Obama the "War Criminal"

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

In early May, U.S. military aircraft dropped 13 bombs, which included 500 and 1,000-pound explosives, on Farah Province in western Afghanistan. The U.S. airstrike killed an estimated 147 civilians. The attack sparked angry demonstrations with Afghan crowds chanting “death to America” and stoning local police. Fearing for their lives, police fired into the crowd in an effort to disperse the mob before it could reach the provincial capitol. It appears Mr. Obama is well on his way to achieving what many on the Left would consider war criminal status.

Anti-war activist Justin Raimondo is having second thoughts about Obama the Messiah. Writing for ANTIWAR.com, Raimondo said:

So you thought with the exit of the Bush Administration, and the entry into Washington of Obama the prince of peace that a new era would dawn and we'd be rid of the war making policies of a deranged White House? No way. We are in for more of the same, albeit marketed under a more reasonable rubric.

Last February President Obama asked for and got a $96.7 billion emergency spending bill for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan from congressional Democrats, which mystified the Miami Herald:

The anti-war crowd had waited years for this moment, when it could finally use its political muscle to end or at least sharply curtail American involvement in a war that seems endless.

Instead, Congress' most vocal anti-war activists were badly outnumbered this week when they tried to define an exit strategy for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.

"We need a plan while we are there and a strategy for leaving," said Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md., who last year defeated an eight-term incumbent Democrat who backed the Iraq war. "We don't have it."

They weren't even allowed a vote on a plan. It was a setback because for years, anti-war lawmakers lacked the votes they needed to impose restrictions on former President George W. Bush's war in Iraq. Now, the president is a Democrat, and the Democrats have a 79-seat majority in the House of Representatives and 59 Senate seats, including two independents, which gives them their biggest margins since the early 1990s.

As Obama increases U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan by 17,000 and threatens to spill U.S. military involvement into Pakistan, the Democrat-controlled Congress is gearing up for hearings it hopes will lead to criminal charges for members of the Bush administration.

The clearinghouse for what the Left considers ideas, the Daily Kos, had this suggestion just before President Bush left office:

The US should bring itself under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court so that they [the Bush administration] can be held accountable under international law. By our own standards, if there are no checks and balances to our actions, one day in the future, other people will rise and commit other crimes that make George Bush's look reasonable by comparison. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater look sane compared to this current administration…

The piece goes on to list what the author considers one of the primary war crimes:

“Attacks directed against any civilian population” means a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts... pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack; George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.”

I searched the Daily Kos to see if they recently added Obama’s name to their list of war criminals, but to no avail. In fact, there was no mention of the recent Afghan civilian casualties resulting from the Community Organizer and Chief’s military surge in Afghanistan. Apparently, “attacks directed against any civilian population” don't apply as long as the one authorizing the attacks has nationalized Wall Street, the banks and is about to Sovietize our nation’s health care system.

As Israel faces possible war crimes charges from the International Criminal Court for her military strikes against Hamas-run Gaza, how long until Obama and his administration face a similar fate for continuing George Bush’s war in Afghanistan? If self-defense is no defense in eyes of deranged nihilists, when will congressional hearings into Obama’s crimes against humanity convene? I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.

--Mr. Curmudgeon