The US president will be visiting South Africa, Tanzania and Senegal at the end of June. The Muslim Lawyers Association in South Africa has lodged a 600 plus pages complaint with the South African National Prosecuting Authority in which the crimes of Obama, as commander-in-chief of the US military, are listed.  In terms of the Rome Statute , which is an official document of the International Criminal Court  – a UN body – and which has approximately 130 countries as signatories, these are legitimate charges. They include extra-judicial killings, extra-territorial killings, war crimes, murder and genocide. Obama’s predecessor George Bush as well as the UK Prime ministers Tony Blair and David Cameron are – in terms of the provisions of the Rome Statute – equally liable for prosecution. Notwithstanding these realities, these leaders are continuing with their murderous attacks on civilians in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and lately in a number of African countries like Somalia and Mali. They justify it in the name of their ‘war on terror’, which for many innocent civilians have become a ‘war of terror’.

Obama conducted his campaign for the presidency as a candidate who wanted to bring an end to the wars the US was involved in at the time. However, his presidency has subsequently been one of permanent war; of eternal war in which the idea of ‘full spectrum dominance’ has turned the entire world into a real or potential battlefield for the US military. In these plans the use of unmanned drone attacks feature strongly. Hundreds of Afghan and Pakistanis citizens have been and are being killed through these drone strikes. On the domestic front tens of millions of US citizens find themselves shut out of social welfare programmes; poverty levels in the country are on the rise. Barely a year ago the Occupy Movement bore the brunt of a vicious clampdown by the US police. Trade union members, social activists and their supporters were beaten up, arrested and their right to protest severely curtailed (see The Apdusan , Volume 17 No 3). The latest scandal dealing with the spying by the National Security Agency on US citizens is hardly democratic. The democratic freedoms of millions are under threat from the very people who are claiming to defend them. Globally, the emergence of security and surveillance systems aimed at controlling and defeating revolutionary and protest movements must be opposed.