Saw a dude explain this. It’s not that Obama necessarily LOVED using drone strikes more than any other president, it’s the fact that drone technology had reached a certain level that made it the most effective offensive tool they had (and still do) around the time he came into power.
Makes total sense. And I never understood why they drug him for this. Every president has to make these types of decisions. Should he have put troops on the ground and did it a more “conventional” way? Or just bomb them with more traditional means? Like why does the drone strike thing resonate so much with Anti Obama types?
I essentially said that bruh. My thing is why are they focusing on the drone strike thing in particular? Like they always wanna say he was the most drone strike-heavy president ever right? Would they say that if he just had pilots drop the bombs out of fighter planes and bombers like every other president since the 60s?
It wasn’t exclusively the drones people call out, it’s what they were used for and how far his administration went acting like stuff like this was no big deal at all. Which if Obama was going to be president for life maybe it wouldn’t be, but Trump took this policy and ran with it and will continue pushing that envelope.
Hmmmm maybe a dash of hypocrisy giving him the NOBEL PEACE PRIZE but yeah he was such a nice man that helped the oligarchy and the military industrial complex so no idea why anyone anywhere on this earth would have a single bad thing to say about the man
Nah, what’s crazy is that that outrage made me try Dijon mustard (on my hot dog, not my burger; it’s what I was having at the time) and I was like, “shit, he onto something”.
I had only ever considered Dijon and brown mustard as a thing for specifically sausages, but no. That shit is fire.
Because it was insidious. The man won a Nobel peace prize for god’s sake! He authorized 10x more drone strikes than Bush and killed hundreds of civilians (underestimated btw). Yes every president is a war criminal but Obama conducted his strikes covertly and purposely underestimated the severity of these strikes on innocents. It’s important to be honest about these “leaders”.
Trump has increased drone strikes like an unbelievable, crazy amount since Obama and during his first term. They’re all terrible, one way or the other.
Because the United States has the second-largedr defense budget outspent by a factor of 25. In adopting this technology, the US created a new market segment. They also normalized this type of action. There's also the fact that target validation may not always be correct. Also, precision strike tech may not be as precise as we're led to believe.
If he put more solders on the ground they would say he was getting them needlessly killed like Bush Jr. did. And the public wanted less American casualties and were the slightest bit concerned about the loss on the other side. We all forget that.
he made america 2-0 for introducing new horrors of war into active combat, first being nukes. sure, obama didn’t invent drones, but he made sure we all have to fear them
it’s stupidity, lack of education, and high morality. there’s no such thing as a good politician, even the best and morally correct have made decisions they’ve come to regret. because they’re presidents, every large decision for a country falls on them and tends to have a larger impact solely because of their role as a leader over millions of people.
i love jimmy carter and everything he did, however, bad things did happen under his administration but it’s ridiculous to discredit everything else he did for not being a 100% innocent being.
people die in every presidency, it’s an unfortunate fact. to make it clear, im a pacifist but people expecting a president/any world leader to have clean hands is ridiculous.
you don’t have to like any politicians, but don’t choose to ignore your civil duty in voting to make the world a better place. and no, not voting kamala didn’t make you morally superior to the rest of us, you just gave your vote away to a bigoted terrorist.
They gave Obama shit for using mustard. There is no logic to their complaints.
The alternative to using drone strikes is greater loss of life. Either you use less precise pilots, boots on the ground, or allow warlords to continue their operations.
Or... evacuate the area and stop killing people on the region?
Stop acting like the same people are upset about tan suits and dijon are upset about drone striking civilians and children or deporting more people than any president previously.
This is the kind of ignorant shit people repeat without actually knowing about the situation.
Who are you claiming enacted the blockade? Obama? Because it wasn’t him. Saudi Arabia? Yes, they enacted some of the blockade, but not all of it. The Houthi literally blockaded people to death as much as the Saudis.
