“We would make a mistake if we thought that Donald Trump is unique,” says the former president
Former US President Barack Obama (2008-2016) has defended in an interview the orders he gave to kill people as “part of his job” and has mentioned in particular the operation to kill the leader of Al Qaeda, Usama bin Laden , and it has legitimized invasions like the one in Afghanistan.
“It was not a surprise that part of my job involved ordering people to be killed,” Obama says in the first part of his memoir, which he has just presented, which is entitled ‘A Promised Land.’
“For example, I do not regret having given the order to the operation that resulted in the death of Usama bin Laden because he was planning the murder of innocent people, something that he had done before,” Obama explained in an interview promoting the book. granted to the Cadena Ser.
The former US president has thus referred to “necessary” wars, such as the one in Afghanistan or unnecessary, such as the one in Iraq. “I think that going to Afghanistan and ending the Taliban and Al Qaeda after 9/11 was necessary. Even the necessary wars involve very terrible things and that is something that weighs on my conscience. And it has to be like that,” he explained the.
“Others who were further to the left, who were more progressive, said that what had to be done was to dismantle the military-industrial complex and I told them that this would happen in the world that I would like to have, in which there would be no need to military operations of this type, “he argued.
“The truth is that if your son is on a plane and suffers an attack and you discover that your government could have prevented that from happening, whatever your ideology, what you want is for that government to protect your son,” he added.
As for the success among young people of politicians clearly to the left of Obama such as Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the former president has argued that during his term he managed to “advance a certain amount of expectations (…) for new politicians, raise expectations even higher and so let’s progress. “
With the new president of the United States, Joe Biden, “we are going to see those kinds of expectations again, but we still have to govern.” “You have to accept the progress that you can achieve at a specific moment in history,” he added.
Regarding his successor in office, Donald Trump, he has warned that “we would make a mistake if we thought that Donald Trump is unique. There is (Viktor) Orbán in Hungary, (Recep Tayyip) Erdogan in Turkey, (Rodrigo) Duterte in the Philippines, (Vladimir ) Putin in Russia, … and the right-wing parties re-emerging throughout Europe. “
“Inequality (…), the forces of the markets, which are becoming more and more powerful, the governments incapable in many cases to regulate them. All this has contributed to anxiety and fear, to nationalism,” he argued. “Invoking nationalism, tribe, ethnicity, religion, chauvinism, a strong man policy (…) generates an attraction when people are afraid,” he said.
Obama has also referred to one of the flagships of his two terms, health reform, and has mentioned the memory of his mother, sick with cancer. “The fact that I saw my mother with cancer, worrying about whether or not she could pay the bills made me more aware of the fear and insecurity that people who do not have health coverage feel. The fact that I come from a modest family. I was not born rich, “he recalled.
