Mathematics seems to be the most objective, least easily manipulated form of human knowledge. Consequently it can be considered an essential tool for the assessment of political performance.
Here are some mathematical metrics applied to Mr Obama’s presidential performance in military aspects of what is usually labelled Foreign Policy.
However, it is always needful to bear in mind the inevitable effects of military Foreign Policy on domestic policies. Security and spending, including debt charges, are always affected.
Mr Obama has spent annual average of $653.6 billion on US military spending. This beats the previous post war record of Mr GW Bush by an average of $18.7 billion per annum in 2016 dollars.
After adjusting for inflation, Mr Obama’ military spending has been 56% higher than Mr Clinton’s, 16% higher than Mr Reagan’s and 42% more than the “Cold War” average. The USA spends about ten times as much on the military as Russia does.
When Mr Obama came to office, the USA had special operations forces in 60 different countries. He leaves office with the USA having special operations forces in 138.
During his two terms in office the US Airforce has dropped over 100,000 bombs. During the two terms of Mr GW Bush some 70,000 bombs were dropped.
During this time some 26,000 bombs have been dropped on Afghanistan. During the time of Mr GW Bush, the number was 37,000.
Under Mr Obama’s leadership, Iraq and Syria have been hit with 65,730 bomb and missile strikes, Libya with 7,700 in 2011 and 496 in 2016, and Pakistan with at least 547 drone strikes.
Drone strikes have increased by a factor of 10 under Mr Obama compared with strikes under Mr GW Bush. Mr Obama is personally involved in target selection – usually on a Tuesday evening.
Under the leadership of Mr GW Bush and Mr Obama, in their combined four terms of office, the combined death toll as a consequence of military activities, overt and covert, direct and indirect, appears to be over two million or 2,000,000.
That is a lot of bodies.
The total number of UK and Colonies deaths in World War 2 was some 450,000.
In due course it will be interesting and significant to see and reflect upon the mathematics of the military aspects of the Foreign Policy of the United States of America under the leadership of Mr Trump.
P.S. Do you think he will be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize like Mr Obama?
* Steve Trevathan is chairperson of Lyme Regis and Marshwood Vale Liberal Democrats.
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14 Comments
What’s missing is that Bush got into the mess -Obama had to finish it.
What does this have to do with mathematics?
Mathematics is objective, statistics ain’t.
I’m sure GW Bush will be grateful for what you missed out.
To take two examples …
What was the USA’s military spending as a percentage of GDP compared to GW Bush?
What were the deaths as a result of Obama’s policies compared to GW Bushes.
And, could you provide a link for the estimated numbers of
Sorry, Steve. Ffinger trouble on my phone.
Could you provide a link to the 2,000,000 direct and indirect deaths?
I’m not condoning the drone strikes. I don’t know enough about them. But indirect deaths is surely impossible to measure. Did some one die because terrorists wanted revenge for a drone strike, or did someone die because a drone strike was aborted, and, as an indirect result, the ISIS group went on to kill people?
I agree with your final point. It was foolish to award Obama a peace prize at the start of his presidency.
But to imply that Obama could be worse than GW Bush is absurd. You didn’t mean that seriously, did you?
Steve
You combine Bush and Obama on loss of life , what are the separate numbers, this needs to be shown. The article is shocking and bleak, not usual ,for lack of viewpoint, or analysis. Which is why it shocks also.
If you are implying that Obama did not deserve his peace prize you are right, but for the wrong reasons. It was not the bad things you obviously, seemingly, think, are the things he did, and therefore did not deserve it. It was the good things he did not do, which was the reason he did not deserve it. He was given it for his promise . And he did not live up to it on peace. The most inappropriate choice for the prize since Kissinger, not because Obama had done bad things ,like that Secretary of State, but because he had not yet done good things! I like Obama, as a person he is better than he was as a president I think. He was a good president . No better . No worse.
Carter was a supposed failure. But he started no wars and dropped no bombs. He tried to bring in universal health care but faced obstacles from the right in Congress and the left there to, including from Edward Kennedy, playing Tony Benn to Carter’s Kinnock ! Carter is in my view a far better president than any I have seen in recent years!
P.S.
As an admirer of all the Kennedys , I would add, that Edward Kennedy was a critic of Carter from the left of him, wanting universal health care so much he would not countenance any other kind but that which the left of the party were pressing for, and Carter was in the mood to at least look for ways to unite , across party .
The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were largely funded through supplemental spending bills outside the federal budget, which are not included in the military budget figures.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/obamas-bombing-legacy/5569349
is the resource for the 2,000,000 deaths.
Mr Obama is the only two-term President in US history who has waged war every single day of his eight years in office.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/01/trump-inherit-obama-war-legacy-170123115134240.html
Wars are expensive in life, limb, mind. property, social damage and so on. Someone always pays and someone always gains, irrespective of which accounts the money and debt come.
In the words of an American President who was not awarded a peace prize, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.” [Mr Eisenhower]
Obama looked and sounded the part, an inspirational speaker, a lovely family and, as a black, the perfect embodiment of the hope and change he promised. What’s not to like?