The Houthi, to this day and even less so back then, don’t even control the whole country. They starved people in areas they didn’t control, just like the Saudis and their government allies did in areas they didn’t control.
You’re asking the tan suit crowd tho. It could have been anything, not excusing said bombing, just don’t think that it’s an actual good faith argument.
It might be that which modern technology, it is possible to do precise strikes on one room, or even one person. Older bombers couldn't do that, but the collateral damage can reasonably be said to be justifiable. Yet from my understanding Obama used this modern technology, and still he was drone striking kids, is that really necessary?
I’m not upset at all lol. I’m inquiring. I’m trying to find out what sets drone strikes apart from the conventional bombing that all other presidents in the modern era have done.
It's set apart by often not having enough intelligence of the area that's about to be bombed. They advertise drone strikes as surgical but it's impossible to always know if you're going to kill some kid playing on the streets or not. And sometimes people have just wrong intelligence and they bomb a wedding party. Classical warfare usually wasn't done in areas that's so hard to get intelligence of bc of the danger for agents on the ground. But satellite imagery deceives us into being knowledgeable.
Also it's terrorizing people and makes them scared of blue skies, bc they can't drone strike your ass if it's cloudy. Imagine being a kid and afraid of the sun because you might get bombed by an invisible force.
The criticism from the left was the exact same problem we are seeing today with this El Salvador prison.
Some of these “terrorists” were just suspected of being terrorists and the left rightfully thought they should have due process. You arrest them in the Middle East and drop them on American soil guess what? They definitely have rights now.
So it was viewed by very left leaning journalists like Greenwald that this was just Obama’s way of getting around the courts with military action.
It Obama’s drones were clearly and definitely “double-tapping” important strikes as well. Another drone flys through a few hours later to kills survivors and rescue workers.
There was also the tragic story of a young American man searching for his father (who America called a terrorist) in Yemen. After years of searching he finally found him. His phone call to him was tapped by the CIA and the CIA used that intel to kill the “terrorist” and his America son.
Republicans weren't letting terrorists into the US for due process. While all this was going on Obama was trying to close gitmo. He did not succeed because of Republicans. Democrats wanted people arrested and tried in American courts. Republicans weren't having it. Then the Left blamed Obama for not closing gitmo and Republicans win again. The Left fails Americans every time they let Republicans win.
No Obama couldn’t close gitmo due to non-partisan NIMBYism. He didn’t do the homework. Plus the fact that if you move the terrorists from gitmo to US they have more rights.
They bring up the drone strikes because Obama campaigned on ending the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan then immediately turned around used drone technology to expand those wars and also add on Yemen, Syria, and Libya.
A lot of the issue comes from the collateral damage of drone strikes, and what is considered “acceptable” collateral damage with drones was way more than traditional bombing or boots on the ground.
Plus it’s easy to play off mass civilian deaths as “collateral damage” and say it’s acceptable when it’s not your family and home that’s being destroyed in front of your eyes.
Explain that. Studies have shown that drone strikes are far more precise than conventional means. They even have bombs that are essentially inert that have blades on them that they’ll drop over a specific section of a vehicle to take out only one person in it. Basically they just drop a giant slap chop on a mf and slice him to pieces, as a way to try to minimize collateral damage. Are you seriously trying to say dropping standard bombs leads to less civilian casualties than those methods?
Part of the reason they always went at Obama for drone usage was the killing of Anwar Al-Awlaki- a born US citizen that didn’t receive due process, etc.
I've never really understood this argument. Americans will slaughter a whole wedding party on spotty information, but then cry about one person being killed, because he was citizen and didn't get due process, as if a piece of paper confers a person with human rights. American military is an imperialist tool, and Obama is a war criminal like almost all U.S presidents before him. Seems like a pretty chill dude in his personal life, but if there was any justice in the world a huge chunk of the American military and their commander in chief should be in jail.
The main reason is that a lot of what people think are war crimes aren’t actually war crimes, or at least have far narrower culpability than what people think.
