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Franklin D. Roosevelt: Shitbird Score 48

Ethical & Moral Breakdown:
FDR is celebrated as the man who saved capitalism and crushed fascism — but beneath the marble busts lies a legacy of racial injustice, state-sanctioned imprisonment, and culpable inaction. The New Deal was built on white supremacy: Black workers were excluded from Social Security, denied union protections, and redlined into generational poverty.

His refusal to lift or even fill existing immigration quotas for Jews fleeing the Holocaust condemned tens of thousands to Nazi death camps — roughly 190,000 quota slots went deliberately unfilled between 1933 and 1945 while the State Department actively obstructed visas. The MS St. Louis, carrying over 900 Jewish refugees, was turned away in 1939; a quarter of its passengers later perished in Europe. Internally, Executive Order 9066 authorized the mass incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans — U.S. citizens — stripped of rights, property, and dignity based solely on ancestry; roughly 1,900 died in the camps.

And then there's the Manhattan Project: authorized with no public knowledge, no congressional debate, and no ethical review, unleashing the arms race his successors would wield. FDR built the framework of American empire — intelligence, surveillance, and atomic infrastructure — while preaching liberty.

Key Policies & Their Toll:

• Refugee denial during the Holocaust — ~190,000 unfilled quota slots plus maritime rejection; counted at the enabling tier (50%): ~100,000 avoidable deaths
• Japanese internment camps (EO 9066) — 120,000 detained without due process; ~1,900 deaths in custody (direct)
• Colonial repression in the Philippines — U.S. suppression of Filipino resistance movements
• Greenlighting the Manhattan Project — no public debate, no ethical oversight; scored as ethics, not bodies
• New Deal racial exclusions — structural harm to Black and Indigenous Americans; scored as ethics, not speculative body count

Toll Assessment:

• Avoidable Deaths: ~105,000 (revised down from an earlier unsourced 2.2M — this ledger only counts what it can itemize)
• Unavoidable Deaths (WWII): ~4,000,000 globally involving U.S. forces — not included in score

Shitbird Score Breakdown:

• Base Score (avoidable death toll): 41
• Ethics Penalty: +7 (racial internment, refugee rejection, nuclear project without consent)
• Final Shitbird Score: 48

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself."
Unless you were a refugee, a Japanese-American citizen, or anyone outside the white New Deal umbrella — then you had the U.S. government to fear.

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Harry S. Truman: Shitbird Score 74

Ethical & Moral Breakdown:
Harry S. Truman is the only human in history to order nuclear weapons used in war — twice. But the two bombs do not carry equal guilt, and pretending they do is bad history. Japan in August 1945 was seeking a negotiated, conditional end through Moscow — not surrender — and even after both bombs and the Soviet declaration of war, the Supreme War Council deadlocked and army officers attempted a coup to stop the surrender broadcast. Run the alternatives honestly — blockade, invasion, Soviet entry alone — and every one of them projects a higher body count, mostly Asian civilians dying at 150,000+ per month under occupation and famine. Hiroshima, grotesquely, models as the least-lethal path actually available. It is therefore counted as unavoidable here, through gritted teeth.

Nagasaki is another matter entirely. It fell 72 hours later — before Tokyo had even convened to assess Hiroshima, hours after the Soviet shock — on an autopilot schedule driven by weather and bomb assembly, not by any finding that the first bomb had failed. Roughly 75,000 people died for a decision nobody actually made. And the deeper crime was upstream: Truman's administration refused to clarify the Emperor's status at Potsdam — the one concession Japan demanded — then granted it for free in September. That refusal may have cost every life the bombs took.

In Korea, the war itself was Kim Il-sung's doing — but American conduct was not. U.S. strategic bombing systematically leveled North Korea's cities and dams; the campaign's own commanders later estimated a huge fraction of the population killed. That conduct-based toll is Truman's. He also birthed the CIA and the permanent war economy — the bodies from the coups it ran are charged to the presidents who ordered them (one-owner rule), but founding the machine is his ethics bill — and lit the fuse of McCarthyism with Executive Order 9835's loyalty purges.

