President Obama's International Visits from 2009 to 2016 | Hacker News Reader

President Obama's International Visits from 2009 to 2016

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91 pointsespek0790 comments

I hope Donald will stay at home. Every presidential visit brings multi-million city to a halt. It has similar effect as an earthquake, major fire or other natural disaster.

It is recommended not open windows, there is risk of snipers. International airport is closed for several hours for a single airplane. And main roads are closed everyday while president is traveling.

I still remember New Orleans. People could not leave flooded city, because Bush decided to do a personal rescue mission :-(

http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/21/news/protecting-donald-trump...

I agree with the fact that the President should probably not visit foreign cities unless absolutely necessary.

In our case, President Obama (and I am a full supporter of his) visited our little town here in Australia (pop: ~100,000) back in 2011 to meet with our Prime Minister to ratify a deal to station about 10,000 US Marines in our town.

He was on the ground here for about 6 hours. For the whole day (and most of the day preceding), major roads were blocked and citizens could not get in or out of the city. RAAF fighter jets criss crossed our skies constantly during his stay, and the police kept all the local citizens out of parks and recreational areas near the airport.

It was a major PITA, to say the least, as commerce and general activity ground to a halt for everyone in our city.

During the same visit, President Obama also met with the Governor General of Australia in Canberra. Watching the televised meeting, I was amused to see that at the end of it, the president was whisked away by his security team in his motorcade, with police escort, whereas the Governor General simply walked back to his home along the river by himself.

The irony that the leader of the free world is probably the least free person in it...

Sounds like an overreaction by your government tbh. Not Obama's fault. He comes to NYC fairly often, and there's usually more traffic in certain parts but 95% of people in the city wouldn't realize it.

Having a foreign leader (especially that of a superpower) hurt/killed on one's soil is likely to be particularly problematic, diplomatically.

The Secret Service would love to shut down NYC when the President visits. They just can't get away with it. Much easier to do with a 100k person city.

i highly doubt that was the reason. remember that obama magnus opus was copyright enforcement and trade deals with southeast asia. Australia and New Zealand were pivotal for this effort. see TPP and kim dot com being arrested the next year of his visit.

A couple of years back I saw president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran on TV talking to a group of people in Tehran. He just stood on the top of a car with a megaphone and a big crowd of people surrounded him. Sure there were a few bodyguards, but you if you wanted you could pretty much tap him on the shoulder. Now I don't want to overestimate the merits of Iranian democracy, but I was kind of impressed by this.

Compare this with the leaders of the Western world. If there's a summit, the city gets under siege as if it's a Hollywood production. People are not allowed to stand on their balcony. If you get within half a mile of Obama, a sniper will put a bullet through your head. There is just something wrong about this ritual of self-importance. Seriously, aside from personal tragedy, what does it matter if some terrorist kills Obama? We just replace him with the next guy in a suit and tie, and the following day it would be the exact same politics. The system runs itself and no longer depends on the individuality of the persons in the top position. In that sense it reminds me of Europe in 1914 where the diplomatic system overruled the kings and presidents. It may be one of the deeper reasons for Trump's election -- people wanting somebody who can shake the tree.

Dont be impressed. Nazi officials also traveled with minimal protection in occupied countries. When Reinhard Heydrich was killed, a few villages were leveled in retaliation.

US president should be protected. But it should be protected as other military targets. You would never put a nuclear silo into large metropolitan area.

"We just replace him with the next guy in a suit and tie" I think this misses a key point of democracy. The president is not important as a person but because he is legitimized by the american public. Replacing him requires an enormous effort which is really what it is all about. On top of that one could argue that the president has to be kept safe so that there is somebody willing to get elected and take the risk. Sure, someone will always become president but that person might not have the required skills.

> Replacing him requires an enormous effort which is really what it is all about.

It's not _that_ difficult. We have at least 17 people in line to replace him https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_lin.... All it takes is verifying the president is unable to serve, and administering the oath of office.

> Sure, someone will always become president but that person might not have the required skills.

What a tragedy that would be! Fortunately, we have a system to prevent it from happening.

TV appearances don't always show how well the crowd was monitored and people in it vetted and searched. And I can think of plenty of Western leaders that have made TV appearances standing in the middle of an apparent non hand-picked crowd. John Major standing on a soapbox surrounded by crowds jeering at him and waving placards condemning his government springs to mind. (Imagine a crowd being allowed to do that in Iran!)

