Gun-Control Psychopath Barack Obama labeled: "Global arms dealer-in-chief"

[William Gigantus]

What a fucking HYPOCRITE my president is, along with being a
non-American, devil-worshipping, crack-smoking, gay drone-nazi with a
tyranny wife.

The worst Obama can say about Syria's Assad is he's a "brutal
dictator;" well, what about this tyrant: the KING of Saudi Arabia, the
brutal dictatorial authoritarian Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.

Saudi Arabia should be getting U.S. bombs dropped, not delivered.

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Obama: Global arms dealer-in-chief
http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/obama-global-arms-dealer-chief-311000658

This Nobel Peace Prize winner has sold $90bn worth of weapons to Saudi
Arabia since 2010, and even eclipsed arms sales under George W Bush.

Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize a mere 12 days into his
presidency. Never had a recipient achieved so little to be lauded so
much. Essentially it was a pre-emptive award given on the presumption
Obama’s foreign policy record would eventually meet its promise.

In the six-years since becoming planet earth’s most recognised agent
for world peace, Obama has failed to close Guantanamo Bay, which
remains the symbol of the darkest chapter in modern US history; has
assassinated US citizens around the globe sans due process; has
suspended habeas corpus; has terrorised villagers in Yemen, Somalia,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere with the incessant buzzing sound
of weaponised drones; armed Israel in the midst of its brutal and
bloody invasion of Gaza, which left more than 2,200 Palestinians dead;
toppled a government in Libya without so much as a consideration for
what might come next; supported the toppling of a democratically
elected government in Egypt, and, in turn, armed arguably the most
brutal dictator in that country’s history; and has coordinated and
guided Saudi Arabia’s terrorist activities in Yemen, which has left
more than 4,000 Yemeni civilians dead.

It’s a record to behold with some awe, and it gets worse.

A newly released report reveals Obama is the greatest arms exporter
since the Second World War. The dollar value of all major arms deals
overseen by the first five years of the Obama White House now exceeds
the amount overseen by the Bush White House in its full eight years in
office by nearly $30bn.

Hail the chief

America’s arms-dealer-in-chief has flooded the most volatile corner of
the world, the Middle East, with guns, bombs, fighter jets, tanks and
missiles.

In an interview, William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security
Project at the Centre for International Policy, told Democracy Now he
was “astonished that Obama had sold this much”. He added: “I mean, I
knew there were record deals with the Saudis, but to outsell the eight
years of Bush, to sell more than any president since World War II, was
surprising even to me, who follows these things quite closely. The
majority, 60 percent, have gone to the Persian Gulf and Middle East,
and within that, the Saudis have been the largest recipient of things
like US fighter planes, Apache attack helicopters, bombs, guns, almost
an entire arsenal they’ve purchased just in the last few years.”

Hartung also points out that this breathtaking bundle of war tools not
only makes its way to stable regimes and governments, but also to
states on the verge of collapse, which ultimately means many of these
arms end up in the hands of militia groups across the region, which
results in an all too predictable conclusion: more death and chaos.

Investigative journalist Dr Nafeez Ahmed says that if you want to
trace the origins of certain jihadist groups, all you need to do is
“follow the money”. He notes: “Anyone can have bad, horrific,
disgusting ideas. But they can only be fantasies unless we find a way
to manifest them materially in the world around us.” US arms sales to
failing states and non-state militias is providing those with
“disgusting ideas” the material infrastructure to play out their
fantasies.

In other words, the deluge of US arms into the region is making
conflicts, rivalries, and unrest even more deadlier, and with the US
having little idea whose hands much of this weaponry ends up in.

“We don’t know the full numbers, but in Iraq the security forces
abandoned large amounts of the weaponry to ISIS. US-armed rebels in
Syria, armed by the CIA, went over to join ISIS. There’s $500mn
missing of weapons in Yemen. Some think it’s gone to the Houthis. Some
think it’s gone to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” said Hartung.
“Of course, there’s arms on both sides, because the government and the
forces have split in this war. So it’s quite possible every side of
that war in Yemen may have some level of US weaponry. So it’s really
gone, you know, haywire. It’s sort of what I call the boomerang
effect, when US arms end up in the hands of US adversaries.”

But what amounts to “haywire” for the Middle East amounts to massive
profits for the US, and on that score no single entity is more
profitable and more beneficial to America’s balance of trade than
Saudi Arabia.

Arming Saudi

The Congressional Research Service found that since October 2010
alone, President Obama has agreed to sell $90.4bn in arms to the Gulf
kingdom.

“That President Obama would so enthusiastically endorse arming such a
brutal authoritarian government is unsurprising, since the United
States is by far the leading arms dealer (with 47 percent of the world
total) to what an annual State Department report classifies as the
world’s “least democratically governed states,” notes Micah Zenko, a
senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Obama has done little to promote democracy or bring an end to terror.
When children in Gaza pick up unexploded ordinance, they see “Made in
Bethesda, Maryland, USA.”

In 2008, the United Nations banned the use of cluster munitions - an
agreement the US is yet to ratify. Why? Cluster bombs are the number
one seller for Textron Systems Corporation – a Wall Street-listed
company located in Providence, Rhode Island. For $38 per share, you
can add the sale of cluster bombs to your stock portfolio.

In February of this year, the Obama administration announced it would
allow the sale of US manufactured armed drones to its allies in the
Middle East. According to the Teal Group, a research and analysis
firm, the sale of drones is expected to double from $5bn to $11bn over
the course of the next decade.

This means countries with horrific human rights records - regimes
whose power is dependent on the repression of its people - will have
access to the most brutally effective tool available for repression
management. While the Obama administration insists the sale of drones
will be made on a “case-by-case” basis, it’s laughable that the US
gets to decide who gets these aerial killers given the US’s own use of
drones often violates international law.

In fact, both a 2013 Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch
report found that US drone strikes were killing far more civilians
than the Obama White House was letting on, and these strikes were
nearly always in violation of international law.

Drone dynamics

Furthermore, armed unmanned airborne vehicles have the potential to
completely change the power dynamics in the Middle East. “The drone is
the ultimate imperial weapon, allowing a superpower almost unlimited
reach while keeping its own soldiers far from battle,” notes James
Risen in Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Relentless War.

There isn’t a country in the Middle East that isn’t clamouring for the
Predator drone. Obama, via US drone manufactures such as General
Atomics, is making the dreams of some of the most oppressive regimes a
reality. From Egypt to Saudi Arabia, from Syria to Iraq, the
forthcoming flood of such advanced weaponry promises to produce
effects we are yet to imagine. “An advance fleet of missile-carrying
drones could, overnight, turn a group like Hezbollah into a legitimate
military power,” forewarns Risen. “A drone programme for Hezbollah
could alter the military dynamics along the Israel-Lebanon border.”

These end games are not imagined by the Obama administration, nor any
other US administration past or future because profits supersede
democracy, human rights and international law; thus greed promises the
Middle East endless war, and the US military oligarchs endless
profits. Obama, like his predecessors, has made sure of that.

- CJ Werleman is the author of Crucifying America, God Hates You. Hate
Him Back, Koran Curious, and is the host of Foreign Object. Follow him
on twitter: @cjwerleman