Download or read book Obama s Unending Wars written by Jeremy Kuzmarov and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2019-07-20 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many academics consider Obama to have been a master foreign policy strategist and shrewd practitioner of the art of realpolitik. This book demonstrates, however, that Obama in reality helped to institutionalize a permanent warfare state that resulted in gross human rights violations and contributed to America's strategic decline. His perpetuation of the War on Terror created more enemies and prompted the United States to lose influence in the Middle East. His Pivot to Asia policy intensified prospects for regional war while his unnecessary and willful military intervention destroyed Libya and drew the Russians in to protect Bashir al-Assad who won Syria's civil war. The Obama administration's heavy-handed interference in Ukraine led to effective Russian counter-moves, promoting a strategic alliance with China and regional integration that is moving the world towards multi-polarity. Obama's Unending Wars provides the first critical, comprehensive and highly documented history of the foreign policy of America's forty-fourth president - the drone king who ordered the bombing of seven Muslim countries, backtracked on a pledge to reduce America's nuclear arsenal, and helped fuel a new Cold War with Russia. During his years in office Obama provided billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia as it assisted in the crushing of pro-democracy demonstrators in Bahrain and invaded Yemen. He sanctioned a coup in Honduras which plunged that country into chaos, perpetuated a failed drug war policy and contributed to the recolonization of Africa. While any Democratic Party president would have faced peril in confronting the Pentagon which had carried out a slow coup d'etat over the decades, Obama was rather, in many ways, the most perfect spokesman for the military-industrial complex. Who else but this articulate constitutional law professor could pull off a pro-war speech after winning the Nobel Peace Prize while ramping up drone assassinations and America's network of military bases in Africa and still retain the support of liberal-progressives? As many in the time of Trump now glance nostalgically back to the Obama presidency, this book will help them to see the continuity -- and continuous failure -- of American foreign policy irrespective of the party or figurehead representing it.
Download or read book Obama s Wars written by Bob Woodward and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-09-27 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Obama’s Wars, Bob Woodward provides the most intimate and sweeping portrait yet of the young president as commander in chief. Drawing on internal memos, classified documents, meeting notes and hundreds of hours of interviews with most of the key players, including the president, Woodward tells the inside story of Obama making the critical decisions on the Afghanistan War, the secret campaign in Pakistan and the worldwide fight against terrorism. At the core of Obama’s Wars is the unsettled division between the civilian leadership in the White House and the United States military as the president is thwarted in his efforts to craft an exit plan for the Afghanistan War. “So what’s my option?” the president asked his war cabinet, seeking alternatives to the Afghanistan commander’s request for 40,000 more troops in late 2009. “You have essentially given me one option. ...It’s unacceptable.” “Well,” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates finally said, “Mr. President, I think we owe you that option.” It never came. An untamed Vice President Joe Biden pushes relentlessly to limit the military mission and avoid another Vietnam. The vice president frantically sent half a dozen handwritten memos by secure fax to Obama on the eve of the final troop decision. President Obama’s ordering a surge of 30,000 troops and pledging to start withdrawing U.S. forces by July 2011 did not end the skirmishing. General David Petraeus, the new Afghanistan commander, thinks time can be added to the clock if he shows progress. “I don’t think you win this war,” Petraeus said privately. “This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives.” Hovering over this debate is the possibility of another terrorist attack in the United States. The White House led a secret exercise showing how unprepared the government is if terrorists set off a nuclear bomb in an American city—which Obama told Woodward is at the top of the list of what he worries about all the time. Verbatim quotes from secret debates and White House strategy sessions—and firsthand accounts of the thoughts and concerns of the president, his war council and his generals—reveal a government in conflict, often consumed with nasty infighting and fundamental disputes. Woodward has discovered how the Obama White House really works, showing that even more tough decisions lie ahead for the cerebral and engaged president. Obama’s Wars offers the reader a stunning, you-are-there account of the president, his White House aides, military leaders, diplomats and intelligence chiefs in this time of turmoil and danger.
