r/politics • u/Quirkie The Netherlands • 1d ago

Soft Paywall Obama Breaks Silence on Trump’s ‘Unimaginable’ Presidency - “Imagine if I had done any of this,” the former two-term president said.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/obama-breaks-silence-on-trumps-unimaginable-presidency/
73.6k Upvotes

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u/jtsa5 1d ago

If anyone else other than Trump did anything wrong it was like the world was ending. When it's Trump everyone has kid gloves on.

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u/RemarkableWave8066 1d ago

Obama wore a tan suit once and the Fox News goons had aneurysms for a solid week

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u/Raoul_Duke9 1d ago

You guys remember "terrorist fist jab"? That one was the one that pissed me off the most.

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u/gatsby712 1d ago

Remember that time Bush got us into two wars because of 9/11, but it wasn’t until Obama that the guy who caused it was killed. I member. Turns out the Republicans didn’t care about justice, they just cared about using the crisis to make some oil money for their VP and President. 

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u/old_and_boring_guy Tennessee 1d ago

The part that bothered me was that the first thing Obama did was put the war money in the budget (as opposed to special appropriations) and everyone suddenly cared what the war cost.

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u/mockg 1d ago edited 1d ago

Are you sure that is just not republicans and the right wing news being themselves. I swear the only times I hear about budget from them is if a democrat president is in charge.

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u/EE_Tim 1d ago

It's called the Two Santas Strategy and it's by design.

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u/Kind_Dream_610 1d ago

Are you sure you spelled that correctly, shouldn't it really be called the "Two Satans Strategy" because it's nothing but self-serving evil that affects not just America, but the world.

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u/EE_Tim 1d ago

Potato, potatoe

(Sorry, Dan)

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u/RanaMisteria 1d ago

Remember when a Republican politician’s career could be ended by misspelling the name of a vegetable in front of a bunch of school children?

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u/RatManForgiveYou 20h ago

Remember when Republicans didn't talk about the rest of Americans as if we're the enemy? When they didn't hate Democrats so much that they'd be willing to support an enemy dictatorship? When they didn't have an entire propaganda network devoted to manipulation? When they actually seemed to care about what they claim to believe and value?

Now they never do the right thing, hypocrisy is the norm, they ignore their own beliefs when convenient (like supporting Trump and his disgusting treatment of McCain and veterans), they put their support behind things simply to "own the libs", and they have absolutely zero shame.

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u/P1xelHunter78 Ohio 14h ago

Barely. They started talking about liberals as the enemy right after 9/11 when people started questioning the wars.

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u/bellboy905 10h ago

They started well before 9/11.

As head of GOPAC, Newt Gingrich encouraged GOP candidates to use combative language that drew a stark contrast between Republicans and Democrats as a means of attracting media attention. It was so effective that within 15 years, the red-blue divide had become the narrative framework for discussing American politics.

https://theamericanleader.org/timeline-event/language-a-key-mechanism-of-control/

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u/RanaMisteria 12h ago

I do. It feels like a lifetime ago.

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u/EE_Tim 1d ago

Such simpler times, when one would pick between two, differing solutions to objective problems, rather than between sane politics and speedrunning fascism.

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u/GwenChaos29 18h ago

Pepperidge Farms remembers

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u/thefoxsaysredrum 23h ago

I bet Dan is super salty about that, watching this shit show.

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u/EE_Tim 23h ago

I imagine him sitting in a recliner, mouth agape as he watches the ever-changing news of Trump over a 24 hour period and occasionally muttering to himself, "it was just an 'e' not this!"

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u/TheBoNix 19h ago

This a Quail reference?

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u/thefoxsaysredrum 19h ago

Yup.

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u/TheBoNix 18h ago

Sorry, watched the Rockies lose in 11 innings, in the freezing cold. My brain is a popsicle still.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/EE_Tim 1d ago

I think there's a definite nefariousness that comes from the fact that it is a concerted effort on their part, separate from the historical proof of it in action.

People are idiots if they fall for that.

