In 2009, the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided that the Nobel Peace Prize would go to a Harvard Law School graduate, an elected junior senator of Illinois, and the first Black President of the United States, Barack Obama. According to the Committee, “Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons” served as the driving force that awarded him a Nobel. However, President Obama would go on to approve more drone strikes in his first year in office than President Bush carried out during his entire administration. The alleged peacemaker, very much like his predecessors, should be considered for the label of international war criminal.
Let’s clarify: President Obama is not a pioneer of the illegal and offensive wars that the United States has engaged in during the last 20 years. Even still, he is an expansionist, reflected clearly in the development of his drone program. During his presidency, Obama approved the use of 563 drone strikes that killed approximately 3,797 people. In fact, Obama authorized 54 drone strikes alone in Pakistan during his first year in office. One of the first CIA drone strikes under President Obama was at a funeral, murdering as many as 41 Pakistani civilians. The following year, Obama led 128 CIA drone strikes in Pakistan that killed at least 89 civilians. Just two years into his presidency, it was clear that the “hope” that President Obama offered during his 2008 campaign could not escape U.S. imperialism.
The drone operations extended to Somalia and Yemen in 2010 and 2011, resulting in more destructive results. Under the belief they were targeting al-Qaida, President Obama’s first strike on Yemen killed 55 people including 21 children, 10 of which were under the age of five. Additionally, 12 women, five of them pregnant, were also among those who were murdered in this strike. These blundered acts of murder by not only President Obama, but the U.S. government, are morally reprehensible.
Even more civilian casualties came out of Afghanistan throughout Barack Obama’s time in office. In 2014, Obama began removing troops currently deployed in the country. However, instead of this action by the president being one in a pursuit of peace and stability in the region, it only acted as an opportunity to drastically increase air warfare. Afghanistan had war rained upon them by U.S. bombardment, with the administration viciously dropping 1,337 weapons on Afghanistan in 2016. In total that year, the Obama administration dropped 26,171 bombs (drone or otherwise) across seven countries: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. The U.S., in cooperation with its allies including the Afghan government, killed 582 civilians on average annually from 2007 to 2016.
In his recent self-aggrandizing memoir “A Promised Land,” Obama defends his drone program through a messiah complex; he writes, “I wanted somehow to save them … And yet the world they were a part of, and the machinery I commanded, more often had me killing them instead.” President Obama would have the reader believe he wanted to help the suspected terrorist but simply couldn’t. In reality, he consciously and undemocratically decided the fates of thousands of lives, without due process.
With the exception of the wars themselves, the claim that former President Barack Obama is a war criminal also lies within the double-tap initiative. Double-tap drone strikes are as disturbing as they sound; these attacks are follow-up strikes on first responders as they rush to the bombed area trying to assist any survivors. In 2012, an attack on the Shawal Valley aimed at Taliban commander Sadiq Noor reportedly killed up to 14 people in a double-tap drone strike. These attacks are both morally and legally reprehensible, as they are conscious acts of murder against civilians.
These drone strikes make a strong case for categorizing Obama as an international war criminal. The 1949 Geneva Conventions, ratified by the United Nations, explicitly provides protections for not only the wounded, but also for medical and religious personnel, medical units, and medical transports. Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court states that “Intentionally directing attacks against personnel, installations, material, units or vehicles involved in a humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping mission in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations” is classified as a war crime. The law also states “intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians” also constitutes war crimes for the guilty party. Through the drone strike program and double-tap attacks, there is no question that former President Obama and his administration violated international humanitarian law. Obama’s symbolic significance cannot outshine his relationship with the imperial endeavors of the American Empire.
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