In a recent interview with Politico, former Green Party Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader spoke to reporter Patrick Gavin about his thoughts on the current state of the Republican Party, the current administration’s renewable energy push, and the fact that he sees President Obama as a war criminal.
“He’s gone beyond George W. Bush in drones, for example,” Nader said. A report released this week by Stanford University and New York University has found that, even though drone warfare targets low-level militants and senior commanders, it has also traumatized communities in northwest Pakistan, killing civilians who are out of the reach of first aid until the area has been deemed safe for medics to enter. According to an article on Public Radio International, the “United States government doesn’t acknowledge that civilians have been killed in drone attacks.”
Nader continued, saying that “[Obama] thinks the world is his plate, that national sovereignties mean nothing, drones can go anywhere. They can kill anybody that he suspects and every Tuesday he makes the call on who lives and who dies, supposed suspects in places like Yemen and Pakistan and Afghanistan, and that is a war crime and he ought to be held to account.”
This past May, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were convicted in absentia of war crimes in Malaysia. The trial, using standards set by the Nuremberg Trials, included ex-detainees of Guantanamo Bay who gave testimony on Bush’s human rights views. In February, 2011, Bush cancelled a trip in which he was to be a keynote speaker in Geneva, Switzerland due to pressure on the Swiss government to prosecute him. Obama hasn’t even finished a term.
According to Nader, Obama has served “below average because he raised expectation levels. What expectation level did George W. Bush raise? He’s below average because he’s above average in his intellect and his knowledge of legality, which is violating with abandon.” Nader then went on to mention Obama’s time as a professor.
“I don’t know whether George W. Bush ever read the Constitution,” said Nader. “This man taught the Constitution, and this is what we got.”
This week, Obama took time to address the United Nations, promoting free speech and challenging countries in the Middle East to respect and protect the basic human right.
“Now I know that not all countries in this body share this particular understanding of the protection of free speech,” he said. In the fast-paced world of the information age, it’s easier than ever to produce and distribute content with the click of a button, something which has caused, according to Obama, the thought of controlling the flow of information “obsolete.”
“I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day. And I will always defend their right to do so,” he said.
Earlier this month, the LA Times reported that outside of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, “more than a few of the marchers took jabs at President Obama, with signs like, “Arrest the War Criminal Obama” and “Obama Murders Children with Drones.”
Obama this week started his speech to the UN condemning the attacks on the US embassy in Libya. “There are no words that excuse the killing of innocents,” he said.