People are idiots, that's why we are where we are as a nation.

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u/GiftToTheUniverse 1d ago

There's been a vested interest working overtime to dumb us down for the past 50+ years.

People who are long dead started this offensive against us. And for what? What did they get out of it?

This system is cancer.

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u/Professor-Woo 21h ago

That is the thing. For the right, power is its own end. It is not to govern or make America better. It is to maintain their own power.

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u/carz4us 15h ago

And mix in racism and sexism to seal the deal

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u/EE_Tim 9h ago

I've been assured from conservatives that racism was solved in the 60s. Please ignore the LA riots, the Watts riots, the Miami riots, the BLM protests, the Charleston United the Right etc. etc.

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u/Kind_Dream_610 1d ago

People ARE idiots who DO fall for it. They don't look at the data, they listen to the sound bites, and their current idol spewing lies. They don't care about cause and effect, they care about if they win (even if they can't see when they're really losing, because they never actually lose, it's stolen from them by those who the idol tells them is to blame for all their woes).

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u/slowpoke2013 1d ago

No kidding. Enter the people who are feeling the pain and all they have to say is “they’re hurting the wrong people!”

FFS. Beyond hope.

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u/RanaMisteria 1d ago edited 13h ago

They don’t have to be stupid to fall for it. All the GOP has to do is flood the zone. If their politicians, and their economists, and their media, and their etc. are all saying the same thing over and over then it starts to look like they know what they’re talking about because surely if it was all nonsense then someone would say so? And that’s all they need because they’ve already laid such solid groundwork to ensure that their voters don’t trust any other source of information but those sanctioned by the party. People aren’t stupid for being brainwashed. The GOP has been at this for decades. They have slowly pushed their voters boundaries to get them to accept more and more extreme, illegal, immoral, authoritarian, and anti-constitutional crap. Some GOP voters are not smart it’s true, and some are bigots and would be fully on board with everything even if the party were honest, but most of them are mostly good people who genuinely buy the lies. They have been radicalised. They’re in a cult. Yes, their choices are still their own, but it’s a bit like being in an abusive relationship. You think you have no choice when really, you can always just walk away. But abusers and cults both like to boil the frog so to speak, and by the time people realise what’s happening the water is already boiling and you’re stuck. Or you feel stuck. Or you think “well, I’m already covered in 3rd degree burns and I’ve come this far and my whole family hates me I might as well stick it out to the bitter end.” Which is the sunk cost fallacy. Or you think things will get better or….

All I’m saying is that yeah, it’s dumb, and yeah, its wrong, and yeah, people who decide they’re okay with their party being full of and run by Nazis are, at the very least, Nazi sympathisers and so automatically wrong in all ways at all times period. But people who are in a cult need to feel like there’s a way back to reality, otherwise even if they realise they have been duped and controlled, they won’t feel like they have a choice but to stay in the cult. Because one day this will end, and we will have to figure out how to put ourselves back together.

By all means, fight fascism with everything you have, but don’t lose sight of each other’s humanity.

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u/PlushladyC 16h ago

Well said . Its been a huge campaign of manipulation .

Im not from USA - just a few monthes back I finally had the realisation that your country is as deeply brainwashed as China or any of the other nations that previously would have been denounced by your government .

And just calling everyone dumb is not going to help come back together as a Nation going forward

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u/RanaMisteria 12h ago

I live in the UK now and we have the same problem here. It’s just subtler. And more class driven. But we have a current Labour government saying they’re going to be reducing how much money is given in PIP (personal independence payments) for disabled people and they’re going to make it harder to qualify for disability benefits and PIP in the future. PIP is already hard to get, and the process to apply is notoriously dehumanising. When I first moved here we had a Labour government and social services and the NHS and local government were all providing far more services and social safety net programmes than they do now. But almost 15 years of Tory “austerity” has stripped those services and programmes so much that many of them don’t exist anymore. They began to privatise the NHS bit by bit because they see how much money it makes people in the US and as they’re the ones who own the concerns that would benefit, well, they wanted what the US had. It’s a mess. They basically did the UK Two Santas. The Two Father Christmases Strategy. And now what’s happening? Labour is saying they’re going to have to cut back on more social safety net spending to fix the problem. It’s a mess everywhere.

