who would prevent people from [[Medicare for All|getting healthcare]], prevent the youth from getting out of debt, ensure the wars and corporate plunder would continue without obstacle, and keep his "legacy" of [[Obamacare]] in place.
*Developing [[neoliberalism|neoliberal]] trade deals with "[[investment protection clauses]]" which enslaved [[global south]] countries to corporations
*Developing relations with [[Saudi Arabia]]
*His "[[Asian Pivot]]", which planted the seeds for the new [[Cold War]] with [[China]]
*Crushing what remained of the [[Pink Tide]]
*Colluding with the right wing in [[Brazil]] to stage [[Operation Car Wash|fraudulent corruption trials]] to that paved the way for a [[Jair Bolsonaro|right-wing rise to power]]
*Supporting a [[2009 Honduran coup d'état|right wing coup]] in [[Honduras]]
*Repealing [[habeas corpus]] with his signing of the [[2012 National Defense Authorization Act]], paving the way for such events as the [[George Floyd protests in Portland, Oregon|kidnapping of people by federal officers in Portland in 2020]]
*Overthrowing the [[Gaddafi]] government in [[Libya]], plunging the country into deep poverty, splitting it into various [[warlord]] and [[Islamism|Islamist]] factions, creating an open [[contemporary slave trade|slave trade]], and causing a [[European migrant crisis|major flood of refugees into Europe]] and other places
*Expanding the wars in [[Afghanistan]], North-West [[Pakistan]], [[Somalia]], and [[Iraq]] (technically he ended one war with Iraq three years into his term, which he promised to do in six months, but followed it up soon with another new war)
*Starting wars in [[Syria]] (where he started by [[proxy warfare|funding rebel militants]]), [[Yemen]], and Libya<ref>[https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/01/10/pers-j10.html Obama's legacy of war, repression and inequality]</ref>
*Doubling down on [[US sanctions on Venezuela|sanctions on Venezuela]], which exacerbated [[Venezuelan economic crisis|its domestic situation]] and which only plunged Venezuelans deeper towards poverty
*Continuing and adding sanctions on the [[DPRK]]
*Supporting regime change in [[Ukraine]] and [[Georgia]]
*Arming [[Ukrainian fascists]] and other far right-wing groups
*And various war crimes, such as:
**[[Drone strikes]] in Yemen, which had a 90% civilian kill rate. This serves to further radicalize the population and thus justify further "counter-terrorism" operations.
It's bad enough that he did all these things, but he did all this when he had the potential to be FDR and then some. Democrats had a filibuster-proof supermajority in [[US Congress]] for the first two years and all he used it for was getting Romneycare (the heavily watered-down version of Obamacare first proposed) passed. Everyone remembers the congressional supermajority he wasted, but for some reason, we never talk about how Democrats also had a majority in governorship and state legislatures as well, so he could have dictated anything we wanted onto the states from Washington and he did nothing. With the worst financial crisis since the 30s, the material conditions were ripe for some massive Keynesian projects and the people would have supported him. Much of his base are Bernie supporters as well, and Obama had them and many more, and after getting elected he did literally nothing to mobilize the millions of email addresses belonging to devoted grassroots activists who had campaigned for him — in fact, he disbanded this grassroots army. Even for a neoliberal Democrat, he had underperformed — [[Bill Clinton]] at least got a couple things passed through Congress, even if they were minor, and was relatively dovish on foreign policy. Obama couldn't even do that.
To be fair, he did do a few good things:
*Signing the [[Iran nuclear deal|nuclear deal with Iran]] which is still blackmail but at least lifted some sanctions
*Lifting some [[US sanctions on Cuba|sanctions on Cuba]] and met with [[Raoul Castro]]
*He at least rolled out his stimulus package in response to the [[Great Recession]] instead of the German-enforced-style [[Austerity in the EU|austerity in the EU]]
==References==
== Old Article ==
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