Well, actually almost everything once you look beneath the glossy surface. Steve is quite right about that but Obama’s dubious record goes far beyond the military.
Consider for example the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. ObamaCare which was advertised as extending affordable medical care to millions of previously uninsured Americans.
Obamacare was actually modelled closely on ‘RomneyCare’ a scheme devised by right wing think tanks and introduced in Massachusetts by former Republican Presidential Mitt Romney when he was governor. It failed.
Obama turned much of the drafting of his version over to a lobbyist for the health insurance industry so it was always about their profits first and foremost, not about health. Some people did benefit, particularly those with previously uninsurable long term conditions who got federal subsidies (but only 20-40 cents of benefit for every dollar of cost according to one estimate).
For most Obamacare is a maze of ‘gotcha’ rules. So, for example poor people who face a deductible (what we would call the excess on a motor policy) that can be $5,000 or more that they must pay before the insurer chips in. So they can’t use the insurance they must buy! Or ‘narrow networks’ meaning that insurers don’t pay (so you, as patient, can’t use) all the doctors you might need. At your local hospital they might have a contract with the surgeon but not the anaesthetist. At the next hospital it might be the other way round.
Of course Obama could have pushed for a public option with the government taking the role of a single ‘no tricks’ insurer. That has overwhelming public support. Candidate Obama supported it but President Obama took it off the table.
And then, just a week before the election, the annual premium increases were unveiled – up around 25% on average, even 50% in some places.
The Democrats lost for a reason; the Republicans may be awful, but under Obama they have been even worse.
Obama has an equally bad record in his handling of the financial crisis.
An epidemic of fraud enabled by earlier financial deregulation was a prime driver of the crisis but Obama’s subsequent handling of it has made things worse, disguised in the short to medium run by kicking the can down the road. Unfortunately financial gravity can’t be denied and the long-term price will be much higher than it need have been.
No senior Wall Street person has been to jail although several have committed the most egregious crimes imaginable. In one case the managing director of a leading firm took well over $1 billion from the client account to make a sure-thing bet on the financial markets. But, of course, things didn’t work out, the bet was lost and with it the clients’ money. The FBI did eventually get round to questioning him but no charges were pressed. That’s like your solicitor running off with the proceeds from the house you just sold and getting away with it because he’s a big political fundraiser.
Then again, a side effect of the infamous business of ‘slicing and dicing’ mortgages for securitisation is lots of paperwork about who actually owns the mortgage at each stage in the process. But good paperwork is expensive so why bother if the business model is really fraud with a veneer of respectability as it was in some cases? And foreclosures with faulty paperwork? It shouldn’t be possible but some courts have been perfectly happy to accept obviously fraudulent paperwork.
All this was well underway before Obama became President but his deliberate failure to prosecute criminality in high places in inexcusable. A pre-established drift towards oligarchical government has been strengthened to the point where we may soon have to describe the US as a kleptocracy.
That’s beginning to show in the statistics – for example life expectancy is falling for some sections of the population and is lower in Appalachia than Bangla Desh.
And that in turn explains a lot about the election. Clinton was the continuity candidate and the justifiable rage of many people found an outlet in Trump.
Thanks and apologies, Steve, I had read the article, but missed the link in the consortiumnews article previously. (And my search was for 2,000,000 not for two million)
The consortiumnews article was very interesting. The globalresearch article less so, as it seemed much more polemical.
I’m sorry Steve but I do not find the 2 million casualty figure convincing given that it does not seperate the deaths inflicted by enemy combatants from those killed by US action. Further, it mistakenly blames Obama for all deaths whilst he was in office despite Obama having nothing to do with the initiating the two major wars he had to fight whilst in office.
Ask yourself this, if Bush had not invaded Iraq then how many deaths in that country could have been laid at Obamas door?
As for the covert/proxy war – where is the evidence that asymetric warfare carried out in Iraq over the last eight years furthered US/Obama policy in the area? Absolutely none!
In my opinion the Global Research piece is nothing more than an attack article from an author whose bias shines through
Thanks to all who contributed to and read this conversation.
Perhaps it might be helpful to look at the similarities between the military actions undertaken by both Democrat and Republican Presidents.
With both parties, a lot of money is spent/moved from the public purse, and a lot of people, including people from the USA and the UK, are harmed and killed. Who actually benefits?
Are these two parties only the two different wings of the same bird of prey?
Here are two quotations from a previous President:
“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
“In most communities it is illegal to cry “fire” in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve political aims?” [Dwight D. Eisenhower]
General Eisenhower also referred to Operation Overlord as ‘the Great Crusade’. In quoting him you also seem to forget the tiny minority of soldiers of all nations who revel in the violence of war.
What you apparently don’t see is that most soldiers – even soldiers who have served in times of conflict – see war as evil, but at times a necessary evil. Most of the servicemen and women I have spoken to who served in Afghanistan understood the reasons for their presence there. What they despise are the politicians of all colours who they see as using the suffering of the armed forces family in the wars to their own end.