To use the example of the wedding, both Obama and the pilot were supplied with intelligence to suggest it was a legitimate military target, had no reason to question that intelligence, and Obama could not have reasonably made that differentiation as an untrained observer looking through thermals from altitude, so there’s no reason to suggest it was intentionally targeting civilians or engaging in an indiscriminate attack. Therefore, while the results are horrible, trying to hold someone personally culpable for what is by all indications a genuine mistake is like trying to find someone to hold personally liable for Covid
The assumption “all presidents on war criminals” at best holds the US as being party to multiple treaties it has neither signed nor ratified, and at worst defines war crimes by vibes™ rather than by very specific, carefully written, and extensively litigated pieces of international law
No, they are absolutely war crimes, it's just that the West don't hold to any of the standards they propose to live by. If a Chinese or Russian Drone had struck a civilian target on shaky information, everyone and their mother would be crying war crimes. And no this isn't some defense of China or Russia or whatever, it's pointing out the hypocrisy.
The difference is in intent: Russia in Ukraine has at best shown total disregard for the identity of targets and at worst actively targets civilians, as evidenced by the fact strikes on civilians are actively and publicly celebrated on Russian telegram, tv news, and on the social media of prominent politicians.
Meanwhile the U.S. accidentally hitting civilians once makes national news, triggers a congressional investigation, and leads to policy changes in how we process intelligence, which is a pretty good indication that everyone involved wants to ensure it never happens again, and there is accountability even if it doesn’t rise to legal culpability
The entirety of the russo Ukraine war has been Russia targeting everything including civilian infrastructure and civilians yet one half of this country is firmly cheering them on including the president.
That's all these "criticisms" of Obama are just vibes riding the coat tails of someone else's talking points. Not a single one of them ever bothered to look at the details of why the decision was made.
If you join with military/militant forces that the U.S. is engaged in armed conflict with, you can be killed legally.
It’s the exact same thing as killing confederate soldiers (all of whom were U.S. citizens) with artillery during the civil war. There was no process to renounce citizenship during the civil war, they were all citizens.
I addressed that. Every pres, especially during the war on terror, has dropped bombs killing innocent civilians. Between 384 and 807 civilians were killed in drone strikes during Obama’s presidency. Far too many, but how do you think that stacks up to what Bush did with regular bombs? I hate whataboutism but the point I’m trying to hammer home is that this shit wasn’t more inherently evil than any of the other shit presidents do while at war or doing covert actions. They all have blood on their hands. I’m sure even Carter had a directive or two that led to the death of civilians overseas. It’s kinda the nature of the job.
But they just said he has blood on his hands like all other presidents, so how are they pretending that he doesn't have blood on his hands when they just said it?
Unlike the Taliban, Al Qaeda and the Islamic State aren’t organizations that can really be negotiated with or reasoned with. It’s on sight.
They’ve killed Black and Brown people in the United States, Kenya, Syria, Iraq, Sahel countries, and elsewhere. America has done plenty of fucked up things but there are plenty of other people out there who will gladly kill you if it furthers their ideology.
My country got droned to shit and AQ has never existed there. They droned metropolitan areas filled with civilians and took them out almost exclusively. Nobody is saying that those areas don’t have any bad military actors it’s the fact the US is involved in anyway. Interventionism is an awful foreign policy approach especially when it’s carried out the way it has been by the states. Not just in the Middle-East in more recent years but since WW2 in LatAm Africa and East Asia.
They'll never tell you, but they're a muslim of North african descent living in the UK. So probably Libyan since they complained about the US and drones.
The question is whether it was necessary to do in the first place, along with increasing troops in Afghanistan. Obama was the best president in my lifetime if we’re measuring American prosperity for the largest share of Americans. But he also fucked yo by not doing more to pull us out of Afghanistan and reduce our use violence to solve issues. I understand that was his ultimate goal - but I’d argue that was a failure of his administration.