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u/PlushladyC 16h ago

Well said . Its been a huge campaign of manipulation .

Im not from USA - just a few monthes back I finally had the realisation that your country is as deeply brainwashed as China or any of the other nations that previously would have been denounced by your government .

And just calling everyone dumb is not going to help come back together as a Nation going forward

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u/RachelMcAdamsWart I voted 1d ago

People are idiots

Many, too many, are.

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u/WellbecauseIcan 1d ago

Thanks for the link stranger. Comments like that is one reason I like reddit.

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u/spiff-o-matic Minnesota 1d ago

This article needs more exposure.

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u/slowpoke2013 1d ago

Exactly this.

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u/EntertainmentEqual84 1d ago

Thanks for the article. Some other really great links like the Doom Loop for Democracy, written in 2022.

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u/Used_Carpenter2947 23h ago

Thank you for that link, incredibly educational and utterly infuriating.

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u/GiveMeAnOption 1d ago

Good find! Thanks

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u/Recent_Tap_9467 23h ago

Excellent article.

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u/John-A 18h ago

But isn't Trumps cuts combined with tariffs almost certain to unintentionally reverse Republican propaganda then?

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u/EE_Tim 17h ago

No, those tax cuts are revenue, so GOP cutting taxes increases the debt tremendously (like last time)

The Senate’s budget plan allows for extending the tax cuts under a scoring method that treats them as not adding to future deficits, even though a new estimate from the Joint Committee on Taxation projects they will add $5.5 trillion over the next decade when including interest, and $4.6 trillion not including interest.[source]

It's exactly in line with the Two Santas Strategy: spend frivolously when in power, rail against spending when not.

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u/John-A 16h ago

Yes, I understand that but Trump and DOGE are now cutting spending on Dem bellweathers while still cutting taxes.

Not only giving up all pretext of not being Grinches but also cutting massive numbers of federal workers AND now Trump gloating about killing the entire stock market.

My point is the old con depends on playing off both sides because it's impossible to BE BOTH sides, except Trump is dropping turds in that punch bowl as well now.

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u/EE_Tim 9h ago

I'd argue it's trying to be both Santas at once, but this is uncharted territory for conservatives - they've never tried dismantling the government this way as there wasn't a cult surrounding a singular person (Reagan got the closest). Rightwing media has implanted the idea that any government is bad and any spending by the government is bad. In that way, the dismantling of the government is a gift and the tax cuts are a gift. Once Democrats take control, they will rail against the government not working and the debt again.

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u/Economy_Sky3832 16h ago

I'm not reading all that

​In his article, Thom Hartmann discusses the "Two Santa Clauses" strategy, a political tactic formulated by Republican strategist Jude Wanniski in 1976. This strategy advises Republicans to act as "Santa Claus" by implementing tax cuts and increasing spending when in power, thereby stimulating the economy and gaining public favor. Conversely, when Democrats hold the presidency, Republicans should emphasize concerns about the national debt and advocate for spending cuts, pressuring Democrats to reduce social programs and potentially lose voter support. Hartmann argues that this approach has been employed over the past four decades to manipulate economic perceptions and influence electoral outcomes.

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u/Economy_Sky3832 16h ago

I'm not reading all that

​In his article, Thom Hartmann discusses the "Two Santa Clauses" strategy, a political tactic formulated by Republican strategist Jude Wanniski in 1976. This strategy advises Republicans to act as "Santa Claus" by implementing tax cuts and increasing spending when in power, thereby stimulating the economy and gaining public favor. Conversely, when Democrats hold the presidency, Republicans should emphasize concerns about the national debt and advocate for spending cuts, pressuring Democrats to reduce social programs and potentially lose voter support. Hartmann argues that this approach has been employed over the past four decades to manipulate economic perceptions and influence electoral outcomes.