The US president is a more potent symbol of his country's power and values than Iran's president and thus a more conspicuous target (even without taking into account the importance America citizens attach to possessing firearms as a supposed bulwark against tyranny)

US Presidential security is a result of a series of assassinations. For whatever reason a lot of people prefer to target the US President. As the US' role internationally has increased over the years the risk has also increased. When presidential security increased nutcases and axe grinders started targeting candidates. The risk is not hypothetical.

The people running the system do matter; change is effected slowly over time through the actions of the people holding office. It might seem like "the exact same politics" but history proves you wrong.

I don't think Trump's election is some reasoned attempt to "shake the tree", otherwise people wouldn't have voted straight-R and handed control of Congress right back to the same Republicans who have controlled Congress for the majority of the past 30 years and are the people actually responsible for the problems in government since Congress controls domestic policy far more than the President.

Trump's election was a combination of apathy of certain D voting blocs, gerrymandering, and people wanting to send a "screw you!" message to some perceived Not Real America™. The total number of votes required to change the outcome is far less than a million in just a few midwestern states.

Gerrymandering is probably the biggest problem we have right now. It's actual electoral fraud designed to disenfranchise the majority's will and I don't see how it is qualitatively or quantitatively different than other forms of electoral fraud like Putin engineering his own re-election.

Iran requires a license for gun ownership, and gun licenses require background checks and passing a test on firearm safety and law.

I wonder how D.C. is able to handle it, the president needs to leave the whitehouse at some point.

Portions of DC are constantly closing for summits when other leaders come to the city. Day to day, I think the area around the White House is always sufficiently secure that the president leaving doesn't cause much of a disruption.

Foreign leaders need to meet with other foreign leaders. If US president were to never leave the US, requesting that all foreign dignitaries visit him, that'd be great loss for US foreign policy.

Y'all are all overstating the impact of visits on local communities too. It is done the way it is to minimize risk and expediency for both parties...

Yup, and usually closed routes are announced days in advance to give people the chance to make alternate plans if their day would be affected.

Obama visited Ireland in 2011. I remember the Clinton visit in the '90s. Both shut the city down and increased the presence of security forces everywhere. I worked in the city centre at the time and it was chaos for a few days.

Making matters worse was the fact that a week or two prior the Queen visited (arguably a more important state visit, for historical reasons). So in effect, for about three weeks, Dublin was hell to commute in.

Fun fact -- the Reagan Library in California bought and sort of rebuilt the Irish tavern that the president visited in the 1980s. You can even buy a beer there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyJ5qJcHUNA

We get to deal with this every day in NYC for the foreseeable future. Hundreds of millions of dollars and quite a few nearby businesses down the drain.

Obama went to Paris (I live in downtown Paris) several times I think, and there have been multiple reunions of numerous heads of state here, I don't remember any particular perturbations, other than 5 or 7 subway station blocked. The most notable was after the november 2015 attacks, there was some trouble because Obama kept changing* schedule.

Not to downplay this, but maybe in some cities it is more doable than others.

*guessing they weren't "changing" the schedule and they were in fact keeping it very tight and putting out another schedule altogether

I'm guessing it's different when it's a capital city as they are used to handling heads of state and other officials e.g. POTUS in DC and POTUS in LA are different situations.

Yeah. Clearly some cities (like Paris) are more accustomed to receiving these sorts of visitors and, probably, have more permanent infrastructure in place to handle the visits with minimal interruption. I live in Washington, D.C. and, obviously, my city is not shut down whenever the president is in town. At most, we have to deal with a closed road and some loud sirens for a few minutes when the president is literally driving past.

I live in Chicago, and the biggest inconvenience is when the weather is bad and they have to drive. That's honestly much more burdensome for people who live in the suburbs than people who live in the city itself. I've not even known Obama was in town until I rode my bike in to a checkpoint a block or so away from where he was eating lunch.

I honestly get much more annoyed when the secret service do their thing for presidential candidates, because the candidates tend to travel around a bit more and screw things up that way.

Westside traffic was often brought to a halt when Obama came to Los Angeles because he tended to visit some extremely wealthy entertainment figure's home (in Bel Air or Beverly Hills or Holmby Hills etc) in order to participate in a fund raiser.

It got to the point where a lot of LA commuters, who overwhelmingly supported Obama, would wince when they learned the presidential motorcade would be gumming up the traffic.

