The Cato Institute

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Obama Leaves a Legacy of War

President Obama will leave office as the first two-term president in American history to have been at war every day of his presidency, having dropped over 25,000 bombs on seven countries in 2016 alone….

As a young state senator in 2002, Obama gave an antiwar rally speech railing against the “dumb,” “rash” rush to war in Iraq. As a presidential candidate five years later, he promised to “turn the page on the imperial presidency” and usher in “a new dawn of peace.” In a speech to US troops last month, he denounced the “false promise” that “we can eliminate terrorism by dropping more bombs,” and piously proclaimed that “democracies should not operate in a state of permanently authorized war.”

And yet, 2008’s “peace candidate” has launched two undeclared wars (in Libya and against ISIS), ordered 10 times as many drone strikes as George W. Bush — including the remote-control execution of an American citizen, and, this summer, bombed six different countries just over Labor Day weekend.

By the time Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, he’d already launched more drone strikes than “war president” Bush managed during his two terms. 

It is Obama who is largely responsible for warping the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force—passed three days after 9/11 to target Al Qaeda and the Taliban—into an enabling act for endless war, anywhere in the world.

Where Bush secured congressional authorization for the two major wars he fought, Obama made perpetual warfare the new normal, and the president the ultimate “decider” in matters of war and peace.

Alas, political tribalism warps people’s perceptions of basic reality, convincing partisans they’re entitled to their own facts.

Even during the heyday of resistance to the Vietnam War, the criticism became more intense after Republican Richard Nixon took over the White House than it had been under Democrat Lyndon Johnson. There was far more criticism of Republican George H.W. Bush’s Persian Gulf War than there was of Democrat Bill Clinton’s wars in Bosnia and Kosovo (a distressing number of prominent liberals even found reasons to praise Clinton’s military crusades in the Balkans).

Left-wing groups mounted a fairly serious effort to thwart Republican Bush’s invasion of Iraq. But when Democrat Obama escalated U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan and led a NATO assault to remove Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi from power, the reaction was very different.  Except for a few hard-left organizations, the sounds coming from the usual supposed anti-war liberal quarters were those of crickets. Likewise, there has been little push-back to Obama’s gradual return of the U.S. military presence in Iraq or the entanglement of the U.S. military in Syria.

With Trump’s inauguration near, Obama has described the transfer of presidential power as ”a relay race” where he’ll pass the baton to his successor. In private, he’s occasionally used a more ominous metaphor: leaving “a loaded weapon” behind for the next president.

And, now, Obama will pass that weapon on to Donald J. Trump, a man he’s flatly declared “unfit” for the office — someone who can’t be trusted with a Twitter account, let alone the nuclear launch codes.

Learn more….

Reagan’s Russia Trip Should Be Obama’s Roadmap in Cuba

When staunchly anti-communist Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980—in the 64th year of Communist Party rule in Russia—no one expected that only eight years later he would end his second term by making a friendly visit to Moscow.

But he did, and what he did there should guide President Obama as he prepares to visit to Cuba—the first visit by a sitting president since Fidel Castro’s communist revolution in 1959—on steps the president can take to usher in true freedom for the Cuban people.

A year after Reagan’s Moscow visit and, more importantly, four years after the reformist Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union, peaceful revolutions in Eastern Europe ended Soviet control. Two years after that, the Soviet Union itself was dissolved.

Cuba’s change will be gradual. But that fact doesn’t change the necessity—it makes it more imperative—for the leader of the free world to offer Cubans a way forward.

We don’t know how long Cuba’s transformation from autocratic state socialism to free-market democracy will take. But the Cuban people would revere Obama if the Castro regime saw a similar dissolution, and if the president’s words helped to inspire that transformation.

Learn more…

The Political Fight to Close Guantanamo Bay

The controversy surrounding the Guantanamo Bay detention facility is one that ebbs and flows throughout our national discourse. 

