Obama’s inaugural staff retained Bush hawks while launching new wars

Evidence

After Obama won the election, he continued Bush’s second-term foreign policy agenda. While he retreated rhetorically from the use of harsh Islamophobic language, in practice he sent thirty thousand more troops to Afghanistan, expanded the war to Pakistan, and tried to alter the Status of Forces Agreement in Iraq so as to not only extend the US occupation but also grant immunity to US troops from Iraqi prosecution. Not only did he carry out far more drone attacks on Afghanistan and Pakistan than his predecessor, he also integrated them into his strategies for Yemen and Somalia. He made a show of demonstrating his loyalty to Israel and failed, like every previous president, to prevent Israeli attacks on Palestinians. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 579 (#expands, via linked claim)

Obama claimed that his policy was a shift to the realist tradition of great power geopolitics. As he put it, “The truth is that my foreign policy is actually a return to the traditional bipartisan realistic policy of George Bush’s father, of John F. Kennedy, and in some ways of Ronald Reagan.” Yet, as we saw above, during Bush’s second term the neoconservatives were also gravitating toward this position because of the failure of their approach in Afghanistan and Iraq. Soon after taking office, Obama deployed 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, expanded the war into Pakistan (through the “Af-Pak” strategy), tried to pressure Iraq into granting an extension of the US occupation (which failed), carried out drone attacks and “black ops” in Yemen and Somalia, and participated in the NATO war on a former ally in Libya, Muammar Gaddafi. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 501 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Obama’s realist framing masked a continuation of Bush-era imperial warfare — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 501; Obama continued and expanded Bush’s imperial wars despite softer rhetoric — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 579; Obama’s realist framing masked continued military expansion across many fronts

Broader Connections

• Obama continued and expanded Bush’s imperial wars despite softer rhetoric #expands (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 579
• Obama’s realist framing masked continued military expansion across many fronts #corroborates (0.82)
• Obama’s realist framing masked a continuation of Bush-era imperial warfare #corroborates (0.78) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 501