The LA Times typically reported the route so that LA commuters could stay the hell away from it.

It shouldn't matter if you support the person politically or not; their visit is a hassle, and it's not like the visit does anything for you personally.

Also, with roads near capacity, it doesn't take much to make it an utter mess. Even a few minutes' closure will have knock-on effects until well after rush hour.

obama caused that to LA almost montly when raising funds for re-election.

Not the best of maps to tell that story. The loxodromes between Washington and the countries he visited aren't all that useful, yet draw most of the attention.

I'd probably make a list of countries, ordered by visit. Beside that, a simple political map with the markers. I'd resist the urge to label the markers with the city he visited, but I might have a mouse-over for more info and a link if available.

Hope this isn't too off-topic, but if you like this and want to create a similar map of your own international/domestic flights you can do that here: https://skyhops.com/

Disclaimer: personal side project

That's pretty cool!

Apparently in 2009 Obama visited Moscow and managed to meet both president Putin and president Medvedev. Granted, it is sometimes hard to remember who of these two is a president at any given moment, but a two-president state is a bit pushing it.

Perhaps, as with the US you retain the honorific title 'President' even after leaving office.

Actually, you don't. Former Presidents are just addressed as "Mr Obama".

http://emilypost.com/advice/addressing-a-former-president-of...

However, e.g. whitehouse.gov refers to "President Clinton" in its description (for the act of being born, not for his active role as president).

https://www.whitehouse.gov/1600/presidents/williamjclinton

Where I live, Finland, a "President" is the official title for former presidents (there are now three alive) so I should actually address them as such. The current one is formally referred to as "President of the Republic". I can't really check how this is with Russia.

A friend of mine moved in next door to then President of Singapore. Even got visited on couple of Christmas dinners.

Neither of them new protocol for the ex-presidency thing and after President left office, upon mutual agreement neighbour now calls him "Uncle".

I'm not convinced. Multiple other sources say you retain the title for life and also recommend addressing the person as such. Obviously it's a matter of etiquette and not right or wrong, though.

US has two presidents right now ;-)

No, I guess the next one is formally addressed as President-Elect.

I wonder what a correct-yet-short summary would be?

Met with then-President-now-Prime-Minister Medvedev and former-President-then-Prime-Minister-now-President-again Putin?

This map really crawls on Firefox.

Not for me. I'm on Firefox 50.1.0 (Windows)

This map uses arcgis jsapi 3.19, compare to leaflet js, it is quite heavy and demanding for low-end pc or mobile. jsapi 4.x is more lightweight though.

I have a high end PC, but Firefox is... what it is ;P

firefox is awesome but it allows you to screw up. you are probably running a bad extension that makes it that slow. if you have ad blocker, make sure it is ublock origin.

also, it is the only browser that allows extensions on mobile.

Very noob question here, but how would one save this as a gif?

Sorry for being off topic, just curious.

Here's another nifty visualisation - this time with drone strikes:

http://drones.pitchinteractive.com/

I like the fact that the site includes all killed people. With 20% civilian casualties rate, the recent announcement of 50000 killed people in Syria/Iraq means US may have directly killed 10000 civilians in just the last two years there. https://airwars.org/ reports a lower number though. But theirs is a very conservative estimate.

I wonder when will this escalation stop.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-500...

I don't think you can draw that conclusion.

The "50,000 ISIS fighters killed" claim includes all reasons for their deaths, not just US drone/air/special forces. Given the civil war in Syria and the anti-ISIS offensive in Iraq it's likely that the majority of those deaths aren't directly caused by US actions.

What's your source for the 20% civilian casualties rate?

According to https://theintercept.com/2016/07/01/obama-administration-fin... the numbers published by the Obama administration are "a fraction of even the most conservative estimates on drone-related killings catalogued by reporters and researchers over the same period."

And that's in part because all males age 18-49 are automatically classified as militants.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-ob...

With so many people around the world needing killing, we should be thankful that Obama was in office. If a Republican was in power, the casualties would have been much worse, probably over ten times!!

Except, for the parts of the timeline when there was a Republican in power, the casualties (and drone strikes) were significantly less.

This comment is so incredibly misleading. Predator drones were new in 2001. The idea that it makes sense to directly compare drone use in the Bush administration to drone usage in the Obama administration is just wrong.