That conversation is once again at a peak, and President Obama presented a plan yesterday to close Gitmo, arguing that “It’s been clear that the detention center at Guantanamo Bay does not advance our national security,” and that “It undermines our standing in the world.”

In other words, President Obama says closing Guantanamo Bay would nix a popular talking point for people hostile to America. Of course, not dropping so many bombs in foreign countries might be more effective, but closing Guantanamo Bay is nevertheless a worthwhile goal.  

Unfortunately, the reality is that President Obama’s plan is unlikely to go anywhere fast. 

The president proposed roughly the same plan in May 2009. That effort was not a total failure—the administration has managed to transfer 147 prisoners abroad (following 500 during the George W. Bush administration), reducing Gitmo’s prisoner population to 91. But even then, with the Democrats running both Houses, the effort to move detainees to U.S. stalled. Today, the political obstacles to closure have only grown.

In some ways, the debate over where to house the remaining prisoners distracts us from the more important issue of indefinite detention. Even under the administration’s plan, several dozen detainees face indefinite detention in the U.S., awaiting an official end to a war that seems endless. 

Internationally, detention practices at Guantanamo remain in violation of several statutes of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Moreover, it could also be argued that detention practices at Guantanamo stand in defiance of national law as well, particularly the guarantee of due process secured through the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.

But, Guantanamo’s questionable legal status alone is not enough to implicate it. Were the actions of abolitionists who sought to free slaves by providing passage to the north in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act morally wrong? Of course not. By the same logic, actions and institutions cannot be morally wrong solely because they are in defiance of the law.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) concluded that the institutional infrastructure present within Guantanamo “cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture,” but even that in itself is not the biggest problem with Guantanamo Bay. 

Even if no torture whatsoever took place at Guantanamo Bay, it would still be filled with people who are being denied basic due process of law, and imprisoned for years upon years with no chance of defending their innocence in front of a legitimate, unbiased court. 

The idea of habeas corpus—which suggests that, when you have an executive detention, there ought to be an opportunity for the individual detained to get an independent judicial assessment about whether the detention is legal—is at the core of American values.

Yet, the United States has suspended habeas corpus for detainees at Guantanamo Bay. 

What is the great fear of permitting someone at Guantanamo Bay to file a writ of habeas corpus with a judge and say, “Your Honor, I think I am being held here illegally. I am not an enemy combatant. I have not had involvement in active hostilities against the United States. All I want is a fair hearing.”?

You have to have a serious process for distinguishing the people who are truly enemy combatants from those who are not. 

We have the judicial process to ensure that we make a proper cut. After all, the difference between civilization and barbarism is that civilization cares about punishing only those who are guilty.

Yes, it is possible to reduce the risk of terrorism by creating a police state and effectively eliminating all of our Constitutional protections, but the price is the end of our Republic. And that is too high a price to pay.

Cato Scholars Fact-Check President Obama’s FINAL State of the Union Address

Last night, President Obama delivered his final State of the Union address, laying out his goals for the final few months of his presidency.

In our annual response video, Cato scholars fact-check the President’s speech and outline what his words might mean for the future of liberty.

Like our video? Share it on Facebook and Twitter, and post your reactions on Twitter with #CatoSOTU.

Watching the State of the Union Tonight?

Tonight at 9 p.m. ET, join us on Twitter for a libertarian perspective on President Obama’s final State of the Union address. 

Happy New Year from the Cato Institute!

Our greatest challenge in 2016 is to extend the promise of individual liberty, economic freedom, and limited government.

As we approach the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency, we note that one of President Obama’s chief accomplishments has been to return the Constitution to a central place in our public discourse.

Unfortunately, the president fomented this upswing in civic interest not by talking up federalism or the separation of powers but by blatantly violating the strictures of our founding document.

President Obama’s Top Ten Constitutional Violations of 2015….

Supreme Court Validates Obama’s Executive Power Grab

The Supreme Court has ruled in King v. Burwell that individuals who get their health insurance through an exchange established by the federal government are eligible for tax subsidies.  

