Liberal activist Ralph Nader said Tuesday that President Barack Obama is a “war criminal” whose military and foreign policies have been worse than that of his predecessor, George W. Bush.
Nader, a former presidential candidate, was speaking with Politico when he blasted the Obama administration for policies that he called “more aggressive” and “more illegal worldwide” than Bush’s.
“He’s gone beyond George W. Bush in drones, for example,” Nader said. “He thinks the world is his plate, that national sovereignties mean nothing, drones can go anywhere.”
Nader particularly bemoaned the president for his failure to meet the high expectations that followed him into office.
“[Obama is] below expectations because he raised expectation levels,” he said. “What expectation level did George W. Bush raise?… [Obama’s] below average because he’s above average in his intellect and his knowledge of legality, which he is violating with abandon.”
Nader, however, tempered his comments, saying that Obama was the “lesser of two evils” of the ongoing presidential race. He called the Republican Party the “the worst…in history.”
This is not the first time that Nader has slammed Obama’s military policies.
Last year, he alleged that many of Obama administration’s military and intelligence directives, including the intervention in Libya, had were “war crimes” that would warrant impeachment.
“Why don’t we say what’s on the minds of many legal experts? That the Obama administration is committing war crimes and if Bush should have been impeached, Obama should be impeached,” he told Democracy Now.
Obama may be his more preferred choice in this election, but Nader had this to say about the president’s political philosophy in 2010.
“He has no fixed principles,” Nader said. “He’s opportunistic — he goes for expedience, like [former president Bill] Clinton. Some call him temperamentally conflict-averse. If you want to be harsher, you say he has no principles and he’s opportunistic.”