Key Policies & Their Toll:

• Nagasaki (Aug 9, 1945) — ~75,000 deaths, schedule-driven, before Hiroshima or Soviet entry could be assessed (direct)
• Hiroshima (Aug 6, 1945) — ~140,000 deaths; counted unavoidable as the least-lethal available path, but enabled by the refusal to clarify the Emperor's status (scored in ethics)
• Korean War conduct — indiscriminate strategic bombing of the North: ~300,000 civilian deaths attributed (direct conduct)
• CIA creation (1947) — downstream coup deaths charged to the presidents who ordered them; founding liability scored here as ethics
• Loyalty Order 9835 (1947) — federal purge of suspected leftists; precursor to McCarthyism

Toll Assessment:

• Avoidable Deaths: ~375,000
• Unavoidable Deaths: ~750,000 (Hiroshima; Korean War in its defensive frame)

Shitbird Score Breakdown:

• Base Score (avoidable death toll): 54
• Ethics Penalty: +15 (Nagasaki, Emperor-status refusal, loyalty purges)
• Empire Foundation Bonus: +5
• Final Shitbird Score: 74

"The buck stops here."
The second bomb didn't even wait for the buck to arrive.

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Dwight D. Eisenhower: Shitbird Score 60

Ethical & Moral Breakdown:
Eisenhower publicly warned of the "military-industrial complex" — after spending eight years feeding it. His presidency normalized covert regime change as a standing tool of U.S. policy. Under his direction, the CIA toppled elected governments in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954), installing regimes that tortured and killed with U.S. weapons, training, and funding.

In the Congo, he authorized planning for Patrice Lumumba's elimination in August 1960 (per the Church Committee); Lumumba was murdered days before Ike left office, and the Congo bled for decades. In Southeast Asia, he bankrolled French colonialism and installed the Diem regime, seeding the Vietnam War. Note on Guatemala: the coup and its early repression are charged here — the 1980s genocide those forces later committed is charged to Reagan, whose administration armed and applauded it. No double-counting.

Key Policies & Their Toll:

• CIA coup in Iran (1953) — installed the Shah; SAVAK torture state counted downstream (25%)
• CIA coup in Guatemala (1954) — Árbenz overthrown; coup and pre-1978 repression share only: ~20,000 (downstream)
• Congo — authorized Lumumba elimination planning (1960); post-independence collapse counted downstream (25%): ~25,000
• Vietnam — backed French colonialism, installed Diem; early-war seeding counted downstream (25%)
• Nuclear expansion — "massive retaliation" doctrine raised global annihilation risk

Toll Assessment:

• Avoidable Deaths: ~100,000
• Unavoidable Deaths: ~150,000

Shitbird Score Breakdown:

• Base Score (avoidable death toll): 41
• Ethics Penalty: +14 (covert coups, assassination authorization, colonial support)
• Systemic Legacy Bonus: +5
• Final Shitbird Score: 60

"Beware the military-industrial complex."
Said the man who built it and handed over the keys.

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John F. Kennedy: Shitbird Score 44

Ethical & Moral Breakdown:
Kennedy is the Camelot myth — polished, photogenic, celebrated. The reality is messier. He inherited Eisenhower's Cuba obsession and made it worse with the Bay of Pigs, then nearly ended the world during a missile crisis that U.S. policy helped create. He escalated Vietnam from 900 advisors to over 16,000, authorized napalm and the strategic hamlet program, and greenlit Operation Mongoose's sabotage-and-assassination campaign against Cuba.

And the entry his hagiographers always skip: in August 1963, via Cable 243, his administration authorized the generals' coup against Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem and his brother were murdered in the back of an armored personnel carrier on November 2 — decapitating South Vietnamese governance on the eve of the war's escalation, three weeks before Kennedy himself was shot. He also signed off on FBI wiretapping of civil rights leaders, including Dr. King, at Hoover's request.