Download or read book The Violence of Peace written by Stephen L. Carter and published by Beast Books. This book was released on 2011-01-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The man who many considered the peace candidate in the last election was transformed into a war president," writes bestselling author and leading academic Stephen l. Carter in The Violence of Peace, his new book decoding what President Barack Obama's views on war mean for America and its role in military conflict, now and going forward. As America winds down a war in Iraq, ratchets up another in Afghanistan, and continues a global war on terrorism, Carter delves into the implications of the military philosophy Obama has adopted through his first two years in office. Responding to the invitation that Obama himself issued in his Nobel address, Carter uses the tools of the Western tradition of just and unjust war to evaluate Obama's actions and words about military conflict, offering insight into how the president will handle existing and future wars, and into how his judgment will shape America's fate. Carter also explores war as a way to defend others from tyrannical regimes, which Obama has endorsed but not yet tested, and reveals the surprising ways in which some of the tactics Obama has used or authorized are more extreme than those of his predecessor, George W. Bush. "Keeping the nation at peace," Carter writes, "often requires battle," and this book lays bare exactly how America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are shaping the way Obama views the country's role in conflict and peace, ultimately determining the fate of the nation.
Download or read book Obama at War written by Ryan C. Hendrickson and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2015-06-19 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During President Barack Obama's first term in office, the United States expanded its military presence in Afghanistan and increased drone missile strikes across Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The administration also deployed the military to combat piracy in the Indian Ocean, engaged in a sustained bombing operation in Libya, and deployed U.S. Special Forces in Central Africa to capture or kill Joseph Kony. In these cases, President Obama decided to use force without congressional approval. Yet, this increased executive power has not been achieved simply by the presidential assertion of such powers. It has also been supported by a group of senators and representatives who, for political reasons that stem from constant campaigning, seek to avoid responsibility for military action abroad. In this revealing book, Ryan C. Hendrickson examines President Obama's use of force in his first term with four major case studies. He demonstrates that, much like his predecessors, Obama has protected the executive branch's right not only to command, but also to determine when and where American forces are deployed. He also considers the voting records of Democrat John Kerry and Republican John McCain in the Senate, detailing how both men have played leading roles in empowering the commander-in-chief while limiting Congress's influence on military decision-making. Obama at War establishes that the imperial presidency poses significant foreign policy risks, and concludes with possible solutions to restore a more meaningful balance of power. The first book on the constitutional and political relationship between President Obama and the U.S. Congress and the use of military force, this timely reassessment of war powers provides a lucid examination of executive privilege and legislative deference in the modern American republic.
Download or read book The American Way of War written by Tom Engelhardt and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The creator of TomDispatch takes a scalpel to the American urge to dominate the globe.
Download or read book Kill Or Capture written by Daniel Klaidman and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2012 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents an examination of the Obama administration that explores its internal power struggles and the seemingly ambivalent measures considered by the president to redefine national security.
Download or read book The Great Destroyer written by David Limbaugh and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-06-04 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When it comes to our prosperity, our freedom tradition, and our constitutional government, President Barack Obama has been the great destroyer—knocking down the free-market economy and principles of limited government that have made America the envy of the world. As New York Times bestselling author David Limbaugh documents in chilling detail in his new book, The Great Destroyer, the Obama administration has waged a relentless, nearly four-year-long war to transform our nation into a country where federal bureaucrats have more power over our lives than we do; where leftist crony capitalism dependent on government subsidies is replacing the real thing; where, in an Orwellian inversion of meaning, a savagely weakened national defense somehow makes us stronger and trillions in deficit spending on counterproductive government “stimulus” and welfare programs somehow makes us richer.
Download or read book President Obama s Counterterrorism Strategy in the War on Terror written by Leonard Cutler and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-07-10 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book assesses President Barack Obama's counterterrorism policy as it evolved throughout his presidency, from the expanded use of drones to the controversial decisions regarding the Syrian conflict. President Obama has achieved the dubious distinction of having been the longest continuous war president in American history, and this title explores how Obama pursued and expanded executive war power in key areas, simultaneously committing to a light footprint approach for U.S. military forces and emphasizing the use of drones, targeted killing of terrorists, and training, advising, and assisting local forces to defend themselves from militant groups such as ISIL. It also provides an in-depth analysis of the defining issue of the Obama counterterrorism strategy: Syria, and his refusal to militarily commit to defeat Bashar al-Assad and support Syria’s insurgency. The work concludes with a consideration of counterterrorism policy post-Obama.
