Foreign Policy Category Archive

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Is Corbyn the Lesser Evil?

Eric Striker • December 12, 2019

• 1,300 Words • 192 Comments • Reply

Once upon a time I had a debate with a number of nationalists over the prospect of America's first black president in 2008. A number of acquaintances demanded everyone vote for "the white guy," John McCain, whose 36 year long career as top traitor in Congress was finally brought to an end when Satan appointed... Read More

John Brennan's CIA Trump Task Force

Could it become Obamagate?

Philip Giraldi • November 12, 2019

• 1,900 Words • 264 Comments • Reply

There is considerable evidence that the American system of government may have been victimized by an illegal covert operation organized and executed by the U.S. intelligence and national security community. Former Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director Jim Comey appear to have played critical leadership roles... Read More

Obama: Front Man for Washington’s Imperialism

Paul Craig Roberts • July 6, 2019

• 500 Words

Clarity Press is a good publisher for authors willing to provide real information in place of the officially sanctioned controlled explanations of our time. A current example is Jeremy Kuzmarov’s assessment of Obama, Obama’s Unending Wars. The forty-fourth president comes across as a successful front man for corporate rule and Washington’s imperialism. Obama was the... Read More

Will the Real John Brennan Please Stand Up?

When will he answer for his war crimes?

Philip Giraldi • August 21, 2018

• 1,700 Words • 180 Comments • Reply

The battle between many former intelligence chiefs and the White House is becoming a gift that keeps on giving to the mass media, which is characteristically deeply immersed in Trump derangement syndrome in attacking the president for his having stripped former CIA Director John Brennan of his security clearance. One of the most ludicrous claims,... Read More

Obama Ignores Genocide In South Africa

Ilana Mercer • August 9, 2018

• 1,000 Words • 445 Comments • Reply

Once upon a time there were two politicians. One had the power to give media and political elites goosebumps. Still does. The other causes the same dogs to raise their hackles. The first is Barack Hussein Obama; the second Vladimir Putin. The same gilded elites who choose our villains and victims for us have decided... Read More

Removing Offensive Monuments

The eyesore presidential libraries

Philip Giraldi • September 12, 2017

• 1,700 Words • 80 Comments • Reply

The social justice warrior charge to purge the United States of all monuments relating in any way to the Confederacy has been rapidly expanding to include the scourge represented by all white people all through history. The Founding Fathers who owned slaves will undoubtedly be the next ones on the block and the list will... Read More

Obama’s AWOL Anti-War Protesters

James Bovard • July 18, 2017

• 1,700 Words • 86 Comments • Reply

Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency in 2008 as a peace candidate. He signaled that he would fundamentally change America’s course after the reckless carnage unleashed by the George W. Bush administration. However, by the end of Obama’s presidency, the United States was bombing seven different foreign nations. But Obama’s warring rarely evoked the protests... Read More

Trump’s Ties to the Past and the Resurrection of the Left

James Petras • February 7, 2017

• 2,200 Words • 33 Comments • Reply

Introduction President Trump is deeply embedded in the politics of the deep state structure of American imperialism. Contrary to occasional references to non-intervention in overseas wars, Trump has followed in the footsteps of his predecessors. While neoconservatives and liberals have raised a hue and cry about Trump’s ties to Russia, his ‘heresies’ over NATO and... Read More

Double Standards: Where Were the Liberal Protestors During Obama’s Wars?

Mike Whitney • January 26, 2017

• 1,300 Words • 73 Comments • Reply

The election of Donald Trump has sent millions of people pouring out onto the streets to protest a man they think is a racist, misogynist, xenophobic bully who will destroy US democracy in his quest to establish himself as supreme fascist ruler of the country. Maybe they’re right. Maybe Trump is a fascist who will... Read More

Obama’s Political Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy: Chelsea Manning as Bait

James Petras • January 23, 2017

• 1,100 Words • 8 Comments • Reply

Introduction: The malady, common among political leaders who commit heartless crimes while craving popular adulation as heroes and misunderstood saints, is ‘Political Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy’ (PMSP). PMSP best explains the pathologic drive of politicians and policy makers who inflict relentless, systematic mass destruction and then intervene in a most theatrical manner to save a... Read More

Obama the War Criminal, Butcherer of Women and Children

Paul Craig Roberts • January 11, 2017

• 300 Words • 6 Comments

There is no doubt that US President Barak Obama is a war criminal as are his military and intelligence officials and most of the House and Senate. Obama is the first president to keep the US at war for the entirety of his eight-year regime. During 2016 alone the US dropped 26,171 bombs on wedding... Read More

Obama's Victory Lap?