Key Policies & Their Toll:

• Bay of Pigs (1961) — ~300 killed, regional destabilization, deepened Cold War antagonism (direct)
• Vietnam escalation — 16,000 advisors, napalm authorization, strategic hamlets (direct share)
• Diem coup (Cable 243, 1963) — authorized the coup that killed Diem and destabilized Saigon; counted downstream (25%)
• Operation Mongoose — covert war on Cuba, including assassination plots against Castro
• Wiretapping of civil rights leaders under FBI surveillance programs

Toll Assessment:

• Avoidable Deaths: ~30,000
• Unavoidable Deaths: ~100,000

Shitbird Score Breakdown:

• Base Score (avoidable death toll): 29
• Ethics Penalty: +10 (Vietnam escalation, Diem coup, domestic surveillance)
• Near-Apocalypse Bonus: +5 (Cuban Missile Crisis risk)
• Final Shitbird Score: 44

"Ask not what your country can do for you."
Ask instead what your country is doing to everyone else when the cameras are off.

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Lyndon B. Johnson: Shitbird Score 88

Ethical & Moral Breakdown:
LBJ is the great American contradiction: the man who signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act — genuine milestones — while lying the country into the century's most catastrophic foreign policy disaster. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was built on an attack that never happened as reported. He knew. His advisors knew. Congress didn't. The war he escalated — from 16,000 advisors to 540,000 troops, with napalm, Agent Orange, free-fire zones, and Rolling Thunder — consumed over 58,000 American lives and an estimated two million Vietnamese, while he privately admitted it was unwinnable.

And here's the entry history books misfile: the Indonesian massacres of 1965–66 happened on his watch, not Nixon's. As the Indonesian army and its militias slaughtered an estimated 500,000 alleged communists, the U.S. embassy in Jakarta handed the army lists of thousands of PKI members — kill lists, confirmed by declassified cables and by embassy staffer Robert Martens on the record — while Washington cheered the outcome. That is enabling a massacre, and it is charged here at the enabling tier.

Domestically, he expanded COINTELPRO, wiretapped Dr. King, and used the FBI against the very civil rights leaders he publicly praised.

Key Policies & Their Toll:

• Gulf of Tonkin (misrepresented, 1964) — launched full U.S. involvement in Vietnam
• Vietnam escalation — 540,000 troops, ~1,365,000 attributed deaths, Agent Orange, Rolling Thunder (direct)
• Indonesian massacres (1965–66) — ~500,000 killed; U.S. embassy supplied kill lists; enabling tier (50%): ~250,000 (reassigned from Nixon — wrong president in the prior version)
• COINTELPRO expansion — FBI targeting of civil rights and antiwar movements
• Dominican Republic intervention (1965) — 3,000+ killed to stop an imagined communist takeover

Toll Assessment:

• Avoidable Deaths: ~1,615,000
• Unavoidable Deaths: ~1,000,000

Shitbird Score Breakdown:

• Base Score (avoidable death toll): 68
• Ethics Penalty: +15 (war escalation on false grounds, kill lists, ecological warfare)
• Surveillance & Repression Bonus: +5
• Final Shitbird Score: 88

"We're not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home…"
Then he sent 540,000. Many never came back. Many more never had homes again.

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Richard Nixon: Shitbird Score 86

Ethical & Moral Breakdown:
Richard Nixon sabotaged the 1968 Paris peace talks through the Chennault back-channel to win an election — Haldeman's own notes record the instruction to "monkey wrench" the negotiations — extending a war that killed hundreds of thousands more before it finally ended in 1975. In office, he expanded that war into Cambodia and Laos with Operation Menu and its successors, secret bombing campaigns of staggering tonnage conducted without congressional approval, destabilizing Cambodia and helping open the door for the Khmer Rouge, who murdered roughly two million people.

Then the crime the previous version of this page missed entirely: Bangladesh, 1971. As Pakistan's army carried out a campaign of mass slaughter and rape against Bengalis — with conservative estimates of hundreds of thousands dead and Dhaka's own consul general, Archer Blood, cabling Washington the word "genocide" — Nixon and Kissinger tilted to their coup-maker Yahya Khan. They ignored the Blood Telegram, punished its author, kept arms flowing in violation of an embargo, and sent a carrier group to intimidate India. That is enabling a genocide, documented cable by cable.