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u/old_and_boring_guy Tennessee 1d ago

Oh, I agree. But that was a huge talking point for them: look at the Bush budget and the Obama budget! And if you didn’t know the Iraq war had not been included in any of the previous budgets, it was persuasive.

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u/CaptainMurphy1908 1d ago

That's because that is literally the only time you hear about it.

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u/UNC_Samurai 1d ago

That was a trap they specifically laid to blame him for "adding to the debt."

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u/gtalley10 1d ago

Most people don't seem to know that almost all of Obama's budget deficit was caused by W. Bush policies: the wars, Medicare Part D, the tax cuts, plus the economy collapsing all of which the Bush administration stashed in discretionary spending as pure deficit and didn't pay for in the budget, but Obama did. Obama's policies were generally paid for with other cuts or increased revenue with taxes.

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u/PomegranateMinimum15 The Netherlands 7h ago

As a European barbarian, I was shocked to read how much money the usa made out of the war in the middle east. The eu needs better military and cooperation. But we have been trashed for decades that even our own people trash eu and compliment Russia (not majority but enough to go..wtf? Even if u r young. U can see Russia always screws deals. Even if u sympathise with Ukraine belonging to Russia sick thought how can u even want to consider Russia. Or let's say putins Russia as a an ally. )

But I'm worried that if we spend too much. There we are with a military scratching their heads. Doing nothing.

For people who think Russia is strong. Yes they got armed by eu to some extent and the usa. He has been fighting for years throwing young people at it. And he lost assad as an asset. Russia took big blows. They fight against Ukraine. That's 1 country. Who believes that they can now even take on the whole EU. Even if nato collapses. We could handle it. Yes he would might attack rotterdam or something with a long distance bomb or something (that would crumble our economy in NL for sure ) as a last resort.

But he won't nuke. He has children. That's why..but he is also a power hungry man getting older and pushed in a corner he might. But that should never be the reason to be afraid. Because then why wouldn't France say hey stop it or we nuke u..only russia does it. When the eu says it. It will happen. We don't go shout russia style and intimidate. Remember intimidation is always their first attack. Putin is testing us the whole time because he is very affraid. He is losing.

But we need a better army

We could either deploy them at the border or help out countries to make sure no more refugees. But I don't want the eu to have to depend on war to keep the military machine going. Like the usa makes so much money on weapons and war. Its diabolical at some points.

Russia is on the verge of collapse. If we attacked before Trump came in we would have had them. EU should sayz if that breaks NATO law. So what ? U hate nato . U want to leave nato.. but if u r serious about nato ..fine punished. Sanction us. Because we r aware that without the usa , we would become very poor for at least years..

But we have to. Just look 1 second at Russian state tv. They don't stop at the balkan. Remember Russia doesn't just attack..Russia is too weak. It makes alliances and deals and corrupts countries from within.if one country that is like Russia and good with Russia sees that Europe bends over. Russia will make other alliances..oh and Russia will get a knife in the back that's for sure. I mean north Koreans joined. Tsjetsjenen were hired (don't know how to type it in English). The man is desperate. And the biggest weapon he has is the polarisation and dependency on Russian gas.(can blame Merkel a bit for that one. But ppl forget a Chancellor in Germany is spokeswoman in a way of a coalition.)

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u/Elphabanean 6h ago

Yeah. People were bitching about the budget and then when Obama added the wars to it, they all assumed that he just ran up the debt for shits and giggles. I have a cousin who is a Trumper and he couldn’t get it through his thick skull that the deficit and budget get exploded when Obama didn’t right thing and added it to the main budget and not special appropriations

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u/lostalaska 1d ago

All I remember was the big "Mission Accomplished" banner on a Navy carrier with bush waving and smiling. Are you now telling me he didn't accomplish his mission? /srcsm

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u/tr1mble 1d ago

Now watch this drive

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u/smokeyser 1d ago

The mission was definitely accomplished. Halliburton had control of the oil fields.