Lots of talk, not much to show

Philip Giraldi • November 1, 2016

• 1,700 Words • 104 Comments • Reply

In between nearly daily campaign stops shilling for Hillary, President Barack Obama has been promoting his record as Head of State. To Obama’s credit, he talks nice and appears to be both thoughtful and rational, qualities that were not always evident in his predecessor in office. But the hype about what was achieved in his... Read More

How the World Ends

Baiting Russia is not good policy

Philip Giraldi • May 24, 2016

• 1,700 Words • 250 Comments • Reply

Last week I attended a foreign policy conference in Washington that featured a number of prominent academics and former government officials who have been highly critical of the way the Bush and Obama Administrations have interacted with the rest of the world. Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago was on a panel and... Read More

The Obama Legacy

War is peace

Philip Giraldi • May 17, 2016

• 1,600 Words • 79 Comments • Reply

A recent interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic confirmed that President Barack Obama during his last few months in office has become focused on his legacy as president, considering how he would like to define himself in the widely anticipated monstrous presidential library that soon will be rising in his name at the University... Read More

President Obama: the Race for the Imperial Legacy

James Petras • April 29, 2016

• 3,400 Words • 2 Comments • Reply

Introduction: President Obama is racing forward to establish his imperial legacy throughout Russia, Asia and Latin America. In the last two years he has accelerated the buildup of his military nuclear arsenal on the frontiers of Russia. The Pentagon has designed a high tech anti-missile system to undermine Russian defenses. In Latin America, Obama has... Read More

“No Ground Troops to Syria:” Obama’s Smartest Move in Eight Years?

Mike Whitney • November 18, 2015

• 1,900 Words • 55 Comments • Reply

Three questions about Paris: 1) Was the over-the-top, no-holds-barred, 24-7 media blitz really an attempt to keep the public informed about a critically important event or was the coverage geared to pressure President Obama into sending ground troops to Syria? 2) Is Obama’s excuse for not putting boots on the ground in Syria to fight... Read More

What Obama Should Have Told Bibi

Philip Giraldi • November 10, 2015

• 1,400 Words • 322 Comments • Reply

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is currently making one of his periodic devastating plundering raids on Washington and New York. During his visit he discreetly picked up a bunch of large checks from the Wall Street crowd, benefited from the plaudits dutifully delivered by the media and chattering class and has even met with President... Read More

Has Obama Come to His Senses?

Obama Shows Strength By Recognizing The Failure Of The Neoconservative Policy

Paul Craig Roberts • October 12, 2015

• 400 Words • 11 Comments

Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge and others are misinterpreting Steve Kroft’s “60 Minutes” interview with President Obama. They see weakness and confusion in Obama’s responses and conclude that Kroft shredded Obama. What I see is entirely different. Steve Kroft is either a neoconservative or he is inculcated into the neocon mind-set that the US must... Read More

Orwell at the UN

Obama Re-Defines Democracy as a Country That Supports U.S. Policy

Michael Hudson • September 29, 2015

• 800 Words • 2 Comments • Reply

In his Orwellian September 28, 2015 speech to the United Nations, President Obama said that if democracy had existed in Syria, there never would have been a revolt against Assad. By that, he meant ISIL. Where there is democracy, he said, there is no violence or revolution. This was his threat to promote revolution, coups... Read More

Illegal Immigration Comes Home

Taxpayers get the bill for an Obama policy

Philip Giraldi • February 24, 2015

• 1,500 Words • 44 Comments • Reply

One might well argue that providing a safe and nurturing refuge for the more than 60,000 young illegal immigrants who crossed the border into the United States in 2014 is the humane and honorable thing to do. Unless, of course, if one regards the flood of youngsters as little more than a cynical exploitation of... Read More