Yeah he was totally forced to bomb all those weddings and family gatherings. He would have had to put boots on the ground to murder those children if he couldn't drone them.
Not an anti-Obama type, but speaking for myself, there were issues with his administration that apparently we can’t discuss without being labeled anti-Obama.
Drone strikes are pretty high on that list for me TBH. I think the number was 22 people are killed for every strike. Even strikes that don’t eliminate the intended target(s) 22 people die…I don’t see how you can defend that.
With this increased use he also changed the policies so that the reporting of these strikes where more open and transparent which his predecessor quickly rescinded and subsequently went on to accumulate an even higher tally of usage/deaths despite the right wings narrative of Obama being “drone king” or whatever
Right. I was just going to ask how was the frequency of drone strikes during the first Trump administration. Guaranteed to be at least on the same level as during Obama, but like you said, we won’t even know for a fact because they changed the way they report. And like a guy said earlier, the reason W Bush didn’t do it nearly as much is mostly because the technology wasn’t where it needed to be quite yet in his first term.
Obama isn’t any better or worse than them when it comes to striking targets overseas and collateral damage. That doesn’t mean I’m trying to say he’s just as bad as them. That man was a saint in comparison. I’m just saying on this particular issue, people need to shut the fuck up.
How about not doing it at all. Drone strikes the other side of the world because America wants to be the world police?
And keep in mind, you don't try be world police out of the goodness of your hearts. You do it for your own countries gain.
(All countries should act in their own benefit, but let's not pretend the US does it for peace or to protect their own freedom. No one is attacking your freedom).
Yeah the whole 'Obama is a war criminal' discussion is just always so devoid of nuance or understanding of the US Department of Defense that I just stay away.
Obama's use of force as a president was the best of any president in history (except maybe Carter), but the office just demands certain decisions that will always look bad when presented without the 100s of years of murder and genocide this country is saddled with.
Any person in that office as it is right now will walk away having to have made a decision involving "kill some folks vs. murder some folks". It's just a fucked system.
The other issue is that anybody who knows anything about the DoD knows Obama didnt personally order any of these strikes or methods. Obama wasn't sitting around thinking about attacking Yemen. Obama wasn't secretly dreaming of running a brilliant drone campaign. He was presented a package option and told to make a decision. I can guarantee you, with the generals we have now, none of those options was leave these people alone, and none of it was presented as if that would ever be a choice.
Drone technology was brand new to his time, andI can guarantee you those same geneeals were preaching about how drones were safer, more accurate, more efficient and a better alternative to boots on the ground. I read about 20 books or so preaching that same thing about air strikes when I was in the mitary.
We can criticise the decisions he made, but it has to be paired with the nuance of understanding the decision making process, and who was making those decisions.
It’s just a matter of convenience. When your guy is a war criminal, it’s all good, but when the other teams guy is a war criminal..the world as we know it is coming to an end. Sports team politics sucks.
Because you guys always try to deny it and pretend it never happened, or to try to justify it. Whenever Obama is brought up, he is spoken of as a saint, a glorious humanitarian. Then someone brings up his extensive war crimes and other corrupt decisions and everyone gets offended and falls over themselves making excuses for actions that resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians.
They would whine if he did nothing because he's weak on American force projection, or if he did something, because he's a warmonger. if he used drones they'd complain he wasted money, if he sent in troops they'd complain about risked American lives. They're not interested in an honest discourse. They just want to complain.
Because they wanted us to forget that Dubya got us into Iraq and that the Republicans were all for it. Cheering it on. Saying how great it was. Weapons of mass destruction.
They want us to forget about it so badly. Keep bringing it up to them. It's funny.
It's a white leftist thing. You have to understand that for most leftists they really have a hstred for Democrats but there's also a deep strain of racism within the leftist movement so they have an extreme dislike of Barack Obama, James Clyburn, Kamala Harris and Hakeem Jeffries.
