Every President is a War Criminal

Truman: Hiroshima and Nagasaki — approximately 110,000–210,000 killed in the bombings (USSBS estimates); a majority were civilians. During the Korean War, US and allied forces killed an estimated 2–3 million Koreans, a large portion of them civilian (US Army official history; Korean War Legacy Foundation research).

Johnson: Operation Phoenix (Vietnam) — a CIA-directed program that killed an estimated 20,587 people, the majority of whom the South Vietnamese government labeled communist "infrastructure" with minimal evidentiary standard (Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 1971). Strategic bombing of North and South Vietnam killed hundreds of thousands.

Nixon: The secret bombing of Cambodia (1969–1973) — 2,756,941 tons of bombs dropped on Cambodia (New York Times analysis of Pentagon data); Yale Cambodian Genocide Program estimates 50,000–150,000 civilian deaths from bombing alone. Concurrent bombing of Laos — the most heavily bombed country per capita in history.

Reagan: US support for counterinsurgency in Central America. The UN Historical Clarification Commission (Guatemala, 1999) documented 200,000 killed, 93% attributed to US-backed Guatemalan military and paramilitaries. El Salvador UN Truth Commission (1993) attributed 85% of documented atrocities to the US-backed Salvadoran military and death squads.

Clinton: Iraq sanctions (1990–2003, spanning Bush 41 and Clinton): UNICEF's 1999 survey estimated 500,000 excess child deaths attributable to the sanctions regime. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, asked on 60 Minutes in 1996 whether the price of 500,000 child deaths was "worth it," replied: "We think the price is worth it." No clarification, no retraction.

Bush (W): The Iraq War. The Lancet survey (2006) estimated 654,965 excess deaths from the invasion and occupation. The Iraq Body Count database documented over 200,000 civilian deaths. The Chilcot Inquiry (2016) found the invasion was based on intelligence that had been distorted, sexed up, and presented to the public with certainty that did not exist. No WMD were found.

Obama: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism documented 563 US drone strikes in non-battlefield countries (Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya) during Obama's presidency, with conservative estimates of 384–807 civilian deaths. A 2016 White House summary claimed far fewer. The bureau's methodology has been verified by multiple independent reviewers; the White House's has not.

Biden: Gaza. The Gaza Ministry of Health — whose counts have historically been consistent with later UN and academic verification — documented 45,000+ killed in the first year of Israel's military campaign following October 7, 2023. A Lancet commentary (July 2024) estimated total deaths including indirect causes (disease, famine, preventable medical failure) could be 186,000 or more. The US continued arms transfers and vetoed ceasefire resolutions throughout.

The full historical record appears in the Soft Coup Doctrine thread. Condensed:

Eisenhower: Iran 1953 (Mossadegh/Operation Ajax) and Guatemala 1954 (Árbenz/PBSUCCESS). The Guatemala operation triggered a 36-year civil war and 200,000 deaths.

Kennedy: Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba (1961) — failed. Authorized coup against South Vietnamese President Diem (November 1963); Diem was assassinated.

Nixon: Chile 1973 (Operation FUBELT, Allende/Pinochet). Three years of CIA destabilization; 3,197 killed and 38,254 tortured under Pinochet (Rettig and Valech commissions).

Carter: East Timor — continued support for Indonesia's Suharto despite the 1975 invasion and subsequent occupation that killed an estimated 183,000 (CAVR Chega!, 2005, approximately 17–27% of the pre-invasion population). Maintained the Khmer Rouge's UN seat after they were expelled from Cambodia by Vietnam in 1979 — a choice to formally recognize the government that had just committed genocide, to punish Vietnamese aggression.

Reagan: Nicaragua (Iran-Contra funding of the Contras); Afghanistan (Operation Cyclone, cross-reference: Assets Today, Enemies Tomorrow).

Clinton: Yugoslavia/Kosovo bombing (1999) — conducted without UN Security Council authorization, setting a precedent for unilateral "humanitarian" military action. Human Rights Watch documented 90 incidents of NATO attacks on civilian objects. Yeltsin's 1996 re-election: US consultants (documented in Time Magazine, 1996) ran Yeltsin's polling-moribund campaign; the US IMF provided loans that funded it.

Bush (W): Iraq 2003 — the full regime change under false pretenses.

Obama: Libya 2011 — NATO air campaign under R2P mandate that extended far beyond the authorized humanitarian protection zone into full regime change. Libya has had no stable government since Gaddafi's death. Honduras 2009 — see the Soft Coup Doctrine thread.

The bipartisan pattern is the point. Each administration inherited the doctrine and extended it. The playbook doesn't belong to either party.

The full record of US weapons transfers is in the Assets Today, Enemies Tomorrow thread. The emphasis here is on the "good president" myths that collapse under scrutiny.

Carter is frequently credited as the only modern president who avoided major military adventurism. The record is more complicated. Carter authorized Operation Cyclone — CIA funding for the Afghan Mujahideen — in July 1979, six months before the Soviet invasion. The explicit goal, per Brzezinski's 1998 admission, was to provoke a Soviet intervention. Carter chose to manufacture a Soviet quagmire, knowing it would require building up the same jihadist networks that would later produce al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Carter also continued US arms sales to Indonesia's Suharto through the occupation of East Timor, despite Congress's 1977 ban on arms sales to countries violating human rights. The Carter administration certified Indonesia's compliance to maintain the sales.

