Bill Ayers: Obama an 'Imperial Leader'

Guess no more palling around for the two of them

President Barack Obama's old Chicago neighbor Bill Ayers, whom Sarah Palin famously referenced when she accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists" during the 2008 presidential campaign, has some harsh critiques of the candidate he voted for and supported in 2008 and 2012.

On foreign policy, Ayers said Obama is acting like an "imperial leader."

"You're attributing to Obama not only good intentions but good actions around Afghanistan and Iraq. Actually he's not acting well. He's acting like any imperial leader would act," Ayers told his interviewer in a new Chicago Magazine story, published online Tuesday. "He wants to have an agreement with [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai because he wants to keep American troops there, trainers there, to keep our interest in oil and all the rest of it on the front burner."

Ayers said Obama's actions were consistent with American history.

"This is true of every puppet that the Americans have put up in the last hundred years," Ayers said. "We always say at the end of the day, why are these brown people such a disappointment to us? We gave them everything, and look they can't do it right, they f—- it up. … In [Ngo Dinh] Diem's case we shoot him. In Karzai's case we demean him."