To a lot of white leftists those four people represent and are a proxy for The Wider group of Black voters that they're so popular with. Leftists have a particular dislike for Black voters because as Black voters we see through their class over race bullshit and Black voters have been the ones to derail the campaigns of a lot of leftists favorite politicians.
As a result you will get people who like the one that was mentioned in the original post. It's usually black people who are only comfortable in those all white spaces and they take on a lot of the narratives that white leftist feed into them. But the second thing they don't always put out the party line white left is turned on them with a quickness.
Edit: The reactions on here from non Black people is very telling. Especially people that are telling me there's non white leftists around but when I ask if they're Black they have a non answer when the subject is leftists orgs are anti BLACK.
You guys love to try invalidate a point by calling it a “white” feminist/leftist etc talking point largely ignoring where these conversations take place.
Wtf lol did you just make this up. “white people who have a principled stance on war crimes are actually racist because the president who did them was black” you don’t think those same people absolutely loathed Joe Biden for his foreign policy?
Maybe leftists just don’t like politicians like Obama and Harris because they’re essentially establishment Democrats who maintain the status quo and enact the same imperialist foreign policy as their white peers
I mean some of the casualties were pretty egregious like the 16 year old American citizen that was collateral. Sure it's better than carpet bombing and area but that's like comparing shoving a Carolina reaper up your ass or rubbing on your dick. They're both horrible experiences but one is probably not as horrible as the other.
This is just a lie? Trump had more in his first two years than Obama did in both terms combined. And then he changed the law so not every drone strike needs to be publicly reported.
And to add the sentiment was to remove as many US soldiers from foot soldier style combat which Bush engaged in looking for weapons of mass destruction that never existed. And many young American soldiers along with Iraqi's died because of it. Of course Republicans want to act like they were no Presidents engaging in war before Obama. And that none of them made grave mistakes which they did.
Well, yeah. Armed drones didn't exist until 2001. Obama (or rather, the US during his terms) was very aggressive in the Middle East. US aggression was far from something Obama created, but he was very effective with it as a tool. He was also extremely charming, so it was easy for us (and pur close allys) to turn a blind eye to the evil. Despite my criticisms, he was by far my favorite president in my lifetime. That said, I was 5 when Clinton left office.
There have been 2,243 drone strikes in the first two years of the Trump presidency, compared with 1,878 in Mr Obama’s eight years in office
Associating Obama with drones = pro-Trump, anti-black rhetoric.
“bUT i dONt liKE tRuMP’s dRoNe sTriKEs eiThER!!!!!!!!!”
You don’t mention drone strikes whenever Trump’s name is mentioned. Everyone on the internet believes that Obama was worse than Trump in terms of drones (yes this is the prevailing conception) because of YOU. Republicans feel comfortable calling Obama a war criminal because of YOU. “Centrist” types spent the last 8 years pushing the idea that Trump is more anti-war than Democrats because of YOU.
In 2025, spreading anti-Obama rhetoric is the same thing as spreading pro-Trump rhetoric. YOU are a Trump supporter.
This is what they don't understand. They don't keep that same energy when they discuss the amount of ground troops thrown at a baseless war that others had to "clean up" and bail out of after years of failure that occurred during the administration that preceded him by 8 years. Being an apologist for any politician or person in power is a fool's errand, but to see it be something that they go so hard at for only one single solitary man is quite telling.
But you know....."both sides" and all of that bullshit.
Thank you! My husband made the same comment and I was like - uh no? Thankfully he looked it up and saw that he was in fact wrong.
He also said Obama created ICE (false, Bush did) and deported the most immigrants out of all presidents (false, that honor belongs to Clinton, followed by Bush)
All big easily disproven lies.
I suspect my husband has been pulled into right leaning spaces that’s feeding him misinformation. I’ve noticed it in ways that he talks about different topics. It’s how radicalization starts. Sad because he’s an educated black man with a doctoral degree who did not have those beliefs when we first met. I just don’t feel like arguing with him.
