Jeremy Kuzmarov - Obamas Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State

As a candidate, Barack Obama beguiled many of us into believing that hed provide the desperately needed antidote to the American empire and national security state that we so fervently desired. Instead, as Jeremy Kuzmarov lays out in this extraordinary book, Obama doubled down on most of Bush and Cheneys hawkish, confrontational, and surveillance-obsessed policies and helped pave the way for the current nightmare of Trumpian warmongering and perversity. In ways no one else has done, Kuzmarov punctures Obamas phony liberal and humanitarian veneer and skillfully deconstructs the carefully crafted Obama creation myth, while laying bare the rot at the base of the Democratic Party and its decades of bipartisan, empire-affirming, militaristic policies, dating back to Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman and culminating with the centrist troika of Obama, Clinton, and Biden.

PETER KUZNICK,
co-author with Oliver Stone of
The Untold History of the United States

Kuzmarovs latest is not just a disturbing look at Obamas disastrous interventions abroad, it is a devastatingly clinical analysis of the cynical thinking that defines the Democratic Partys foreign policy consensus and of the public relations tactics the partys leadership applies to sell it to their liberal base. As such, it is a critical guidebook to the 2020 primary field.

MAX BLUMENTHAL
author of The Management of Savagery and
The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza

This important book is an urgent reminder that the forever wars of the United States are a bipartisan affair; in this in-depth study of the Obama presidency, Jeremy Kuzmarov documents the continued imperial domination policies and actions.

ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ
author of An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States

For all those liberals who have romanticized Barack Obama as an enlightened leader of the people, Jeremy Kuzmarov busts through such myths with a well-documented book showing Obama for what he was and is the kind face of US imperial aggression. This is a must-read for anyone believing that simply getting rid of Trump and returning to normal is a way forward.

DAN KOVALIK
author of The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela

Written in muckraker fashion, Kuzmarovs Obamas Unending Wars is a bombshell blowing the progressive camo off the Obama presidency.

JERRY LEMBCKE
author of The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam

Kuzmarovs impeccable and extensive research reveals the reality of Barack Obamas eight presidential years favoring the economic and military-warring interests of the rich. Obama, the drone president, stood for seven aggressive wars, more than any other US president. The author peals the imperial white mask off the black skin in an analogy to Frantz Fanons classic work. Racism, colonization and contemporary neo-colonialization have distorted the psyches of all colors of peoples. Obamas black Kenyan roots allowed him to do the white mans bidding throughout Africa, and many other nations. While George Bush founded the US African Command (AFRICOM), in 2007, it was Obama, who set about implementing military (and economic) domination to 53 African governments. Kuzmarov shows how many white progressives, who, in their anxiety to reject any racist appearance, embraced this warmongering president. Obama also convinced most African-Americans to give him leeway to do them justice, which he never did.

RON RIDENOUR
author of The Russian Peace Threat

OBAMAS
UNENDING WARS

Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State

by

JEREMY KUZMAROV

Clarity Press, Inc

2019 Jeremy Kuzmarov

ISBN: 978-1-949762-00-6

EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-949763-01-3

In-house editor: Diana G. Collier

Cover: R. Jordan P. Santos

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: Except for purposes of review, this book may not be copied, or stored in any information retrieval system, in whole or in part, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kuzmarov, Jeremy, 1979- author.

Title: Obamas unending wars and the Soviet collapse : fronting the foreign policy of the permanent warfare state / Jeremy Kuzmarov.

Description: Atlanta, GA : Clarity Press, Inc., [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019016447 (print) | LCCN 2019020079 (ebook) | ISBN 9781949762013 | ISBN 9781949762006 (alk. paper) | ISBN 9781949763013 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Obama, Barack. | United States--Foreign

relations--2009-2017.

| United States--Military policy--History--21st century. | United
States--Politics and government--2009-2017. | Militarism--United
States--History--21st century. | Politics and war--United
States--History--21st century. | Political leadership--United
States--History--21st century.

Classification: LCC E907 (ebook) | LCC E907 .K89 2019 (print) | DDC 327.73009/051--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019016447

Clarity Press, Inc.

2625 Piedmont Rd. NE, Ste. 56

Atlanta, GA. 30324 , USA

http://www.claritypress.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication:

To the memory of Fred Branfman, 1943-2014 a man of peace and compassion

FOREWORD

Obama: Imperialisms Second Wind

Glen Ford

Barack Obama may go down in presidential history as the most effectiveand deceptiveimperialist of them all.

U.S. empire is deeply indebted to Obama, both as commander-in-chief and savior of the finance capitalist class. In late September 2008, just weeks before voters made him the first Black president of the United States, candidate Obama rescued the Lords of Capital from the consequences of the catastrophic meltdown of their own making. On Monday, September 29. despite Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsons warnings of looming Armageddon, the outgoing Bush administrations $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill came up 13 votes short in the House. One third of Democrats and two thirds of Republicans rejected legislation to save the banks by buying up worthless securities. The crisis had rendered Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain incapable of coherent speech, leaving the salvage of Wall Street to Obama. He quickly went to work on the holdouts, who constituted a 21 to 18 majority in the Congressional Black Caucus. By Friday, Obamas intervention had convinced all but eight Black Democrats to cough up hundreds of billions in cash for trashthe first act in Obamas 8-year mission to make the banks too big to fail.

American empire was also in need of rescue. Obama would be U.S. imperialisms second windor, in Paul Streets words, the emperors new clothesa tanned and polished Son of Africa who would make the continent the starting point of a global military offensive and New Cold War.

It was the last thing that most of his bedazzled American supporters expected from their young Black prince. The nation and world were weary of George W. Bushs blustering and bumbling cowboy imperialism. Certainly, the Iraqi people were desperate to be rid of the occupier that had laid waste to their nation, once the most developed in the Arab world. Polls showed U.S. public support for the war had risen from 62 percent right after the March, 2003 invasion to 79 percent when Bush declared Mission Accomplished in May -- proof that Americans love nothing more than a short war they think theyve won. But in fact, the Iraqi war of resistance had just begun, and would ultimately result in most of the countrys ethnic, religious and political factions demanding a U.S. exit.

By the spring of 2004, Moqtada al-Sadrs Shiite Muslim militia rose in armed revolt against the occupation regime, seizing Shiite cities and at times collaborating with fighters holding Sunni cities, most notably Fallujah. Americans, in and out of uniform, were shocked. They had been told the U.S. had waged war against Saddam Hussein, in part, to rescue the Shiite majority from his rule. But Hussein was dead, as were thousands of U.S. soldiers, and the Shiites were demanding an American withdrawal. Ayatollah Sistani threatened to put millions of Iraqis in the streets if the U.S. didnt negotiate an exit.