He also greenlit the coup machinery in Chile — Allende overthrown in 1973, Pinochet's regime torturing, executing, or disappearing tens of thousands — and launched the War on Drugs, which his own aide John Ehrlichman later described as a tool built to criminalize Black Americans and the antiwar left.

Key Policies & Their Toll:

• Sabotage of 1968 peace talks + Vietnam continuation — ~500,000 deaths (direct)
• Bombing of Cambodia & Laos (1969–73) — ~150,000 direct deaths (scholarly range ~100–250k)
• Khmer Rouge rise — ~2,000,000 murdered; destabilization counted downstream (25%): ~500,000
• Bangladesh genocide (1971) — arms, cover, and the Blood Telegram ignored; enabling tier (50% of a conservative ~500,000): ~250,000 (new entry)
• CIA-backed coup in Chile (1973) — Pinochet dictatorship: ~10,000 (direct/enabling)
• War on Drugs (1971) — codified systemic racism; scored as ethics

Toll Assessment:

• Avoidable Deaths: ~1,410,000
• Unavoidable Deaths: ~1,500,000

Shitbird Score Breakdown:

• Base Score (avoidable death toll): 66
• Ethics Penalty: +15 (peace sabotage, genocide enabling, coups, racist drug war)
• Systemic Oppression Bonus: +5
• Final Shitbird Score: 86

"If the President does it, that means it's not illegal."
The Constitution wept. Then bled. In two hemispheres at once.

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Gerald R. Ford: Shitbird Score 41

Ethical & Moral Breakdown:
Ford's presidency is remembered as a healing moment after Watergate — but that healing came through institutional amnesia. His first major act was pardoning Nixon, setting the permanent precedent that presidents are above the law.

Then, on December 6, 1975, Ford and Kissinger met Suharto in Jakarta. The declassified memcon shows them giving the nod; Indonesia invaded East Timor within hours, using U.S. weapons, with U.S. aid still flowing. The occupation ultimately killed 100,000–180,000 Timorese (per the CAVR truth commission) across 1975–1999 — this ledger charges Ford the invasion-phase deaths on his own watch, at the enabling tier. The occupation's deadliest stretch, the engineered famine of 1977–79, is charged to his successor, who kept the arms flowing through it.

Key Policies & Their Toll:

• Pardon of Nixon (1974) — shielded the presidency from legal consequence; scored as ethics
• Green light for Indonesia's invasion of East Timor (1975) — invasion-phase deaths ~60,000, enabling tier (50%): ~30,000
• Continuation of Operation Condor — thousands disappeared, tortured, executed across Latin America (downstream share)
• Opposed release of Church Committee CIA findings

Toll Assessment:

• Avoidable Deaths: ~35,000
• Unavoidable Deaths: ~100,000

Shitbird Score Breakdown:

• Base Score (avoidable death toll): 31
• Ethics Penalty: +10 (pardon of Nixon, covert support for mass murder)
• Final Shitbird Score: 41

"Our long national nightmare is over."
No, it was just classified and airmailed to Jakarta.

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Jimmy Carter: Shitbird Score 40

Ethical & Moral Breakdown:
Carter remains the least bad name on this list — Camp David, human rights as actual policy, the Panama Canal returned, genuine discomfort with the imperial playbook. But the halo has to come off, because the previous version of this page gave him a pass on the deadliest thing that happened on his watch.

The East Timor occupation's most lethal phase — the encirclement-and-starvation campaigns and engineered famine of 1977–79 — occurred squarely during Carter's term. And the human rights president didn't cut off Jakarta: his administration increased military assistance and greenlit new arms deliveries, including the aircraft used in the encirclement campaigns, while tens of thousands of Timorese starved in resettlement camps. That is material support during an atrocity, and it is charged at the enabling tier. He also launched Operation Cyclone, arming the Afghan mujahideen with consequences that echo to this day, and backed the Shah's repression until the house burned down.

