Ok internet, I’m officially irritated with loud stupid people. I think everyone will agree right now that Obama is way more a hawk than anyone thought but I’m really, really tired of this idea that he’s something new, or worse. America has been violently intervening with the internal policies of countries significantly and illegally since the second world war and before (I’m well aware Britain has too, that’s not the point here), and brinksman politics were the goddamn norm during the cold war. JFK and Reagan both acted in a way that makes current politicians look like mild mannered pacifists.
And I need not even mention Vietnam.
I’ve heard time and again that Obama is a warmonger, or a murderer, and it really needs to be said: what version of the last seventy years of American history have you been reading to make such a negative comparison? Government overthrows, illegal funding and aid of terrorist organisations, client warfare so blatant it may as well have been straight up war with the Russians, chemical weapons abuse in Vietnam, NUCLEAR BOMBARDMENT OF THE JAPANESE.
By our current standards, Obama is a little scary, but what is scarier is the way people are cherry picking their way through history to show America as a force for good in the past progressively getting more malignant, rather than precisely the opposite. Aside from their involvement with the first and second world wars, America’s military action in the past has been incredibly shaky morally. This must not be forgotten.
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