For eight years, President Obama has set the world ablaze under a
regime of endless warfare. Part six and seven of this series explored
Obama's investment in war on the African continent and on the
undocumented population that resides in the US. However, these two areas
cannot possibly cover Obama's extensive record of globalized war and
chaos. US imperialism’s foundation rests upon the largest military
apparatus in the world. The system's enduring economic crisis has made
war an indispensable tool toward maintaining and expanding US hegemony. A
summation of Obama's war legacy provides more than is needed to verify
the necessity of endless militarism to the imperialist system in this
period of crisis.
Obama inherited an economic crisis and two full-scale occupations in
Iraq and Afghanistan that lacked support from the majority of people in
the US. Not only did Obama fail to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
but he managed to expand them as well. The Obama Administration
sent 30,000 troops to Afghanistan in 2009 and devoted 8,400 of those
troops to remain in the war-torn nation beyond 2016. Obama carried out
these policies despite announcing in 2015 that he was against "endless
war" in Afghanistan.
Obama has taken a different, but no less devastating approach in
Iraq. The Obama Administration announced a formal end to the occupation
of Iraq in 2011. However, the so-called "end" to the war included the
maintenance of 5,000 private security contractors and almost 16,000
State Department "civilian employees." Since 2014, the Obama
Administration has escalated the presence of US Special Forces in Iraq
to fight the so-called Islamic State (ISIS). Yet it has been
acknowledged by multiple sources that it was the US destruction of Iraq
that ultimately led to the rise of ISIS in the first place.
The US occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq were visible to the US
public mostly because US soldiers died in them. When Obama came into
office in 2008, he was almost immediately given a Nobel Peace Prize for
his empty promises to end the "dumb" wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama
ended up doing no such thing, and actually expanded war in the region.
-- Danny Haiphong, "The Obama Legacy Part VIII: The War Summation" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).