Key Policies & Their Toll:

• East Timor famine phase (1977–79) — ~80,000 famine deaths during continued and increased U.S. arms flow; enabling tier (50%): ~40,000 (new entry — previously misassigned entirely to Ford)
• Operation Cyclone (1979) — armed the mujahideen; long-term blowback scored as ethics, not speculative bodies
• Support for the Shah of Iran — backed repression until the regime collapsed
• Iran Hostage Crisis mismanagement — 444 days, failed rescue

Toll Assessment:

• Avoidable Deaths: ~45,000
• Unavoidable Deaths: ~10,000

Shitbird Score Breakdown:

• Base Score (avoidable death toll): 33
• Ethics Penalty: +7 (East Timor arms flow, Afghan blowback seeds, Iran support)
• Final Shitbird Score: 40

The bar for decency in this office is subterranean. Carter dug upward — while quietly shipping the shovels to Jakarta.

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Ronald Reagan: Shitbird Score 77

Ethical & Moral Breakdown:
Reagan is the smiling face of policy-as-cruelty. He armed, funded, and protected some of the most brutal regimes and paramilitaries of the century in freedom's name. In Central America he backed death squads in El Salvador, funded and trained the Nicaraguan Contras, and — critically — armed and publicly defended Guatemala's Ríos Montt during the genocidal campaigns of 1982–83, declaring him "totally dedicated to democracy" while the highland massacres ran. Those Guatemalan deaths are charged here, not to Eisenhower, whose 1954 coup built the machine but whose ledger only carries its early years. He defied Congress to keep the Contra war running through Iran-Contra, and armed Saddam Hussein through the Iran-Iraq War — including intelligence used for chemical-weapons targeting.

Domestically, the AIDS epidemic killed tens of thousands while Reagan wouldn't say the word for years; his administration treated gay men as acceptable losses. His drug war imprisoned a generation of Black and brown Americans. On the crack-CIA question, the record supports something narrower but still damning than the legend: the CIA's own 1998 Inspector General reports found no agency-run trafficking, but documented that the agency knowingly kept working with Contra-linked individuals credibly alleged to be traffickers and obtained a DOJ exemption from reporting them. Tolerance, documented; complicity in the supply chain, not proven.

Key Policies & Their Toll:

• Central American proxy wars — ~300,000 regional dead in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala (incl. the Ríos Montt genocide, reallocated here); blended direct/enabling: ~150,000
• Iran-Contra (1985–87) — illegal arms sales and Contra funding in defiance of Congress
• AIDS epidemic inaction — ~30,000 preventable U.S. deaths; inaction tier (25%): ~8,000; the cruelty itself is scored in ethics
• Arming Saddam Hussein — incl. chemical-targeting intelligence; enabling tier: ~25,000
• War on Drugs escalation — mass incarceration; scored as ethics

Toll Assessment:

• Avoidable Deaths: ~185,000
• Unavoidable Deaths: ~500,000

Shitbird Score Breakdown:

• Base Score (avoidable death toll): 47
• Ethics Penalty: +20 (genocide endorsement, AIDS cruelty, Iran-Contra lawlessness)
• Domestic Cruelty Bonus: +10
• Final Shitbird Score: 77

"Morning in America."
Unless you were Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Nicaraguan, gay, Black, poor, or any combination of the above. Then it was still very much night.

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George H.W. Bush: Shitbird Score 51

Ethical & Moral Breakdown:
Bush Sr. is the "respectable" imperialist — competent, measured, and deadly in ways that didn't make good TV. As a former CIA Director he inherited and maintained the covert architecture. As president, he invaded Panama to arrest Noriega — a longtime CIA asset — killing hundreds to low thousands of civilians and lowballing the count.

The Gulf War was more defensible than most American wars: Kuwait was invaded, the coalition was real, the UN mandate genuine. But Bush's air campaign deliberately destroyed Iraqi civilian infrastructure — power, water treatment, sanitation — in ways planners knew would kill long after the ceasefire. He then encouraged Iraqis to rise against Saddam and abandoned them when they did; the Shia and Kurdish uprisings were crushed while U.S. forces stood down.