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u/proletariatblues 1d ago

That reminds me of the episode of Scrubs when they are all arguing politics. JD knows almost nothing and, while reading ‘The Iraq War for Dummies’ says, “You know what’s so messed up? I just got to the point where President Bush gave his “mission accomplished” speech on a battleship and I still got, like, 400 more pages to go.”

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u/Cockalorum Canada 1d ago

Funny story - that "Mission Accomplished" carrier was anchored just off of the coast of San Diego.

They filmed him flying in to imply that it was off on active duty, and not just a film set.

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u/cupo234 1d ago

Officially the Mission Acomplished was supposed to be the ship's. But they did decide to film there

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u/aenteus Pennsylvania 1d ago

Fool me once…

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u/DisfavoredFlavored Canada 1d ago

I remember the moment he announced Bin Laden's death. Dad and I were just watching the news like"welp, he just got 4 more years."

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u/gatsby712 1d ago edited 1d ago

Bush got 4 years just for waving a loudspeaker around a disaster site and promising to get revenge. It isn’t hard to get re-elected unless you’re either mismanaging a pandemic or old as shit. 

Edit: oh and for coasting on Bill Clinton’s economy and government surplus for a few years before the economy crashed. Kind of like Trump coasting on Obama’s stable economy too. Wait. I see a pattern here. 

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u/Ohnoherewego13 North Carolina 1d ago

Whoa there. You can be old as shit as long as you're orange. It's a special qualifier.

I wish I was joking.

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u/Easy-Round1529 1d ago

Or bernie tho too lol

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u/UncIe_John 1d ago

Trump got 4 years for throwing paper towels at Puerto Ricans

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u/Pizza_Low 1d ago

You forgot brownie you’re doing a heck of a job. During the after math of Katrina when he totally botched the pre hurricane evac and the rescue

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u/styr 1d ago

There's an old saying in Tennessee, I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee, that says, fool me once, shame on, shame on you. Fool me, you can't get fooled again.

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u/ApprehensiveRemote84 1d ago

Clinton sold us to China if I remember correctly. That was the start of his oh look they’re buying 5000 Jeep Cherokees and we’re going to buy 500 billion in goods from them once they get and keep the manufacturing jobs. I didn’t mind Clinton but economic policy not my fave.

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u/ScrewAttackThis Montana 1d ago

2 days before that he roasted Trump at the correspondents dinner and he released his birth certificate 3 days before that. Was a pretty wild week of him bitch slapping conservatives lol.

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u/Sleepy_cheetah 1d ago

How I miss those days. He just handled shit.

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u/dhuntergeo 22h ago

The good old days of competent presidents being rewarded

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u/That_Xenomorph_Guy 1d ago

War is just another fuckin’ money makin’ machine

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u/gatsby712 1d ago

Money making for whom?

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u/That_Xenomorph_Guy 1d ago

Well, I was referencing the sopranos. But the military industrial complex.

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u/ScrewAttackThis Montana 1d ago

Bush admin shut down task forces that were set up to track down Bin Laden. They also allowed him to escape into Pakistan by not committing more forces to Tora Bora. Then followed this all up a couple years later by launching a war by presenting falsified evidence to the public (despite what anyone will say now, the invasion of Iraq was widely supported by the public).

They never wanted to capture him. They wanted the wars to drag out to divert tax dollars to the execs of defense contractors and oil companies.

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u/EmpTully 1d ago

The fact that you put 'VP' before 'President' in that last sentence tells me you remember those times well.

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u/gatsby712 1d ago

Oh too well. 

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u/slowpoke2013 1d ago

Ya can’t spell Haliburton without oil.

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u/MarkKnotts 1d ago

And Obama actually said ahead of time, at least during the debates, that bin Laden would be killed. McCain was reluctant to say it.

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u/-Aquanaut- 1d ago

Hey that military industrial complex that trump just Sabotaged wasn’t going to build itself!