Says Cato scholar Michael F. Cannon, “The Court today validated President Obama’s massive power grab, allowing him to tax, borrow, and spend $700 billion that no Congress ever authorized.…In doing so, the Court has sent a dangerous message to future administrations: If you are going to violate the law, make sure you go big.”

Today at 3: p.m. EST, Cato scholars will be answering your questions on King v. Burwell’s overall impact and what the decision will mean for individuals enrolled in state health plan exchanges.

Tweet your questions using ‪#‎CatoConnects‬ & SHARE with your friends.

Want to read up on the case before today’s event? Check out these links:

• “Supreme Court Validates Obama’s Power Grab,” by Michael F. Cannon
• Cato’s Brief in King v. Burwell
• King v. Burwell Brief from Michael F. Cannon and Jonathan H. Adler

What Will Obama Do if He Loses King v. Burwell?

Originally posted by garhedlund

We’ve famously been told that the Department of Health & Human Services has no Plan B if the Supreme Court decides against the administration in King v. Burwell. But what if the Supreme Court forces the executive branch’s hand?

 Ilya Shapiro takes a look ahead to what President Obama will do if the government does indeed lose King v. Burwell. 

Read more….

The Minimalist Surveillance Reforms of USA Freedom

The Senate on Tuesday passed (and President Obama later signed into law) the USA Freedom Act, which reforms the way U.S. agencies conduct surveillance and gather data. 

Cato scholar Patrick G. Eddington argues that while the USA Freedom Act is an improvement, it still needs work: “The USA Freedom Act would not end the executive branch’s authority to collect metadata; it would (assuming the best case scenario) simply narrow the scope of such metadata collection.”

• “The Minimalist Surveillance Reforms of USA Freedom,” by Patrick G. Eddington
• “The Symbolic Sunset & What’s Next for the USA Freedom Act,” by Julian Sanchez
• “The 2014 Cato Institute Surveillance Conference,” featuring Julian Sanchez, Rep. Thomas Massie, and Edward Snowden

In Case You Missed It….Cato’s Annual Video Response to the State of the Union

In this video produced by Caleb O. Brown, Austin Bragg and Tess Terrible, Cato Institute scholars Alex Nowrasteh, Aaron Ross Powell, Neal McCluskey, Mark Calabria, Bill Watson, Chris Edwards, Gene Healy, Chris Preble, Julian Sanchez, Pat Michaels and Trevor Burrus respond to President Obama’s 2015 State of the Union Address.

Prefer reading to watching videos? Here’s the video transcribed:

President Obama: 00:00 – 00:21 :  Mr. Speaker. Mr. Vice President. Members of Congress. My fellow Americans. We allow ourselves to be sorted into factions and turned against one another. We capture the sense of common purpose that always propelled America forward.

Aaron Powell 00:22 – 00:36 : The President says he doesn’t like when factions turn us against each other but unfortunately those factions are a result of the policies that he champions. When you have government that is taking from people to give to other people, we will naturally form groups to fight over the spoils.

President Obama 00:37 – 00:44: Our high school graduation rate has hit an all time high. More Americans have finished college than ever before. 

Neal McCluskey 00:45 – 01:31: We do have more people graduating high school than ever before, but they don’t seem to be learning anything more. So if you look at National Assessment of Educational Progress Scores, they have been essentially stagnant for 40 years. Meanwhile, spending per pupil has more than doubled. When it comes to college, we have, again, more people who are graduating. We have a lot more certificates, and degrees, and sheepskin out there. The reality is the labor market can’t possibly use all those people, so about a third of people with a bachelor’s degree are in jobs that don’t require it. It’s even worse when you talk about people with graduate degrees. So essentially when we say we should give away more college; we should get more people through college, we’re selling them a false bill of goods. Promising that they are going to get a whole lot of benefit out of more education, that we simply can’t deliver.

