Ralph Nader: 'Obama is a war criminal'

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Published time: September 26, 2012 21:21
Edited time: September 27, 2012 01:21

Ralph Nader has called President Barack Obama an aggressive “war criminal” who commanded more illegal actions in US affairs abroad than George W. Bush. But in this election, Nader still considers Obama “the lesser of two evils.”

Nader, who ran for president against Bush in 2000 and 2004 and is considered politically independent, said in an interview with Politico that Obama is worse than his predecessor “in the sense that he’s more aggressive, more illegal worldwide.”

“He’s gone beyond George W. Bush in drone, for example. He thinks the world is in his plate, that national sovereignties mean nothing, drones can go anywhere,” Nader said. “They can kill anybody that he suspects and every Tuesday he makes the call on who lives and who does.”

Nader, a political activist, author, lecturer and attorney, called Obama’s actions a war crime, and demanded the president be held accountable for them.

But Nader, who for the first time in a long time is not running for president this election, is not a fan of Bush, either.

“I don’t know whether George W. Bush ever read the Constitution,” he said. But while Bush never raised expectation levels, Nader said Obama raised them because of his high level of knowledge.

“[Obama is] below average because he’s above average in his intellect and his knowledge of legality, which he is violating with abandon,” he said.

But compared with GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, Obama is the lesser of two evils “because he brings credibility, he brings the democratic heritage to [the election], he has legitimized the lawless war-mongering and militarism abroad of George W. Bush.”

While Nader sees flaws in Obama, Romney and Bush, he also took to criticizing the GOP as a whole, calling them “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,” he said.

He let no one off easy in his interview with Politico. But while he sees shortcomings in all parties and both presidential candidates, he does not want to run for office again, citing the difficulties of running as a third party. Nader has run for president six times, including once as a write-in candidate in 1992. Some claim that his candidacy in the 2000 election gave Bush an advantage by taking away a significant number of votes from the opposition.

“Since we’re all trying to get votes from one another, either we’re all spoilers of one another or none of us are spoilers,” Nader said.