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u/Mikeinthedirt 1d ago

Oh no, the big quiet part was to fascistize the USA. Subsidize weapons R & D and manufacture. ‘Patriotize’ the armor on your rights. Move on the ME geopolitics. Kill about a million Arabs.

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u/dullship Canada 1d ago

I remember when some americans blamed "President" Obama for the poor response to Katrina.

You know, that famous storm that happened. In 2005.

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u/GiftToTheUniverse 1d ago

Was that the Veep who shot his own friend in the face with a shotgun and then didn't present himself or the story to anyone for 14 hours?

And then accepted his friend's apology for all the inconvenience the Veep was caused?

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u/gaslacktus Washington 1d ago

but it wasn’t until Obama that the guy who caused it was killed.

I hate to break it to you but both George W Bush and Dick Cheney are still very much alive.

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u/CommieCatLady 1d ago

I member! You member?

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u/Electrical_Welder205 1d ago

Everyone knew that the war in Kuwait was about oil. It was too obvious. 

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u/Educational-Ad-2884 1d ago

Remember also that the Bush Administration ignored a brief titled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US" on August 6, 2001; 36 days before 9/11.

Republicans never even cared about national security. They've been acting exclusively in bad faith for over half a century now and exploited 9/11 to set us on the path that has led directly to our current state of affairs.

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u/artgarciasc 1d ago

Don't forget the military industrial complex, they made bank also.

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u/veteran_squid 1d ago

Pepperidge farm remembers.

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u/psychorobotics 1d ago

Hijacking, but you guys should see all the posts getting wiped from r/all in r/undelete, it's a bit terrifying. There's so many about the stock market getting removed from all but still existing on subs so they're not deleted by mods or anything. I guess reddit admins don't want you to see them.

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u/Zer_ 1d ago edited 1d ago

I mean the US bombed the ever living shit out of Iraq during the first war, they had to finish the job in the 2nd war, even though they were so incompetent they let a bunch of recently fired and very disgruntled government workers with easy access to Saddam's old weapon's caches because the costs to do so wouldn't have fit within the "Iraq Business Plan". And this is how ISIS was born.

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u/Tmscott 1d ago

On the plus side that also helped many red states with the pork and what was essentially 'welfare programs' when they went aggressively into military production.

Member when representives from those districts started pressuring the Pentagon to buy more tanks and they responded with 'But we really don't need those things now, we're fighting an insurgency... buuuuut if you're giving us more money, sure!'?

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u/juanitovaldeznuts 23h ago

The ultimate floppy cock slap in the public’s face was the photo shoot where Bush pretended to look around the Oval Office for the wmds but surprise he couldn’t find them. What a silly president!

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u/tossitcheds 19h ago

I member

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u/Lurkkin 18h ago

Man I’m not trying to argue, we’re on the same “team” but I don’t think the Bush Admin would have hesitated for a fucking second if they were able to get Bin Laden. You don’t try to delete a mountain range of the map (Tora Bora) unless you’re trying to kill the guy & frankly Bush wasn’t the best president, but the more I’ve of seen him, I genuinely believe he’s a good person and I can’t see him dragging out a war for oil & $.

Sure Cheney would have sighed at the Halliburton $ no longer being made, but it would have been a huge win for them politically.

Like if we’re making silly arguments, the CIA was ready to kill Bin Laden during the Clinton admin, had a guy (Billy Waugh) living in the house next door to him and everything, and Clinton didn’t want to do it, so it’s actually the Clinton’s fault right?

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u/P1xelHunter78 Ohio 14h ago

I also member that they found the bad dude who caused it in neither of the countries we invaded.

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u/Smooth-Physics-69420 6h ago

They also just used it as an excuse to get Saddam, who had made his daddy look like a total dunce.

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u/servetheKitty 3h ago

Oh oil isn’t a party issue. Obama got us into Syria, fueled and armed the Saudi terror campaign in Yemen, while Biden was setting the table for the Ukraine war (which is in the interests of Halliburton, Blackrock, and Exxon).