President Obama: 01:32- 1:39: Today we have new tools to stop tax payer funded bailouts and a new consumer watchdog to protect us from predatory lending. 

Mark Calabria 01:40 - 01:57: Rather than ending bailouts, Financial Reform actually labels certain companies as too big to fail, essentially guaranteeing that these companies that will be rescued in the next crisis. Additionally, financial reform limits consumer choices, eliminating certain invaluable products while raising the cost of credit.

President Obama 01:58 – 02:01: And these policies will continue to work. As long as politics don’t get in the way.

Aaron Powell 02:02 – 02:14: We have politics because people actually disagree with each other over the best policy. So when the President says he’d like to get rid of politics, get politics out of the way, what he really means is he would simply like us to stop disagreeing with him. 

President Obama 02:15 – 02:16: We gave our citizens schools and colleges.

Neal McCluskey 02:17 – 02:53: The federal government didn’t give us school and colleges. The President didn’t build that. At the very beginning of our history the American people, on their own, pursued education. They established elementary schools and colleges all over the country. What ultimately happened was government came in and said well we’ll help pay for that; and then what happened was when the government money came in, we started to have control by special interest; we started to have bureaucratic control and that’s when we went from powerful, responsive education to bureaucratically controlled, special interest controlled, educational stagnation. 

President Obama 02:54 – 03:02: I want to spread that idea all across America. Spending two years of college becomes as free and universal in America as high school is today.

Neal McCluskey 03:03 – 03:16: Based on what we’ve seen in performance from high schools where we’ve had decades of stagnant achievement, probably the worse thing we can do for our community colleges is make them as free and as government funded and as government controlled as American high schools. 

President Obama 03:17 – 03:20: So no one knows for certain which industries will generate the jobs of the future. 

Bill Watson 03:21 – 03:28: Least of all government. The President’s middle class economics isn’t going to work for exactly that reason. 

President Obama 03:29 -03:31: But we do know, we want them here in America.

Chris Edwards 03:32- 03:45: The problem is President Obama has not done anything to make America a better place for businesses to invest. The United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the world and President Obama has done nothing to bring that rate down.

President Obama: 03:46 - 03:59: I’m the first one to admit the past trade deals haven’t always lived up to the hype. And that’s why we’ve gone after countries that break the rules at our expense. But 95% of the world’s customers live outside our borders. 

Bill Watson: 04:00 – 04:26: This was a big opportunity for the President to make the case for freer trade. To argue that it is good for the United States and good for the world. Instead, he equivocates and argues that his free trade agreements will be less bad than other ones and might be good for business. He needed to make the case to liberal democrats to support his ambitious trade agenda and he seems to have failed to do that. 

President Obama: 04:27 – 04:35: And tonight I call on this Congress to show the world that we are united in this mission by passing a resolution to authorize the use of force against ISIS. 

Gene Healy 04:36 – 05:13: Great, but for six months now we’ve been at war in Iraq and Syria without any legal authority whatsoever. Meanwhile, President Obama claims that a thirteen year-old congressional resolution gives him the power to go to war with virtually any Jihadist group anywhere in the world. This is a president who has bombed at least seven countries, who has launched six times as many drone strikes as his predecessor, and who whose Pentagon tells us that the war on terror will go on at least ten to twenty years more. And last year’s State of the Union, for anybody keeping score, the President said….

President Obama: 05:14 – 05:16: America must move off a permanent war footing.

Gene Healy: 05:17 – 05:20: Well when exactly?

President Obama: 05:21 – 05:26: You know, in Cuba we are ending a policy that was long past its expiration date.

Chris Preble: 05:27 – 05:50: So many of Obama’s policies are based on things that have been tried and failed in the past, but at least in one case he is willing to admit that a long standing policy has failed and should end. That’s the policy of trying to isolate Cuba by denying Americans their basic freedom, freedom to trade, to travel, to a country that is 90 miles away, Congress should follow his recommendations and end the embargo now.