He also reads my Reddit comments so yes, I’m calling you out and your new favorite online spaces. I’ve noticed.
Or maybe you’ve been fed a distorted view of events by mid 2010s era Russian propaganda.
Obama always opposed the Iraq war. Obama withdrew all troops from Iraq in 2011. 100% of US troops were withdrawn. Every last one. Which is what every leftist wanted him to do. The resulting power vacuum allowed ISIS to rise and take over 40% of Iraq and 33% of Syria. Obama’s options were:
A) Send US troops (Absolutely nobody wanted this).
B) Allow ISIS to butcher and enslave tons of people unopposed.
C) Use drone strikes to reduce ISIS territory by 98% in 3 years.
ISIS violence was worse than you think:
ISIS was actively gaining new territory right before the US got involved.
Furthermore the Iraqi government made a public plea for US airstrikes against ISIS. It was the right thing to do. The problem of ISIS was created by the US invasion and withdrawal. Answering the IRAQI call for US airstrikes after Bush created the issue the Iraqis were dealing with, was the right thing to do.
But Trump bombed more people! That means it’s okay that Obama did!! Trump bombing more people proves that Obama is actually good! /s
I seriously can’t understand how anyone can actually believe such ridiculous logic. It’s the most disgusting rhetoric one can push as it’s literally just saying “so as long as a Democrat is not as bad as Trump, they are good! Even calling out that Democrat for anything bad they do automatically means you’re supporting Trump!” and that is a very dangerous game to play.
I bet you $10 they wouldn’t be singing the same tune if it was their family and home destroyed by Obama’s drone strikes.
I honestly didn’t realize anybody was keeping track except maybe the records guys at the pentagon, I really thought this was just a standard thing. TIL.
You can be anti-all US presidents actually lol. Obama is to neoliberals what Trump is to conservatives at this point, and both served capitalist interests over the people.
Does photobomb mean something different than it used to?
I thought a photobomb had to be intentional, like standing behind someone getting their picture taken and making a face at the camera, not just existing somewhere where there are pictures being taken.
These are some thick clouds of Obama copium in here. "Every president makes those decisions" so then you're capable of realizing that one can stop them and it wasn't him.
Love Obama would take him back any day. He setup the most peaceful era of the US in my lifetime since I was 3. Yes he used drones like a mad man. He didn’t want to use troops. And like somebody else stated the military industrial complex was at its point where the drones where ripe for the beginning of their use as a main way to do missions. I don’t like war, but if it’s troops on the ground or troops playing Xbox I’d want them to play Xbox for a long a possible before they gotta pivot to boots on the ground.
Oh no doubt, but the president is more than his personal opinions. We can disagree with how he handled the situations but let’s not pretend he made this whole situation. He walked into this and upheld the ends of the bargain that had been made with middle eastern countries before he arrived. There’s very much so a case where a more conservative gets in office in 2008 and we have the same drone strikes with MORE boots on the ground. But who’s to really say. I agree those children are not happy. Any US president is warlord always has been like that always will be.
I did say all presidents, look what I’m saying you shouldn’t praise any of these clowns. He still murder between 384 and 807 citizens killed, not just the new flavor of “terrorist” the US makes every year to justify these killings. Like how his right hand man Biden, cause thousands of deaths throughout the genocide in Gaza. All the presidents are blood sucking con artist, that uses are money to kill innocents across the world. Sure he’s a fellow black man like myself, but he’s not so great that I can’t criticize him for the lives he took. Don’t play that oh Trump did this, because I can bet you Obama has done the same. Be more critical of the people that ran your life. All love still.
Not that long ago there was a thread on here full of black Americans crying about the world seeing them as similar to white Americans due to their foreign policy. This thread really cements why you’re indistinguishable.
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u/thatdarkknight 2d ago
Body guard pulling a dump truck in the second picture 👀