Obama in the Bunker, Clings to Mustache in Final Days of his Administration

by Dennis Speed

With the German government’s December 5 release of an admission that, in support of the U.S. drone policy, it has allowed the carrying out of illegal acts of killing and murder within its borders—a practice specifically prohibited since immediately following World War II by the German Constitution—Barack Obama has been forced to see, if not to read, the proverbial “handwriting” on the wall. Obama’s recent speeches, and some articles appearing in the trans-Atlantic neoliberal media, have tried to deflect from and cover-up for his murders, perhaps in the hope that he not be subjected to investigation and even impeachment prior to his leaving office. This is ultimately to no avail. The diaphanous, if not outrightly transparently self-serving “legal defenses” recall a school of law descended from a “beast man” conception of humanity, a legal code comparable at best to that of Hitler’s jurists Carl Schmidt, and Nazi Judge Roland Freisler.

Though Angela Merkel’s Germany was finally forced, as a result of a parliamentary inquiry by the Die Linke party, to admit in August that it had in fact engaged in this criminal collusion, they managed to wait until after the American election to publicly state the truth. The American military base in Ramstein, Germany was the scene of the crime. It was the chief relay station of the entire United States drone warfare policy. Die Linke Parliamentarian Andrea Hunko said, “We have been asking about Ramstein’s role in the U.S. drone war for two years. Because of statements from drone pilots the public has known for a long time that Ramstein is a major control center… Now, after many denials, there is finally an admission… Terrorists are targeted on the basis of lists created in the U.S. and released by the American President every Tuesday…”

Ramstein, an American military “city-base” of about 16,000 personnel, is the central relay and switching station for much of the entire global drone program. Routed through Ramstein are many, if not all of the 64 United States–based drone warfare stations, and at least 25 international drone warfare stations. The concern for Germany is that since World War II, Germany, according to precedent from the Nuremburg trials up to today, must not either stray into, or be accomplice to, anything which smacks of mass-murder in the name of war, no matter how persuasive the reason. Angela Merkel, recently called “the last bastion of democratic rule in Europe,” has betrayed that solemn commitment made by the German people, in order to give a green light to “Nobel Peace Prize Winner” Obama’s weekly atrocities. Such collusion is explicitly against the law in Germany, specifically the German Code of Crimes against International Law, which became law in 2002.

Obama’s Administration, and Bush and Cheney before, have re-implicated, and re-involved Germany in international crimes against humanity.

Many dismiss Obama’s sponsorship by Union Bank of Switzerland and its American representative Robert Wolf in the fall of 2006 as unrelated to that bank’s notorious history of safe-housing Nazi gold during the 1940s, as well as the wealth stolen from Holocaust victims. Wolf took over the Obama campaign’s fundraising immediately following a meeting between Obama and George Soros. As reported in a 1998 CBS 60 Minutes interview, Soros’ father “bribed a government official to take 14-year old George Soros in and swear that he was his Christian godson. But survival carried a heavy price tag. While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being shipped off to the death camps, George Soros accompanied his phoney godfather on his appointed rounds—confiscating property from Jews.”

Soros was, however, a mere conduit. The UBS connection meant that Obama was also being officially blessed by European “old money” as well as by Wall Street. Obama’s April 1, 2009 obeisance to the Queen and Prince Phillip illustrated that. Obama was never an “American project.” He was understood to be a certifiable property that could be trusted to support “death policies,” whether in health care, or in war, or in his summary execution of the American manned space program. His Wall Street pedigree was especially clear in his firm opposition to any form of Hamiltonian banking measures to restore the United States, especially when it came to his keeping the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall from happening at all costs.

Today, former UBS executive Robert Wolf, who left the Obama Administration in 2012, can be found at a new address: a company he formed called 32 Advisors, whose specialty is the promotion of the private commercial use of drones through Measure, the “drones arm” of his firm. Will Obama, now soon to be out of a job, find employment with Wolf in selling drones to Blackwater and other private security companies, based on his “wealth of experience” honed each Tuesday for the past several years?

The Obama Administration’s “official figures” of civilian dead killed worldwide by drone attacks are by any account absurd. They claim that as few as 64 and at most 116 civilians have been killed in the 473 drone attacks that are admitted to have occurred in the years of his Presidency. Various groups contradict that total, with estimates reaching as high as 1100. In addition, only one of the eight Americans known to have been killed by drones was an actual target. Obama has refused to allow scrutiny of specific drone strikes: “The Obama Administration has released only aggregate numbers, refusing to detail individual strikes. As a result, it’s impossible for the public to assess the morality of the program,” says The Atlantic of August 18 of this year.

That is, of course, absurd. Assessing the morality of the drone program is quite straightforward. It is, as Germany knows, and is now proven, a crime against humanity. It is illegal under the Nuremburg standard established by Chief Justice Robert Jackson. It’s Obama’s true legacy—and that, by itself, means that it’s no damn good.