President Obama: 05:51 – 05:59: No foreign nation, no hacker, should be able to shut down our networks, steal our trade secrets or invade the privacy of American families, especially our kids.

Julian Sanchez: 05.59 – 06:39: If the president wants to improve cyber security the first order of business should be to get his own house in order. First, improving the Federal government’s terrible track record on data breaches on federal system:, tens of thousands every year. And also, ensuring NSA is not working to degrade security, both directly by weakening encryption standards, or by stockpiling vulnerabilities and information about cyber threats that they ought to be sharing with the private sector. Instead, we hear about laws that make it easier for the private sector to let information flow to the government, but there is just no evidence that that is a cyber security problem that needs to be addressed.

President Obama: 06:40 – 06:44: And if we don’t act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans.

Pat Michaels: 06:45 – 06:52: Sea levels have been rising for twenty thousand years since near the ending of the last Ice Age. There’s no government in the world that can stop geology.

President Obama: 06:52 – 06:59: The United States will double the pace in which we cut carbon pollution, and China committed for the first time to eliminate their emissions.

Pat Michaels: 07:00– 07:15: What China really said was they “intend to cap” their emissions “around the year 2030. Well, by then probably they will be emitting two or three times as much as we do per year. How in the world is that going to do anything about global warming?

President Obama: 07:16 – 07:32: So, well as some may have moved on from the debates over our surveillance programs, I have not. As promised our intelligence agencies have worked hard with the recommendations of privacy advocates to increase transparency and build more safeguards against potential abuse.

Julian Sanchez: 07:23 – 07:57: So I’m glad that the president is still interested in the surveillance debate, but it doesn’t sound like he is asking Congress to do anything here. And it would be so easy to ask them to move forward with the reforms that his own intelligence community has already said would protect American privacy without hampering the essential intelligence mission. Internal reforms are great, but those can be thrown aside in secret any day. 

President Obama: 07:57 – 08:03: I know how tempting such cynicism may be, but I still think the cynics are wrong.

Aaron Powell: 08:04 – 08:21: As he has done before, the President is once again labeling a cynicism what is actually a skepticism about his policies; a belief that maybe they won’t work quite as well as he tells us they will. And if there is anything we have learned in the last six years, it’s that that skepticism is probably warranted. 

President Obama: 08:21 – 08:39: Passions still fly on immigration, but surely we can all see something of ourselves in the striving young student and agree that no one benefits when a hardworking mom is snatched from her child. And that it is possible to shape a law that upholds our tradition as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. 

Alex Nowrasteh: 08:40 – 09:04: Immigration is one policy area where President Obama has significantly improved his positions. When he first took office in 2009, it could fairly be stated that he was the deporter-in-chief. He increased both border security and deportation from the interior of the United States, but since 2011 he has decreased enforcement and has legalized some portion of the American illegal population. As a result, I think this President has certainly improved his positions in the United States. 

President Obama: 09:05 – 09:09: For the first time in forty years, the crime rate and the incarceration rate have come down together.

Trevor Burrus: 09:10 – 09:21: The incarceration rate has dropped slightly, yet the United States still imprisons more than any other country on Earth. If the President wants a criminal justice system that works for us all, he can start by calling for an end to the War on Drugs.  

President Obama: 09:22 – 09:26: A brighter future is ours to write. Let’s begin this new chapter together.

Gene Healy: 09:27 – 09:46: There is nothing in the Constitution that mandates this annual prime-time speech from the throne and there is nothing stopping us from putting an end to this pompous spectacle and going back to the old Jeffersonian tradition. Next year, President Obama could do us all a favor by just mailing it in.

President Obama: 09:47 – 09:52: Thank you. God bless you. God bless this country we love. Thank you.

For more Cato responses to the President’s sixth annual State of the Union address (or to share your thoughts), check out #CatoSOTU on Twitter.