Jay Kuten: Failures dent Obama legacy

Jay Kuten PHOTO/FILE

AS President Obama's term ends, it is fair to ask what were his accomplishments and his shortcomings. I'm focusing mainly on foreign policy and domestic policies influenced by the constancy of war and the threat of terror as bookending one on domestic issues (Chronicle, August 3, 2016).

To credit Obama properly, let's recall that he came to office when the US economy was in freefall, shedding 700, 000 jobs monthly and threatening the global economy. He inherited two wars, one of which, Iraq, he had opposed. Despite Republican opposition massed against him from day one, his actions helped stabilise the economy. Along the way those actions saved the US auto industry and thousands of jobs. But his decision to bail out the banks without helping the indebted citizens, and his emphasis on health care but not job provision, made for a jobless recovery that fuelled a part of the anger his eventual successor could capitalise on.

His achievement of a health reform tied to insurance companies was based on a Republican scheme. Despite its origins, Republicans hated it and their repeated attempts to repeal it will finally succeed when Donald Trump is sworn in. It is President Obama's foreign policy which is at issue, especially as it may be dealt with by the incoming administration.

President Obama's foreign policy mantra, "Don't do stupid stuff" may have been a slap at the Bush administration and its recklessness in Iraq, the greatest strategic blunder in American history.

Neither history nor the regard for the structure of democracy will be forgiving about Obama's handling of the torture of prisoners conducted by the Bush administration. Obama's "we tortured some folks" is a meaningless admission as he failed to prosecute anyone for these war crimes, claiming the need "to look forward".

Forward turns out to be Trump's willingness to undo Obama's orders forbidding torture. Without consequence the statements and orders were toothless. A crime without consequence becomes normalised as accepted practice.

One application of not doing stupid stuff is the determination of not having boots on the ground. Military actions with large-scale ground forces were avoided.

Sometimes that avoidance was through diplomacy, sometimes by delay, leading to worsening of a situation, as in Syria. But mostly that mantra has meant a continuation of Bush-era policies of war on the cheap, avoiding at all costs those photos of flag-draped coffins. Unfortunately, as with Bush, the bill will come later.

It was President George W. Bush who instituted the drone programme and began the substitution of special operations units for adequate numbers of combat troops. Obama has ramped up the use of both programmes. The political convenience for domestic consumption of the covert nature of special ops mobile killing squads and of the use of drones to avoid any possibility of military funerals cannot be overrated. Neither can it be overstated that both strategies, which bypass accountability, are a threat to democracy. The drone programme is particularly dangerous. The spectacle of a president meeting with advisers and technicians over a list of the condemned through extra-judicial killing is of a piece with absolute monarchy, not democracy.

Use of special ops forces is seductive towards warfare of clandestine form. Obama, who started with two wars, now is engaged in five, including Syria, Somalia and Yemen.

His overt timidity dealing with domestic adversaries and his covert aggression against foreign enemies will both be held against him. The hope and change that he harnessed to propel him to the White House gave way to the despair and hopelessness and anger that fuelled his successor.

It is no small thing that Obama renewed the dignity of his office by his demeanour that gave pride to all Americans and certainly to African Americans. In the end it was not enough to prevent the ascendance of a man, far inferior in character and more dangerous with all the tools of that office.

�Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.