Download or read book Obama s Foreign Policy written by Michelle Bentley and published by Routledge Studies in US Foreign Policy. This book was released on 2018-05-07 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume is an innovative analysis of President Barack Obama's foreign policy, security and counter-terrorism policy, specifically within the context of ending the now infamous War on Terror. The book adopts a comparative approach, analysing change and continuity in US foreign policy during Obama's first term in office vis-à-vis the foreign policy of the War on Terror, initiated by George W. Bush following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Despite being heralded as an agent of change, since his election in 2008 Obama has faced criticism that his foreign policy is effectively the same as what went before and that the War on Terror is still alive and well. Far from delivering wholesale change, Obama has been accused of replicating and even reinforcing the approach, language and policies that many anticipated he would reject. With contributions from a range of US foreign policy experts, this volume analyses the extent to which these criticisms of continuity are correct, identifying how the failure to end the War on Terror is manifest and explaining the reasons that have made enacting change in foreign policy so difficult. In addressing these issues, contributions to this volume will discuss continuity and change from a range of perspectives in International Relations and Foreign Policy Analysis. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of US foreign policy, security studies and American politics.
Download or read book The Post American Presidency written by Pamela Geller and published by Threshold Editions. This book was released on 2013-03-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Popular conservative blogger Pamela Geller and New York Times bestselling author Robert Spencer sound a wake-up call for Americans to stop the Obama administration from limiting our hard-won freedoms, silencing our democratic voices, and harming America for generations to come—now available in paperback. America is being tested in a way that she has never been tested before. Since taking the oath of office in January 2009, President Barack Obama has cheered our enemies and demoralized our allies. He is hard at work “remaking” America by destroying the free-market system and nationalizing major segments of our economy, demonizing dissent and restricting freedom of speech, turning against our longtime friends, and above all, subjecting us to the determinations of foreign authorities. In this timely and urgent battle cry, Pamela Geller, founder of the widely popular website AtlasShrugs.com, and bestselling author Robert Spencer team up to expose the Obama administration’s destructive agenda—largely ignored by the mainstream media—and rally Americans to protect the sovereignty of a country that is under siege. Geller and Spencer critically examine the Obama administration’s ominous and revealing moves against our basic freedoms, particularly as he seizes control of the three engines of the American economy: health care, energy, and education. The Post-American Presidency is a vital guide to helping conservatives prepare for the tough battles ahead.
Download or read book The Forever War written by Nick Bryant and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of When America Stopped Being Great, an insightful and urgent reassessment of America's past, present and future – as a country which is forever at war with itself. The Forever War tells the story of how America's extreme polarisation is 250 years in the making, and argues that the roots of its modern-day malaise are to be found in its troubled and unresolved past. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the American experiment is failing. Division, mistrust and misinformation are now the country's defining characteristics. The storming of the Capitol, the prosecution of Donald Trump and battles over gun rights and abortion raise the spectre of further political violence, and even the possibility of a second civil war. Nick Bryant explains how the hate, divisiveness and paranoia we see today are in fact a core part of America's story. Combining brilliant storytelling, historical research and first-hand reportage, Bryant argues that insurrections, massacres and civil disturbances should sadly not be seen as abnormalities; they are a part of the fabric of the history of America. The compromises originally designed to hold the union together have never truly been resolved and today, a country that once looked so confidently to the future has become captive to its contentious past.
Download or read book Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics written by Paul Street and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many Americans believe Barak Obama represents a hopeful future for America. But does he also reflect the American politics of the past? This book offers the broadest and best-informed understanding on the meaning of the "Obama phenomenon" to date. Paul Street was on the ground throughout the Iowa campaign, and his stories of the rising Obama phenomenon are poignant. Yet the author's background in American political history allows him to explore the deeper meanings of Obama's remarkable political career. He looks at Obama in relation to contemporary issues of class, race, war, and empire. He considers Obama in the context of our nation's political history, with comparisons to FDR, JFK, Bill Clinton, and other leaders. Street finds that the Obama persona, crafted by campaign consultants and filtered through dominant media trends, masks the "change" candidate's adherence to long-prevailing power structures and party doctrines. He shows how American political culture has produced misperceptions by the electorate of Obama's positions and values. Obama is no magical exception to the narrow-spectrum electoral system and ideological culture that have done so much to define and limit the American political tradition. Yet the author suggests key ways in which Obama potentially advances democratic transformation. Street makes recommendations on how citizens can productively respond to and act upon Obama's influence and the broader historical and social forces that have produced his celebrity and relevance. He also lays out a real agenda for change for the new presidential administration, one that addresses the recent failures of democratic politics.
Download or read book The People Vs Barack Obama written by Ben Shapiro and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-04-28 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American conservative political commentator, Ben Shapiro presents his arguments of wrong doingings by the Obama administration.
Download or read book Duty written by Robert M. Gates and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the former secretary of defense, a strikingly candid, vivid account of serving Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When Robert M. Gates received a call from the White House, he thought he’d long left Washington politics behind: After working for six presidents in both the CIA and the National Security Council, he was happily serving as president of Texas A&M University. But when he was asked to help a nation mired in two wars and to aid the troops doing the fighting, he answered what he felt was the call of duty.
