25 thoughts on “Obama’s Legacy”

  1. Obama’s legacy will be the next four years of never shutting up. The last 8 years will be erased in pretty much the same way they were created.

  2. How can I miss you when you won’t go away?
    Keep telling you day after day
    But you won’t listen, you always stay and stay
    How can I miss you when you won’t go away?

    – Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks

  3. If Obama does hang around to cause trouble, I can see Trump just trolling the shit out of him on Twitter. Obie’s fragile ego won’t be able to handle it.

  5. The author abandons sanity with this remark: “To be sure, Obama did not leave us with the kind of catastrophic legacy that the incompetent Bush administration left behind, notably in Iraq.” Iraq was stable and supplied with military deterrent when Bush left office.

    Not one mention of Libya? Or the mistake of backing the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt?

    1. While Obama and Clinton have been disastrous in the Middle East, Iraq was only stable so long as America kept paying the Danegeld. You can’t buy off all sides forever, because there’ll always be another side with its hands out.

        1. The Iraqi invasion has cost a lot of Iraqi lives and destabilized the entire Middle East. Sure Iraq was “stable” after the invasion. As long as the US kept its army inside it and paid in blood. The fact is the invasion left a huge power vacuum. You can’t possibly compare it with Germany (surrounded on all sides by the Allies), or Japan (an island nation blockaded by the USN) or South Korea (which was liberated from a Japanese invasion for crissakes).
          Obama managed to make the situation even worse by starting even more fires (Libya, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine, etc). But it doesn’t make the Iraqi invasion any less of a disaster. It was never going to work.

          1. The fact is the invasion left a huge power vacuum.

            Pulling troops and diplomatic engagement out of Iraq caused a power vacuum, with the latter probably being more important.

            As long as the US kept its army inside it and paid in blood.

            Most of the deaths in Iraq were Iraqis being killed by Syrian and Iranian proxy groups. American deaths were relatively low in comparison to other wars and were especially low in 2009.

        2. Recall that things were going so well in 2010 that Biden took to the airwaves to proclaim that Iraq would be a “great achievement” of the Obama administration.

          It was done. All we needed to do was to police the area, like we did in Europe and Southeast Asia for decades, and still are.

          Obama screwed the pooch.

    2. The historians write the history books. And, their biased and insipid opinion at this time is that Iraq II was a huge mistake.

      But, opinions can change over time. The verdict of Truman’s tenure was abysmal at one time. Now, he is considered one of the better chief executives.

      1. I am not sure how Obama messing up in Iraq makes the invasion a mistake for Bush but considering that we will still have troops there after Obama leaves and that the fighting there and in the region will also continue, it looks like the shaping of the war’s legacy falls to Trump.

    3. Talking about Bush is a cop out in an article about Obama.

      It’s out of scope.

      What are Obama’s achievements?

        2. But Obama failed to realize that the problem of Islamic terrorism and desire for a caliphate is not a problem of a single person or group.

          1. It is a problem arising from the population’s yen for control over their own lives. For decades, they have been at the mercy of autocrats supported by outside powers.

            How would you feel if, depending on your political persuasion, you had Obama or Trump as president for life, and there was not one thing you could do about it, due to the interventions of outside powers? Would you not come to detest those outside powers with every fiber of your being? Would you not be willing to take up arms against it?

            GW started that ball rolling with a free and democratic Iraq. Then, Obama threw it all away.

          2. It is a problem arising from the population’s yen for control over their own lives.

            This is true for some but there is also a large segment of these populations that want a caliphate. In some ways, this desire is a reflection of wanting their own form of government, even if that is also a totalitarian system.

            The number of groups organized for jihad is astounding. The number of groups organized for democratic reforms is vanishingly small.

          3. I think they probably think there just isn’t enough passion to effect any meaningful change except on the side of the crazies. Desperate people do desperate things.

      2. Well he helped Donald Trump find something to do with his time besides sit in a fake board room and talk to D list celebrities. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.

      3. He has done an amazing job of increasing Iranian influence in the region and propping up Russian influence. Not to mention the spectacular job he did pivoting to Asia.

    4. There has also been little talk of Obama saying we wouldn’t fight a proxy war with Russia and then fighting a proxy war with Russia.

      The level of knowledge in the public surrounding the wars we are involved in is abysmal. Obama owes a lot of thanks to his party media for hiding reality from the American public to keep his poll numbers up.

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