A new book from filmmaker Oliver Stone offers a scathing critique of President Barack Obamaās time in office.
Stone, who wrote āThe Untold History of the United Statesā with historian Peter Kuznick, puts forth a liberal interpretation of American history from the turn of the last century to present day. The 618-page book, slated for release Tuesday - a week before Election Day - from Gallery Books, slams Republicans and Democrats alike, and the authorsā assessment of Obamaās presidency is tinged with disappointment.
āThe country Obama inherited was indeed in shambles, but Obama took a bad situation and, in certain ways, made it worse,ā Stone and Kuznick wrote. āā¦[R]ather than repudiating the policies of Bush and his predecessors, Obama has perpetuated them.ā
Obamaās election āfelt like a kind of expiation for the sins of a nation whose reputation had been sullied, as we have shown throughout this book, by racism, imperialism, militarism, nuclearism, environmental degradation and unbridled avarice,ā they wrote.
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But on subjects from Wall Street reform to health care to Afghanistan, Stone and Kuznick rip Obama for breaking campaign promises and continuing the policies of President George W. Bush ā whoās roundly condemned throughout the book. In some instances, they write, Obama went further than Bushās White House toward anti-progressive policies.
āObama asserted presidential power in ways that must have made Dick Cheney jealous,ā they wrote.
āIn 2011, Obama defied his own top lawyers, insisting that he did not need congressional approval under the War Powers Resolution to continue military activities in Libya,ā they continued, in their write-up of Obamaās handling of intervention in that country.
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An accompanying documentary series is set to air on Showtime starting Nov. 12.
Stone said in 2008 that he backed Obama, but earlier this year said that he would support GOP Rep. Ron Paul over Obama if he could.
The biting criticism from Stone and Kuznick includes:
On Wall Street reform: āThe biggest winner under Obama was Wall Street.ā
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On health care: āObamaās failure to articulate a progressive vision was also apparent in the fight over health reform, which was to have been his signature initiativeā¦Obamaās health care reform effort, marked by the inability to even refute Republican charges of death panels, was so unpopular that it became an albatross around the necks of Democrats in the 2010 election.ā
On a troop surge in Afghanistan: āWhen it finally came down to decision time, Obama didnāt have the courage or integrity of a post-Cuban Missile Crisis John F. Kennedy. He settled on a 30,000-troop increase, giving the military leaders almost everything they wanted and more than they expected.ā
On civil liberties: āAmong the greatest disappointments to his followers was Obamaās refusal to roll back the expanding national security state that so egregiously encroached on American civil liberties.ā
On āimperialismā: ā[He] was not offering a decisive break with over a century of imperial conquest. His was a centrist approach to better managing the American empire rather than advancing a positive role for the United States in a rapidly evolving world.ā
On defense spending: āWhile cutting defense spending, pulling combat forces out of Iraq and beginning the drawdown in Afghanistan represented a welcome retreat from they hypermilitarism of the Bush-Cheney years, they did not represent the sharp and definitive break with empire that the world needed to see from the United States.ā
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