Ralph Nader calls President Obama ‘war criminal’ and Democrats ‘sick, decaying party’
No one would expect Ralph Nader to be a supporter or fan of former President George W. Bush, running against Bush in 2000 and 2004.
White House photo by Chris Greenberg
Now the activist and Green Party candidate says President Barack Obama is much worse “in the sense that he’s more aggressive, more illegal worldwide,” Nader told POLITICO, going so far as to call Obama a “war criminal.”
“He’s gone beyond George W. Bush in drones, for example. He thinks the world is his plate, that national sovereignties mean nothing, drones can go anywhere. They can kill anybody that he suspects and every Tuesday he makes the call on who lives and who dies, supposed suspects in places like Yemen and Pakistan and Afghanistan, and that is a war crime and he ought to be held to account.”
Nader described why Obama has been such a disappointment and voters are frustrated.
“below average because he raised expectation levels. What expectation level did George W. Bush raise?… He’s below average because he’s above average in his intellect and his knowledge of legality, which is violating with abandon.”
“I don’t know whether George W. Bush ever read the Constitution,” said Nader. “This man taught the Constitution, and this is what we got.” (Nader emphasizes “taught” in statement)
Nader says Romney would be worse than Obama but cautioned that the President is “the more effective evil because he brings credibility, he brings the democratic heritage to it, he has legitimized the lawless war-mongering and militarism abroad of George W. Bush.”
As a Green Party candidate, it wouldn’t be surprising to hear Nader praise the administration in this topic.
“I like the way he’s emphasized renewable energy, even though he still supports nuclear and fossil fuels, as if they’re all the same, all of the above. But he does speak more about renewables than any president perhaps since Jimmy Carter.” (Nader will be speaking at the Green Festival in Washington, D.C., later this month.)
“He wanted to have a public works program, he really did want to have a jobs program and the Republicans crushed it and that would have created a lot of jobs that couldn’t be exported to China.”
Nader concluded by targeting the GOP “the worst Republican Party in history.”
“We’re dealing with a real sick, decaying Democratic Party that can’t defend the country against the cruelest, most ignorant, most anti-worker, most war-mongering, most Wall Street–indentured Republican Party in its history, since the 1850s.”
