When Barack Obama swept into the White House in 2008, the American electorate was hoping for “change.”
A “change” in the way Republicans and Democrats interacted with one another, a “change” in how the US is perceived by the rest of the world, and a “change” in Washington’s notoriously poor foreign policy in the Mid-East.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but none of that materialized. The US now faces legislative gridlock in Washington as the parties are more divided than ever, the effort to restore America’s international standing backfired in dramatic fashion as allies accuse the US of “leading from behind,” and rather than promoting peace in the Mid-East, Obama helped turn Libya into a lawless wasteland and Syria into “the worst circle of hell” (to quote Ban Ki-Moon).
Meanwhile, relations with Russia have fallen apart completely and the dispute with China over Beijing’s land reclamation efforts in the Spratlys threatens to devolve into a shooting war with each passing “freedom of navigation” exercise conducted by a US warship.
In short, “yes we can” quickly turned into “no we probably can’t” and now, as the Obama presidency draws to a close, we can definitively say “no we didn’t.”
Against this backdrop, some Americans want to send the Nobel Peace Prize winner off with a rather unpleasant parting gift: a referral to the Hague. Below, find a peition that appeared earlier this week on The White House's official web page calling for the "conviction of the US President and trial in the international criminal court."
"Some folks" are angry...