Obama'
s
greatest
accompl
ishment
"There’s a playbook in Washington that presidents are supposed to follow,” Obama told
Goldberg. “(It) prescribes responses to different
events, and these responses tend to be militarized responses. Where America is directly
threatened, the playbook works. But the playbook can also be a trap that can lead to
bad decisions.”
To this day, many see “the line in the sand” as
one of the greatest failures of his presidency but
it’s worth noting that, under American pressure, Assad later agreed to remove all chemical
weapons. It was a triumph of diplomacy, and it
was just one example of a uniquely thoughtful
and level-headed approach that would define
Obama’s foreign policy. That may not sound
as consequential as a great military victory but
in a part of the world already ravaged by war,
his restraint likely mattered more than action.
III.
THE TRAPPINGS OF
THE PRESIDENCY
Obama never had any illusions that he would
be able to fix all of America’s problems, as
if a health system, or climate change, or gun
violence, or mass incarceration, or illegal im-
migration, or unemployment were a leaky faucet. You can’t turn a country on a dime, and
though eight years is basically that, Obama
has done an admirable job. But as important
as the wins are, there will always be people
who remember the president for his failings,
and it would be a mistake to believe that those
failings will always fall under the shadow of
his accomplishments.
After George Bush enacted the Patriot Act
following 9/11, the National Surveillance
Agency expanded to become the most massive intelligence-gathering operation ever,
violating basic rights of U.S. citizens along
the way. Edward Snowden, the whistleblower
who revealed those violations, was prosecuted
under the 1917 Espionage Act – an act that
Obama has used to prosecute more than
twice as many whistleblowers as all previous
U.S. presidents combined. The executive use
of military drones has spiked, in Pakistan for
example by 700%, and their use has bred immeasurable fear and hatred towards the west.
Then there’s Guantanamo Bay. Since its inception, the military prison has been a den of
human rights violations where suspected enemies of the U.S. have been held indefinitely
without the possibility of a trial. Obama
promised in his first term to close the prison
and remains committed to moving prisoners
out, but it now seems impossible that it will
ever close. Trump, as will come as a surprise
to no-one, has vowed to keep the prison open
and fill it with “some bad dudes.”
When we talk about these failures, it’s not
enough to say Obama tried to do better. They
happened under his watch. Whether they were
byproduct of the unstoppable march of technology and the growing popularity of a ‘do
whatever it takes to keep America safe’ attitude
(as one could argue is the case with the executive use of drones), or a Gordian knot of legal
and bureaucratic problems (as is the case in
GTMO), he still bears responsibility for them.
Such is the burden of the presidency. And
when we remember the great strides Obama
has taken to make healthcare more equitable,
to combat climate change, or to change the
way the rest of the world looks at the U.S., we
will hopefully remember that he carried that
burden gracefully.
fredi winter 2016 •
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