Cornel West Calls Obama a "War Criminal"

Black activist Dr. Cornel West has always been a critic of the Obama administration, but now he’s ratcheting up his attacks in public — this time referring to the president as a "war criminal."

Speaking on Thursday’s Tavis Smiley Show, Dr. West criticized the White House’s policy of deploying drones to kill high-level terrorist leaders, saying "The chickens are coming home to roost."

"We’ve been talking about this for a good while, the immorality of drones, dropping bombs on innocent people. It’s been over 200 children so far. These are war crimes," Dr. West proclaimed.

"Let us not be deceived — Nixon, Bush, Obama, they’re war criminals … They have killed innocent people in the name of the struggle for freedom, but they’re suspending the law, very much like Wall Street criminals. The law is suspended for them, but the law applies for the rest of us," he added.

This is far from the first time Dr. West has harshly criticized the president for a perceived willingness to use shady, possibly illegal tools in the war on terror. In January, Dr. West said that Obama’s approval of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was reminiscent of FBI surveillance of civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr., claiming that provisions in that law would allow authorities to lock away agitators like King without "due process or judicial process." Soon thereafter, he said that Obama was from a different tradition than black activists like himself and that the president should not have been sworn in on MLK’s Bible.

Watch the accusation below, courtesy of Mediaite: