Mehdi Hasan: Barack Obama

In his column today, the Guardian's Gary Younge writes that "withdrawing the troops [from Iraq] is about the only truly popular thing Obama has done in the last two years. Polls show more than 70% support withdrawal, roughly two-thirds oppose the war, and more than half believe it was a mistake".

So it is sad and frustrating to witness Barack Obama, who opposed the Iraq invasion ... read more

The easiest and quickest way to expose the hypocrisy of our government's, and the wider western world's, professed support for democracy and freedom in the Arab world is to say just two words: Saudi Arabia.

From the BBC website today:

Amnesty International has accused Saudi Arabia of reacting to the Arab Spring by launching a wave of repression.

In a report, the human ... read more

Remember Barack Obama's speech on 1 December 2009, in which he announced his troop surge for Afghanistan? The US president was mocked and derided by neoconservatives for failing to use the word "victory" even once.

In an interview in today's Times (£), General Sir David Richards, the Chief of the UK's Defence Staff, has no such reservations. He doesn't use the ... read more

Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American Muslim cleric of Yemeni descent and alleged al-Qaeda commander, was assasinated by a CIA drone yesterday on the orders of the US commander-in-chief. Once again, Barack Obama, the Drone President, has been given a pass by liberals.

Where was the trial?

Where was the evidence or indictment in a court of law?

Where was the attempt at an arrest or extradition?

Where was due process?

Even George W Bush didn't ... read more

On Saturday, the website Truthout published a must-read "confessional" essay by a former "GOP operative", who "left the cult". Mike Lofgren, says the byline, "retired on 17 June after 28 years as a Congressional staffer. He served 16 years as a professional staff member on the Republican side of both the House and Senate budget committees." According to the Atlantic's read more

We got 98 per cent of what we wanted.

That's the verdict of Republican congressman and House Speaker, John "dark side" Boehner, on the debt deal that was agreed yesterday between Barack Obama, congressional Democrats and congressional Republicans.

The deal, as the BBC summarises, involves:

* Government spending cuts of $900bn, split between defence and non-defence spending

* Bipartisan ... read more

Here's Bill Clinton speaking at the Campus Progress conference in Washington, DC, yesterday:

In the current Budget debate, there is all this discussion about how much will come from spending cuts, how much will come from tax increases. Almost nobody's talking about one of the central points that everyone who's analysed this situation makes -- including the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles Commission -- which said you shouldn't do ... read more

In this week's New Statesman, we take a look at the quagmire in Afghanistan, in the wake of President Obama's recent announcement of a "drawdown" in US forces from the so-called graveyard of empires. My own piece, not yet published online, asks why Obama, as well as David Cameron, is intent on keeping combat troops in action in Kabul, Kandahar, ... read more

I blogged in the weekend about Andrew Marr's soft interview with Barack Obama in the White House ahead of his state visit to the UK. There were plenty of journalists willing to take potshots at Marr's giddiness and obvious excitement at being in the presence of "The One".

But newspaper journalists, commentators, pundits, broadcasters and bloggers alike have been fawning in ... read more

Andrew Marr landed the big interview with the US president, Barack Obama, ahead of his state visit to Britain this week. He covered Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Israel but there are so many other things he could have asked. Off the top of my head, here are ten questions Marr could have asked but didn't:

1) You've doubled the number of drone strikes in Pakistan that Bush ordered ... read more

As the protests escalate across Egypt, I have a simple question: on which side are the US and UK governments? The side of the protesters, fighting for their democratic rights and freedoms, or the side of the ageing, corrupt dictator, Hosni Mubarak, and his secret police? The US and UK governments, aided and abetted by the US and UK media, ... read more

The Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, one of America's leading liberal commentators, used his New York Times column yesterday to issue a devastating crititique of Barack Obama in the wake of the president's decision, on Monday, to introduce a pay freeze for federal government workers across the United States.

The Princeton professor describes the move as ... read more