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Comment by vichle | Hacker News Reader

Could you elaborate, which wars did he start? (honest question)

In addition to the other replies, he is the only US president in modern history to explicitly authorize the assassination of a US citizen without a trial, and create a legal doctrine allowing future presidents to do so; and he was the major escalator of the use of drone strikes in war (the practice started with Bush, but it expanded many fold under Obama).

> […] [Obama] is the only US president in modern history to explicitly authorize the assassination of a US citizen without a trial

Just one of the many things Obama did that upsets me so much. The precedent he set with that is criminal.

Of course I’m against terrorism, but our government MUST NOT have the right to classify Americans as terrorists and just execute them without a trial—via drone strikes!

Most Americans likely don’t even know about what happened to the al-Awlaki’s, which is unfortunate.

"He launched airstrikes or military raids in at least seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan."

https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-na-pol-obama-at-war/

Technically not the same thing but ironic/hypocritical nonetheless.

nah no way. i thought obama kool

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zmIUm1E4OcI

so you can arguably add ukraine crisis to that list

> "He launched airstrikes or military raids in at least seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan." https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-na-pol-obama-at-war/

A bit different from "started a war".

Just because those countries could not realistically engage in a war with the US, seeing as they lack the necessary technology. Obviously, if you shoot fish in a barrel you're not starting a war with the fish, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're doing much to advance peace with the fish.

If someone launched an airstrike against the continental US, what exactly would that mean?

So the Great War with Pakistan turns out to be checks notes the raid on OBL compound?

Tangential to your question but not the premise of this subthread/post - he became president in Feb 2009 and got the award in October.

I don't think he started any new wars, but he inherited some and continued. Anyway, the point here should be the absurdity of a lot of Nobel awards and that stands - especially in his case.

I mean Trump was nominated for the award for fuck's sake! More than 2 or 3 times iirc. So anyway.

The Nobel peace prize is awarded by a different institution than the science ones. And there are hundreds of people that can nominate, doesn't mean that a nomination reflects anything upon the committee that awards the prize.

Each of the Nobel prizes is awarded by a different committee from a different organization. The Nobel Peace prize was established at the same time and in the same way as the Literature, Physics, Physiology or Medicine, and Chemistry prizes (through Alfred Nobel's will). Of course, by its nature, it is the most political of the prizes.

The only Nobel prize that is separate is the Economics one, which was established much later and has no connection to Alfred Nobel (it is paid for by Sweden's central bank instead of the Nobel estate). But even that one is administered by the same Nobel foundation.

Obama intervened in the Libyan civil war. The outcome was disastrous for Libya (13 years of chaos and counting, the entrance of ISIS into Libya, the re-emergence of slavery in Libya, to name a few consequences). Obama blatantly violated the War Powers Act, which requires the President to seek Congressional approval for any war waged abroad after 60 days. The act was passed on the tail end of the Vietnam War, to prevent a repeat of things like Nixon invading Cambodia in secret. The US Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, but that power is absolutely meaningless if the President can just wage war wherever he chooses without a declaration.

Obama specifically won the Nobel Peace Prize for talking about his "vision of a world free from nuclear weapons" as a candidate. As President, he initiated a massive program to upgrade the US' nuclear arsenal. It made a complete mockery of the Nobel Peace Prize, though Kissinger also won the Nobel Peace Prize, so it's not as if the prize has any credibility anyways.

The outcome was positive for Libya, as it experienced only a fraction of human suffering compared to Syria where the United States did not intervene against the regime.

Either way Libya operation was spearheaded by France with Obama joining only reluctantly later.

The US intervened in both civil wars, though in Syria its involvement early on was much more through funding and arming of various armed groups - notably Sunni fundamentalist groups. How you can say that the outcome was positive for Libya is beyond me. The country was utterly destroyed. It went from being the one of the most developed countries in Africa to a war-torn country with competing warlords and open slave markets.

Human death toll in Libya and Syria differ by almost 60x. Half a million Syrians could have lived, the refugee crisis and the rise of far right in the West could be avoided had Assad been droned in 2013. Putin would also not have dared the 2014 annexation either.