Furthermore, I never really understood why people focus on drones as particularly egregious. Drones are significantly more accurate than cruise missiles and airstrikes because they can get closer to targets.

If you want to question the whole "deliver ordinance to places in which intel suggests there may be 'enemy combatants'" then I'm with you. But that criticism is totally separate from how the ordinance is delivered.

That site really drives the tragic results of drone strikes, however from a UX perspective, I wish they would not use a stacked sliding bar for the death count at the top.

Seeing the death of children growing at the start is heart wrenching, but as the other values grow, the 'children' bar actually shrinks, devaluing the impact of the tragic toll.

Perhaps counters like the "Every Atomic explosion since 1945 video"? [0] Might drive home the point a little better?

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY

They are getting "better" though. The ratio of civilian deaths seems to go down with the years.

The statement that only 2% are high profile targets is kind of misleading. The vetting that goes into assessing whether military age males are actually doing bad things is surprisingly high.

I am not saying mistakes were not made. Civilians and kids have died for sure, but the majority of those killed were combatants. Implying otherwise makes me doubt the veracity of the other claims here.

Nifty visualization though.

Is the vetting truly that high?

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/i-am-on-the-us-kill-list...

From what you write, I understand that you mean mistakes in targeting/dropping bombs, but not mistakes in assessing/choosing the target themselves. Or do you mean otherwise?

http://www.npr.org/2012/06/06/154443665/how-the-president-de...

How do you know? Internal documents concerning a five month period of airstrikes in Afghanistan showed that around 90% of individuals killed were not the intended targets.

Look at my profile.

What about it? The SSL certificate on your personal site is broken.

> but the majority of those killed were combatants

I hope so because otherwise that makes the US a monster.

> Civilians and kids have died for sure

It makes you wonder though, about cause and effect.

I mean, imagine if a foreign power had the capability to deploy drone strikes on US soil against people it saw as 'military combatants', and managed to kill them while they were attending weddings and the like, with some civilians and children regretfully caught in the crossfire.

I don't imagine it would take long for large numbers of military age males to be willing to become combatants against such an enemy.

> military age males

> Civilians

Not mutually exclusive.

> but the majority of those killed were combatants

You mean all men aged between 16-49 regardless of who they are or what they do?

Remember that the definition for a militant/combatant was changed due to the terribly high number of civilians killed by the US. What a disgusting thing to do. Ranks as one of the lowest points of the Nobel peace prize winning President

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-o... https://www.salon.com/2012/05/29/militants_media_propaganda/ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in...

> The vetting that goes into assessing whether military age males are actually doing bad things is surprisingly high.

No. Not just since the Vietnam War, but certainly since then, the US is beyond her eyes in blood. It's so thick you can even call it water and not blush. Amazing.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/18/life-as-a-dron...

The leaked documents and statements from the military explicitly contradicts any claims of assessing whether military age males are actually a combatant. The leaked documents wrote that any male casualties between 18-49 were automatically classified as militants.

And I personally suspect that the age verification is beyond anything scientific.

President Obama visited Moscow as he met with President Medvedev and President Putin.

This is at least innacurate.

Accurate how? At the time Medvedev was President of Russia, and Putin was Prime Minister. Since he was President before that, it's ok for him to be referred as President, like any former President of country.

The convention of referring to an ex president as President is peculiar to United States presidents, AFAIK.

It can also mean that he met with (then) President Medvedev and (now, as of writing) President Putin

No, we have the same in Poland, former presidents are still referenced as president (e.g. president Walesa or as mr president).

It’s also done in France.

I'm curious why this doesn't show any flights to Hawaii - is the map only of official visits? Obama takes an annual vacation there[1].

[1] https://whitehouse.gov1.info/blog/blog_post/agenda-hawaii.ht...

Hawaii isn't considered international, from the perspective of the US - it's domestic. Notice that there also is not a trip to Alaska shown, though he did visit Alaska. (And, trips in the mainland US are not shown either.)

Right, thanks! My US geography is a little rusty.

Hawaii is part of the United States...

And to be clear, that website is a weird parody. It's not an official anything.

What's a weird parody about it? That's different from being unofficial.

The URL at least is really dodgy, looks like a phishing scam. At a quick glance the gov1 can be mistaken for gov/ and lead people to think it's the official White House website. I'd think twice before clicking through.

It says "Parody of whitehouse.gov" on the main page.

Also this: https://whitehouse.gov1.info/launch/launch.html

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