Download or read book Humane written by Samuel Moyn and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[A] brilliant new book . . . Humane provides a powerful intellectual history of the American way of war. It is a bold departure from decades of historiography dominated by interventionist bromides." —Jackson Lears, The New York Review of Books A prominent historian exposes the dark side of making war more humane In the years since 9/11, we have entered an age of endless war. With little debate or discussion, the United States carries out military operations around the globe. It hardly matters who’s president or whether liberals or conservatives operate the levers of power. The United States exercises dominion everywhere. In Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War, Samuel Moyn asks a troubling but urgent question: What if efforts to make war more ethical—to ban torture and limit civilian casualties—have only shored up the military enterprise and made it sturdier? To advance this case, Moyn looks back at a century and a half of passionate arguments about the ethics of using force. In the nineteenth century, the founders of the Red Cross struggled mightily to make war less lethal even as they acknowledged its inevitability. Leo Tolstoy prominently opposed their efforts, reasoning that war needed to be abolished, not reformed—and over the subsequent century, a popular movement to abolish war flourished on both sides of the Atlantic. Eventually, however, reformers shifted their attention from opposing the crime of war to opposing war crimes, with fateful consequences. The ramifications of this shift became apparent in the post-9/11 era. By that time, the US military had embraced the agenda of humane war, driven both by the availability of precision weaponry and the need to protect its image. The battle shifted from the streets to the courtroom, where the tactics of the war on terror were litigated but its foundational assumptions went without serious challenge. These trends only accelerated during the Obama and Trump presidencies. Even as the two administrations spoke of American power and morality in radically different tones, they ushered in the second decade of the “forever” war. Humane is the story of how America went off to fight and never came back, and how armed combat was transformed from an imperfect tool for resolving disputes into an integral component of the modern condition. As American wars have become more humane, they have also become endless. This provocative book argues that this development might not represent progress at all.
Download or read book Inaugural Presidential Address written by Obama Barack and published by Hardpress Publishing. This book was released on 2016-06-23 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.
Download or read book Dirty Wars written by Jeremy Scahill and published by Nation Books. This book was released on 2013-06-04 with total page 779 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This enhanced edition for Nook features over thirty images, including film stills from the Oscar-nominated documentary Dirty Wars, as well as exclusive photographs of Scahill's reporting in Yemen and Somalia. This edition also features interactive color maps, as well as seven short videos that include the film trailer, clips from the film, and interviews with Scahill. In the video interviews, Scahill shares his insights on the history of drones, President Obama's hawkish foreign policies, and the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki. In Dirty Wars, Jeremy Scahill, author of the New York Times best-seller Blackwater, takes us inside America's new covert wars. The foot soldiers in these battles operate globally and inside the United States with orders from the White House to do whatever is necessary to hunt down, capture or kill individuals designated by the president as enemies. Drawn from the ranks of the Navy SEALs, Delta Force, former Blackwater and other private security contractors, the CIA's Special Activities Division and the Joint Special Operations Command ( JSOC), these elite soldiers operate worldwide, with thousands of secret commandos working in more than one hundred countries. Funded through “black budgets,” Special Operations Forces conduct missions in denied areas, engage in targeted killings, snatch and grab individuals and direct drone, AC-130 and cruise missile strikes. While the Bush administration deployed these ghost militias, President Barack Obama has expanded their operations and given them new scope and legitimacy. Dirty Wars follows the consequences of the declaration that “the world is a battlefield,” as Scahill uncovers the most important foreign policy story of our time. From Afghanistan to Yemen, Somalia and beyond, Scahill reports from the frontlines in this high-stakes investigation and explores the depths of America's global killing machine. He goes beneath the surface of these covert wars, conducted in the shadows, outside the range of the press, without effective congressional oversight or public debate. And, based on unprecedented access, Scahill tells the chilling story of an American citizen marked for assassination by his own government. As US leaders draw the country deeper into conflicts across the globe, setting the world stage for enormous destabilization and blowback, Americans are not only at greater risk—we are changing as a nation. Scahill unmasks the shadow warriors who prosecute these secret wars and puts a human face on the casualties of unaccountable violence that is now official policy: victims of night raids, secret prisons, cruise missile attacks and drone strikes, and whole classes of people branded as “suspected militants.” Through his brave reporting, Scahill exposes the true nature of the dirty wars the United States government struggles to keep hidden.