The US had hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground in Iraq for over a decade. More than half a million Iraqis died. There was intense violence between different religious groups and political factions. But you come here and say that everything would have magically gotten better with more US involvement in Syria.

A direct American intervention in Syria probably would have made things even worse. Droning Assad, as you suggest, probably would have led to an even greater amount of chaos (besides being totally illegal). It's bad enough as it is that the US funded Sunni extremists in Syria.

Notice how I specifically talked about Syria and Libya. I (along with a lot of other people) opposed Iraq war as well and it took you to pull it here for lack of consistent argument.

Don't see the point arguing with you further. Some day both Putin and Assad are going to be dead and I hope they suffer in their last minutes. I will be cheering while you will be mourning your tyrants.

You argued that the US intervening more heavily in Syria would have prevented all of the human suffering. I'm pointing out to you that the US' other interventions in the Middle East show that the opposite is likely the case.

Just imagine the chaos in Syria if the Sunni extremist groups that the US supported had won. How would the various religious minorities, like the Shiites, Alawites and Christians, have fared? What's the chance that the Sunni extremists would have carried out genocide against religious minorities? It's one thing to say that Assad is a tyrant, but another to say that everything would be better if the US toppled him.

In Iraq, supporters of a US invasion made the exact same argument. "Saddam is a tyrant? Why don't you want to get rid of him?" The US toppled him, and half a million people died as a result.

Your analysis - everything will be better if the US topples tyrants (and realistically, empowers people who might be even worse) - is very simplistic, and has a terrible track record in the real world.

Can you explain why starting a war (still ongoing), killing >10k people, and converting Africa's best functioning and richest country into one of the world's worst functioning places is positive outcome? I don't understand this.

The Syrian Civil war was clearly (in parts) engineered by the west. Here is some evidence.

- Western government spokesperson in 2003: https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/18328

- In 2014, the West officially intervened in the Syrian civil war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_intervention_in_the_Syrian_...

- Western government spokesperson in 2018: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/...

- As of 2024 the West still has at least 1000 military personnel in Syria: https://theconversation.com/us-military-presence-in-syria-ca...

American military on the ground did not engage Syrian government forces except once in 2018 when they were attacked. They were there only for ISIS.

See the sibling comment for human toll perspective.

The US did intervene in the Libyan conflict; they trained and armed the FSA, remember?

Like it or not, one of the reasons Obama got the award was his campaign promise of withdrawing from Iraq. Guess who actually did it?

You're mixing up wars.

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-promised-withdr...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_United_States_...

That's the second withdrawal from a second presence, requested by the Iraqi government after the rise of ISIL.

> The United States completed its prior withdrawal of troops in December 2011, concluding the Iraq War.[9] In June 2014, the United States formed Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) and re-intervened at the request of the Iraqi government due to the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

> On 9 December 2017, Iraq declared victory against ISIL, concluding the 2013–2017 War in Iraq and commencing the latest ISIL insurgency in Iraq.

Perhaps those troops should have been withdrawn for the second time in early 2018. Alas, it took place after messier circumstances.

> On 31 December 2019 through 1 January 2020, the United States Embassy in Baghdad was attacked in response to the airstrikes.[6] On 3 January 2020, the United States conducted an airstrike that killed Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani and Kata'ib Hezbollah commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.[6] Iraq protested that the airstrike violated their sovereignty.[13] > > In March 2020, the U.S.-led coalition, Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF–OIR), began transferring control over a number of military installations back to Iraqi security forces, citing developments in the multi-year mission against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Or perhaps the second withdrawal has never actually completed.

> In February 2021, NATO announced it would expand its mission to train Iraqi forces in their fight against ISIL,[14] partially reversing the U.S.-led troop withdrawals. In April 2021, U.S. Central Command stated that there were no plans for a total withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, citing continued threats posed by the ISIL insurgency and Iran-backed militias.[3]

I mean Trump was nominated for the award for fuck's sake

Being nominated only means that one of thousands of people allowed to nominated candidates wrote your name on a piece of paper and mailed it in. There is at least one right wing Swedish politician who's been sending in Trumps name every year for a while now.

The Nobel peace prize committee is not really responsible for nominating candidates[1], only for selecting a winner from the list of nominated candidates.

[1] Although I believe they are allowed to suggest names.

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