A Tale of Two Presidents

Putin versus Obama

Philip Giraldi • January 20, 2015

• 2,500 Words • 40 Comments • Reply

In the American mainstream media fact and fiction frequently diverge, leading to established narratives that bear little relationship to what is actually happening. The recent events in Paris have most often been described as free speech colliding with religious extremism but the reality is that existing French hate crime legislation means that the country has... Read More

There Are None So Blind

As Those Who Will Not See

Philip Giraldi • January 6, 2015

• 1,800 Words • 48 Comments • Reply

My wife and I had a number of visitors over the holidays, including several foreign friends from our time spent in Europe and the Middle East. Both the Americans and the visitors from overseas eventually came around to wanting to discuss how deformed United States foreign policy has become, noting generally that the elite that... Read More

Lame-Duck Obama’s Brave New World

Pepe Escobar • November 7, 2014

• 1,500 Words • Leave a Comment

Fresh out of his latest Congressional election shellacking delivered by the minority who bothered to vote in the United States, the formerly most powerful leader in the world, US President Barack Obama, will star in a thriller this weekend, appearing in the same room with China’s Xi Jinping, Japan’s Shinzo Abe and – fasten your... Read More

Obama’s Failed Foreign Policy Change

A new administration only gave interventionism a confused, humanitarian face-lift

Philip Giraldi • September 18, 2014

• 1,500 Words • Leave a Comment

President Barack Obama presents something of a dilemma. I voted for him twice in the belief that he was basically a cautious operator who would not rush into a new war in Asia, unlike his Republican opponents who virtually promised to attack Iran upon assuming office. Unfortunately, Obama’s second term has revealed that his instinct... Read More

President Obama's Failure

It's the Man and also the System

Mac Deford • April 29, 2014

• 1,600 Words • 17 Comments • Reply

There are obviously people who voted for President Obama and think he's done a great job -- but there are just a lot fewer of them than there used to be. I was reminded of this when I got an email the other day commenting on my column last week on US policy in the... Read More

When Is Sovereignty Not Sovereignty?

The Golden Age of Newspeak

Philip Giraldi • March 25, 2014

• 1,600 Words • 35 Comments • Reply

Harvard Professor Stephen Walt has described the current contretemps over Ukraine as “geostrategic incompetence of the highest order” on the part of the White House. Seconding that I would add that the central problem with the Obama foreign policy, guided as it is by a bundle of poorly defined principles, is that it has no... Read More

Karen Greenberg: Obama's Commandments

Tom Engelhardt • February 27, 2014

• 400 Words • Leave a Comment

Think of us as having two presidents. One, a fellow named Barack Obama, cuts a distinctly Clark Kent-ish figure. In presiding over domestic policy, he is regularly thwarted in his desires by the Republicans in Congress and couldn’t until recently get his most basic choices for government positions or the judiciary through the Senate. For... Read More

The Five Commandments of Barack Obama

How “Thou Shalt Not” Became “Thou Shalt”

Karen Greenberg • February 27, 2014

• 2,300 Words • 3 Comments • Reply

In January 2009, Barack Obama entered the Oval Office projecting idealism and proud to be the constitutional law professor devoted to turning democratic principles into action. In his first weeks in office, in a series of executive orders and public statements, the new president broadcast for all to hear the five commandments by which life... Read More

American Rooster Prepares to Crow Atop Asian Dunghill

Peter Lee • February 24, 2014

• 2,800 Words • 1 Comment • Reply

[This piece may be reposted if Asia Times Online is credited and a link provided.] In other words, it’s time for the United States to engage in a full-throated celebration of the pivot to Asia with what I think is going to be President Obama’s America F*ck Yeah tour of Asian democracies in April 2014.... Read More

The Age of Mediocrity

Revisiting Exceptionalism

Mac Deford • February 18, 2014

• 1,400 Words • Leave a Comment

The pictures of President Obama and President Hollande of France, the country which is our oldest friend, touring Thomas Jefferson's Monticello screamed at us, "The Age of Mediocrity." The contrast, between today's two living presidents and that earlier epoch of French-US relations, when our first president and the Marquis de Lafayette were close friends, when... Read More

Why Remain in Afghanistan?