Obama continued Afghanistan and Iraq (inheriting them but not ending them), authorized Timber Sycamore (Syria), and expanded drone warfare in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya. The constitutional question of whether the 2001 AUMF authorized strikes in countries where the US was not at war was never resolved — the executive branch simply asserted the authority and acted.

Truman: Founded the National Security Agency in 1952 via classified executive order (NSCID No. 9), with no congressional authorization. Cooperated with Joseph McCarthy's Red Scare — the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover maintained surveillance files on hundreds of thousands of Americans based on political beliefs.

Johnson: COINTELPRO — the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program — was intensified under Johnson. The program surveilled, infiltrated, discredited, and disrupted civil rights organizations, anti-war groups, socialist parties, and Black liberation movements. Tactics included forged letters, manufactured evidence, informant-driven provocations, and outreach to employers to have targets fired. The Church Committee documented it as systematic government repression of constitutionally protected activity.

Nixon: COINTELPRO continued; Watergate added the specific crime of breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices and covering it up. Nixon also authorized the Huston Plan — a proposal for coordinated domestic intelligence operations including mail opening, break-ins, and infiltration that Nixon approved and then withdrew after FBI Director Hoover objected to the CIA on his turf.

Bush (W): Stellar Wind — authorized within weeks of September 11, 2001, without FISA court approval, warrantless collection of communications of millions of Americans. The program was eventually revealed by a whistleblower to the New York Times in 2005. The full scope was not publicly known until Snowden in 2013.

Obama: Continued and expanded the NSA's bulk collection programs. After Edward Snowden revealed the scope of the surveillance to the world in 2013, the Obama administration prosecuted Snowden under the Espionage Act, sought his extradition from Russia, and conducted a classified review that concluded — in a classified report — that bulk phone metadata collection had produced minimal counterterrorism value. The administration did not voluntarily end the programs. Congress ended one of them in 2015 via the USA FREEDOM Act; others continued.

Johnson/Nixon: Operation Phoenix — the CIA-run program in South Vietnam that authorized the capture, interrogation under torture, or killing of alleged Viet Cong cadres. Senate testimony confirmed that torture was used in interrogations. The program killed 20,587 documented and an estimated 40,000 total by South Vietnamese government counts that the CIA itself acknowledged were unreliable.

Nixon: Operation Condor — documented CIA support for a Latin American network of security services that hunted and killed political opponents across borders. NSA cables declassified in 2019 confirm US knowledge of and assistance to the program. Kissinger's role is documented separately.

Reagan: School of the Americas training for Latin American officers whose units committed documented torture and massacres. The 1996 release of SOA training manuals confirmed that the curriculum included techniques for prisoner handling that violated the Geneva Conventions.

Bush (W): CIA "enhanced interrogation program" — the Senate Intelligence Committee's 2014 Torture Report documented: 183 waterboardings of one detainee (KSM), rectal feeding without medical necessity, sleep deprivation for up to 180 hours, mock executions, threats against detainees' families. The program produced no intelligence that prevented an attack, per the committee's own assessment. No one was charged.

Obama: Authorized the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen, in Yemen in September 2011 — without trial, without indictment, without any judicial review. Two weeks later, his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, also a US citizen, was killed in a separate drone strike. The Obama administration's legal justification — a classified memo released only in 2014 — argued that the executive branch could authorize the killing of US citizens deemed threats without any court oversight. No US court has ruled this unconstitutional. No president since has abandoned the authority.

Reagan: In August 1981, 13,000 striking air traffic controllers (PATCO) were fired after refusing to return to work, and the union was decertified. The precedent — that a president could break a public sector strike and destroy a union — permanently shifted the balance of power between capital and labor. Union membership was 20% of the workforce in 1983; it is 10% today. The line goes through Reagan. (See: War on the Working Class thread; Ronald Reagan dossier.)

Clinton: NAFTA (1994) accelerated the offshoring of US manufacturing jobs; the Economic Policy Institute estimated 700,000+ jobs lost to Mexico by 2010. Welfare reform (Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, 1996) eliminated the federal guarantee of welfare assistance, imposed work requirements, and capped lifetime benefits. Child poverty in single-mother households increased in the years following. Clinton also signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (1999), repealing the Glass-Steagall separation between commercial and investment banking — a decision that contributed directly to the conditions enabling the 2008 financial crisis.

Obama: The 2008 bank bailout was inherited; the prosecution choices were Obama's. Despite documented mortgage fraud, robo-signing, and securities fraud in the lead-up to the financial crisis, no senior banking executive was criminally charged. The Department of Justice settled with major banks for billions of dollars — which the banks wrote off as business expenses — while homeowners who lost their homes received a median of $2,000 in compensation. Obama also set a deportation record: 3 million deportations in eight years, earning the label "Deporter-in-Chief" from immigration rights groups.

Trump (both terms): 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — reduced corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%; reduced top individual rate from 39.6% to 37%; created a 20% deduction for pass-through business income disproportionately benefiting high earners. CBO analysis: the top quintile received 65% of the benefit. The working-class components (expanded child tax credit) were temporary; the corporate cuts were permanent.