Peace Out, Obama

Peace Out, Obama

By Chris Ernesto
RINF.com
January 23, 2017

In the final days of his presidency, Barack Obama deployed 3,500
US troops, 87 tanks and 144 Bradley fighting vehicles to Poland,
and 330 Marines to Norway.

He also signed 'milestone' agreements with Estonia and Lithuania
enabling a broad range of defense-related activities.

For Poland, this marks the first time forces from the West will have
a continuous presence on NATO's eastern flank.

For Norway, it's the first time since WWII that foreign troops will be
allowed to be stationed there.

The US, through NATO, had already begun the "biggest
reinforcement since the Cold War, posting four multinational
battalions to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

In November, Washington announced the deployment of nearly
6,000 troops, along with tanks, infantry vehicles, heavy howitzers,
and combat helicopters to Eastern Europe," according to RT.

Obama's latest provocations put more US firepower at Russia's
doorstep and are (rightfully) being viewed as acts of hostility by
Russian officials.

John Pilger summed up the past 8 years of Obama by writing,
"according to a Council on Foreign Relations survey, in 2016 alone
Obama dropped 26,171 bombs."

That is 72 bombs every day.

He bombed the poorest people on earth, in Afghanistan, Libya,
Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan.

Every Tuesday - reported The New York Times - he personally
selected those who would be murdered by mostly hellfire missiles
fired from drones. Weddings, funerals, shepherds were attacked,
along with those attempting to collect the body parts festooning
the "terrorist target."

Under Obama, the U.S. has extended secret "special forces"
operations to 138 countries, or 70 per cent of the world's
population.

The first African-American president launched what amounted
to a full-scale invasion of Africa.

Reminiscent of the Scramble for Africa in the late Nineteenth
Century, the U.S. African Command (Africom) has built a network of
supplicants among collaborative African regimes eager for American
bribes and armaments.

It was Obama who, in 2011, announced what became known as the
"pivot to Asia", in which almost two-thirds of U.S. naval forces
would be transferred to the Asia-Pacific to "confront China," in the
words of his Defense Secretary.

There was no threat from China; the entire enterprise was
unnecessary.

It was an extreme provocation to keep the Pentagon and its
demented brass happy.

"...Propaganda is his triumph. The lies about Russia -- in whose
elections the U.S. has openly intervened -- have made the world's
most self-important journalists laughingstocks. In the country with
constitutionally the freest press in the world, free journalism now
exists only in its honorable exceptions."

Here are some of Obama's foreign policy lowlights:

Obama ordered ten times more drone strikes than Bush

Obama planned a $1 trillion program to add more nuclear weapons
to the US arsenal.

Obama sold an all-time record $30 billion of weapons to Saudi
Arabia.

Obama bragged that he has "increased foreign military financing
to record levels".

The Obama administration supported - or led - at least 2 coups
of democratically elected governments (Ukraine and Honduras).

Obama wildly supported Israel's wars and occupation of Palestine.

Obama ordered the assassination of four U.S. citizens.

Obama repealed the Propaganda ban, making it legal to spread
government propaganda via news outlets.

Obama continuously regurgitated the sickening and dangerous
myth of American Exceptionalism, claiming that the U.S. is "the
one indispensable nation".

Eight years of Obama's blood-soaked actions have been documented
in the St. Pete for Peace Obama Fact Sheet -- a webpage we are
relieved not to have to continue!

Good riddance, Obama.

http://rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/peace-out-obama