Philip Giraldi • December 12, 2013

• 1,400 Words • 17 Comments • Reply

The White House is pushing hard to keep a significant number of American soldiers in Afghanistan contrary to President Barack Obama’s earlier pledge to have then all out by the end of 2014. As the United States President has demonstrated himself to be a habitual liar that failure to connect promises made in 2008 with... Read More

Obama-Rouhani: Lights, Camera, Action

Pepe Escobar • September 19, 2013

• 1,200 Words • Leave a Comment

The stage is set. By now it's established Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has given full authority to the new administration of President Hassan Rouhani to talk directly to Washington about Iran's nuclear program. This happened only a few days after US President Barack Obama leaked that letters had been exchanged between himself and Rouhani.... Read More

Obama’s “Bombing Credibility”: “the Emperor Is Naked”

Pepe Escobar • September 9, 2013

• 1,300 Words • Leave a Comment

There is nothing tragic about the Obama presidency, capable of drawing the analytical talents of a neo-Plutarch or a neo-Gibbon. This is more like a Pirandello farce, a sort of Character in Search of An Author. Candidates to Author are well documented – from the Israel lobby to the House of Saud, from a select... Read More

Vlad the Hammer vs Obama the Wimp

Pepe Escobar • August 9, 2013

• 1,100 Words • Leave a Comment

Make a plan; then make another plan. Both won't work. - Bertolt Brecht This is getting ridiculous. The President of the United States (POTUS) screamed and shouted because he wanted his spy (Edward Snowden) back. Snowden, following Russian laws, was granted temporary asylum. The White House was "disappointed". Then POTUS snubbed the bilateral summit with... Read More

Al-Qaeda to the Rescue

Pepe Escobar • August 5, 2013

• 800 Words • Leave a Comment

When the going gets tough, count on the Ministry of Truth to get going. The end of Ramadan was imminent. The jihadi chattering classes of that fuzzy entity, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), went on overdrive. It was jailbreak galore from Libya to Pakistan via Iraq. And all this in perfect synch with two... Read More

Snowden: Our Man in Moscow

Pepe Escobar • August 2, 2013

• 1,100 Words • Leave a Comment

So what is the "extremely disappointed" Obama administration, the Orwellian/Panopticon complex and the discredited US Congress to do? Send a Navy Seal Team 6 to snatch him or to target assassinate him - turning Moscow into Abbottabad 2.0? Drone him? Poison his borscht? Shower his new house with depleted uranium? Install a no-fly zone over... Read More

Obama's Weapons-for-Peace Program

Pepe Escobar • June 18, 2013

• 1,300 Words • Leave a Comment

They looked like two dejected schoolboys in front of the headmaster by the end of the two-hour Putin-Obama summit at the sidelines of the Group of Eight meeting in Northern Ireland. But as astonishing as the sound of silence was the fact that, on Syria, the former KGB guy was trying to save the "leading... Read More

Is Sunnylands America’s Munich?

Peter Lee • June 8, 2013

• 1,300 Words • Leave a Comment

Nah. Just clickbaiting you. Despite the dim prospects for concrete results, the Sunnylands summit between Xi Jinping and Barack Obama has provoked a disproportionate frenzy of chinstroking among serious pundits. Much of it is along the lines of “the United States must not make nice with the PRC, thereby validating Xi’s ‘New Type of Great... Read More

Humble Pie for on Menu for Xi Jinping at Sunnylands

Peter Lee • June 6, 2013

• 3,400 Words • Leave a Comment

[This piece originally appeared at Asia Times Online on June 6, 2013. It can be reposted if ATOl is credited and a link provided.] The expert consensus is that the Barack Obama-Xi Jinping summit at Sunnylands, California is something of a relationship-building nothingburger. The summit was arranged on short notice, there is no detailed agenda,... Read More

Israel Rescues Mujahid Obama

Pepe Escobar • May 7, 2013

• 1,200 Words • Leave a Comment

Just when the red line charade was reaching fever pitch - but still buried in the sand - and he had to choose between the US "exercising restraint" or "directly involving itself" in the Syrian war, (see The Syria-Iran red line show, Asia Times Online, May 2, 2013) President Obama was saved by Bibi Netanyahu's... Read More

The Illusory State of the Empire

Pepe Escobar • February 13, 2013

• 1,400 Words • Leave a Comment

Barack Obama would never be so crass as to use a State of the Union (SOTU) address to announce an "axis of evil". No. Double O Bama, equipped with his exclusive license to kill (list), is way slicker. As much as he self-confidently pitched a blueprint for a "smart" - not bigger - US government,... Read More

