A popular Democratic president legitimized and expanded the Republican war on terror.
Evidence
The securitization of Islam and the racialization of Muslims initiated by the Bush administration were strengthened during the Obama era. The failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, had called the credibility of the Bush administration into question. Both on the international and domestic front, Obama launched a “smarter” war on terror. Here I lay out a few ways in which the Obama administration built on and deepened the policies developed by Bush, but also how it replaced programs that had come under fire. Just as with the global war on terror where Obama initiated a new rhetorical posture, the domestic war on terror also acquired a more liberal veneer. As journalist Jeremy Scahill notes in his book Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, one of the most comprehensive journalistic accounts of the expansion of empire after 9/11, “the war on terror, launched under a Republican administration, was ultimately legitimized and expanded by a popular Democratic president.” — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 612
Categorization
- XREF: Directly challenges narratives of Obama-era liberal break from Bush — corroborates Rana/Aziz on imperial continuity. — connects to: Obama legitimized and expanded the war on terror, not reversed it; Presidents across party lines securitized Muslim identity through state action — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 108; Each successive president advanced rather than curtailed the War on Terror — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 306
Broader Connections
- Obama legitimized and expanded the war on terror, not reversed it
#corroborates(1.00) - Presidents across party lines securitized Muslim identity through state action
#expands(0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 108 - Each successive president advanced rather than curtailed the War on Terror
#expands(0.70) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 306