Ralph Nader: 'How Prescient They Were When They Nicknamed You "Barry O'Bomber"'

September 6th, 2013 6:24 PM

Ralph Nader had some harsh words Friday for Barack Obama's planned attack on Syria.

In a letter to the President published at the Huffington Post, Nader began, "Little did your school boy chums in Hawaii, watching you race up and down the basketball court, know how prescient they were when they nicknamed you 'Barry O'Bomber.'"

For those unfamiliar, Obama's high school crew in Hawaii - the Rat-ballers - nicknamed him Barry O'Bomber because of his lengthy jump shot.

"Little did your fellow Harvard Law Review editors, who elected you to lead that venerable journal, ever imagine that you could be a president who chronically violates the Constitution, federal statutes, international treaties and the separation of power at depths equal to or beyond the George W. Bush regime," Nader continued. "Nor would many of the voters who elected you in 2008 have conceived that your foreign policy would rely so much on brute military force at the expense of systemically waging peace." 

Nader next offered what many in the nation are thinking: "Now, as if having learned nothing from the devastating and costly aftermaths of the military invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, you're beating the combustible drums to attack Syria -- a country that is no threat to the U.S. and is embroiled in complex civil wars under a brutal regime."

From there, Nader mentioned how little public support there is for this attack, and that Obama hasn't been able to get much from the international community either.

But Nader wasn't only critical of the President.


"Secretary John Kerry descended to gibberish when, under questioning this week by a House Committee member, he asserted that your proposed attack was 'not war' because there would be 'no boots on the ground,'" he wrote. "In Kerry's view, bombing a country with missiles and air force bombers is not an act of war."

To Nader, this current aggression by the President is part and parcel to his entire failed foreign policy.

"Start with unjustified government secrecy garnished by the words 'national security,'" wrote Nader. "That leads to secret laws, secret evidence, secret courts, secret prisons, secret prisoners, secret relationships with selected members of Congress, denial of standing for any citizen to file suit, secret drone strikes, secret incursions into other nations and all this directed by a president who alone decides when to be secret prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner."

In his conclusion, Nader called for a "Right/Left coalition" to stop the President.

The way the polls look, that's exactly what's happening.