Mr. President, Tear Down This Wall

Washington’s Iranian Future

Pepe Escobar • December 6, 2012

• 3,100 Words • Leave a Comment

Imagine, for a moment, a world in which the United States is a regional power, not a superpower. A world in which the globe’s mightiest nation, China, invades Mexico and Canada, deposing the leaders of both countries. A world in which China has also ringed the Americas, from Canada to Central America, with military bases.... Read More

A Game of Inches

Chinese Condom-Maker Sizes Up Obama and Romney

Peter Lee • November 9, 2012

• 2,000 Words • Leave a Comment

The caption on this post on the China Weibo blog of the Durex condom company reads “The difference between Obama and Romney is…” Actually, I think the PRC regime-meisters might have a slight preference for President Obama as “the devil you know.” Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is a protean shape-shifter and it was... Read More

Hawk, Dove, Butterfly, Bee

Pepe Escobar • September 27, 2012

• 900 Words • Leave a Comment

What's that unheard-of political specimen spreading its wings over the geopolitical spectrum? It is aggressive as a hawk, compromising as a dove; it dances like a butterfly and stings like a bee. What kind of plumed composite is that? A hawdovebutterbee (HDBB)? Get used to it. The HDBB happens to be no other than the... Read More

Brother Obama, Where Art Thou?

Pepe Escobar • September 15, 2012

• 900 Words • Leave a Comment

MENA (Middle East/North Africa) is on fire. The diffuse rage - even if manifested by a tiny minority - is distinctly anti-American. Protests in Cairo have reached Sanaa in Yemen and even Bangladesh. The administration of US President Barack Obama is perplexed beyond belief. There will be revenge. What's really going on? It does not... Read More

Still in Search of the American Dream

Pepe Escobar • September 7, 2012

• 1,000 Words • Leave a Comment

NEW YORK - Don't … stop … thinking about tomorrow. Fleetwood Mac is back. The roaring 1990s are back. Bubba is in da house. The American dream is back with a bang. The nightmare is over. Or is it? How can any living politician anywhere in the world even pretend to rival former US president... Read More

Realpolitik Blurs US Red Line on Syria

Pepe Escobar • August 24, 2012

• 1,000 Words • Leave a Comment

Weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) are back. It's like we never left Dubya's glory days. No, they didn't find the non-existent Saddam stash on eBay. This is about the existent Bashar al-Assad's. And it's not WMDs as the pretext for an invasion and occupation, but WMDs as a pretext for whatever euphemism the Obama administration... Read More

Obama Does Syriana

Pepe Escobar • August 3, 2012

• 1,000 Words • Leave a Comment

It took Reuters quite a while to be allowed to report that US President Barack Obama had approved an intelligence finding [1] letting the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) loose in its support for the weaponized "rebels" fighting for regime change in Syria. By now even fishermen in Fiji knew about this "secret" (not to mention... Read More

Drone Me Down on the Killing Floor

Pepe Escobar • June 16, 2012

• 1,100 Words • Leave a Comment

Lord knows, I should'a been gone Lord knows, I should'a been gone And I wouldn't've been here, down on the killin' floor - Howlin' Wolf, Killing Floor As convenient as it is for someone in a cubicle in the Nevada desert to press a button and incinerate a Pashtun wedding party in North Waziristan, now,... Read More

How Osama Re-Elects Obama

Pepe Escobar • May 28, 2012

• 500 Words • Leave a Comment

A nuclear deal with Iran? An organized retreat from Afghanistan? The eurozone picking up a little bit of steam? Stable oil prices? Forget it. The crucial foreign elector recruited for Obama II at the White House is one Osama bin Laden. Call it the “Obama nails Osama” winning strategy. No wonder the winning strategy has... Read More

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"Barack Obama" Items Across Entire Archive

Category Classics

9/11 Was an Israeli Job

How America was neoconned into World War IV

Laurent Guyénot

• 381 Comments • Reply

John McCain and the POW Cover-Up

The “war hero” candidate buried information about POWs left behind in Vietnam.

Sydney Schanberg

• 148 Comments • Reply

America's Jews Are Driving America's Wars