Key Policies & Their Toll:

• Invasion of Panama (1989) — civilian dead in the hundreds to low thousands; official counts lowballed (direct)
• Gulf War infrastructure targeting — water/power destruction with foreseeable post-war mortality (direct conduct share)
• Abandonment of the Shia/Kurdish uprisings (1991) — thousands massacred post-ceasefire; inaction tier
• Maintained Iran-Contra-era covert networks

Toll Assessment:

• Avoidable Deaths: ~35,000
• Unavoidable Deaths: ~100,000

Shitbird Score Breakdown:

• Base Score (avoidable death toll): 31
• Ethics Penalty: +15 (civilian infrastructure targeting, abandoned allies, Panama lies)
• CIA Legacy Bonus: +5
• Final Shitbird Score: 51

"A thousand points of light."
Mostly from the burning oil fields and the infrastructure you bombed.

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Bill Clinton: Shitbird Score 62

Ethical & Moral Breakdown:
Clinton is the smooth-talking architect of benign-seeming catastrophe. He presided over the Rwandan genocide — 800,000 people hacked to death in 100 days — while his administration pushed to shrink the UNAMIR peacekeeping force, refused to jam the genocide radio, and banned officials from saying the word "genocide" to dodge legal obligations under the Convention. How many could realistically have been saved is genuinely contested — serious estimates run from ~125,000 to most of the toll — so this ledger takes a mid-range ~300,000 plausibly savable and charges it at the inaction tier. His administration later called it a moral failure. The admission raised no one.

An honest correction on Iraq: the "500,000 dead children" sanctions figure that once headlined this entry is gone. Later demographic work (Dyson & Cetorelli, BMJ Global Health, 2017) showed the surveys behind it were rigged by Saddam's government, and independent data show no child-mortality catastrophe of that scale. The sanctions still caused real deprivation and real deaths — counted here in the tens of thousands for Clinton's era — and Albright's "we think the price is worth it" remains a moral obscenity, delivered in defense of a number that wasn't even true. He also bombed the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant, destroying a huge share of Sudan's medicine production on intelligence that collapsed, and signed the 1994 Crime Bill that supercharged mass incarceration.

Key Policies & Their Toll:

• Rwanda genocide inaction (1994) — ~300,000 plausibly savable; inaction tier (25%): ~75,000
• Iraq sanctions — revised per current demographic literature: ~30,000 era-share deaths (500k child-death figure removed as debunked)
• al-Shifa strike (1998) + Yugoslavia campaign civilian toll — ~10,000 combined (direct/downstream)
• 1994 Crime Bill — mass incarceration explosion; scored as ethics
• NAFTA-era displacement — economic destabilization; scored as ethics

Toll Assessment:

• Avoidable Deaths: ~115,000
• Unavoidable Deaths: ~100,000

Shitbird Score Breakdown:

• Base Score (avoidable death toll): 42
• Ethics Penalty: +15 (Rwanda word-games, sanctions cruelty, domestic mass incarceration)
• Plausible Deniability Bonus: +5
• Final Shitbird Score: 62

"I feel your pain."
Not enough to say the word "genocide" while it would have mattered.

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George W. Bush: Shitbird Score 94

Ethical & Moral Breakdown:
George W. Bush launched two of the longest, most expensive, most deadly wars in American history on fabricated intelligence and institutional cowardice. The Iraq War — built on the WMD lie — killed on the order of half a million people (excess-mortality studies range from ~200,000 documented violent deaths to ~500,000+ total excess), displaced millions, destroyed a functioning if brutal state, and opened the vacuum that spawned ISIS.

He authorized a global torture program — waterboarding, stress positions, rendition to deniable black sites — illegal under international law and approved at cabinet level. He built the NSA bulk-collection apparatus that shredded the Fourth Amendment. Afghanistan's initial premise was defensible; the two-decade occupation that followed enriched contractors and warlords and evaporated within weeks of withdrawal. And Katrina drowned a city while his government watched.

Key Policies & Their Toll:

• Iraq War (2003–2011) — ~500,000 excess deaths on fabricated WMD claims (direct; his-term share of a war he chose)
• Afghanistan occupation — his-term share of a two-decade toll (direct)
• CIA torture program — cabinet-authorized, internationally illegal; scored as ethics
• NSA mass surveillance — gutted the 4th Amendment; scored as ethics
• Hurricane Katrina response failure — ~1,800 dead from negligence (inaction, counted at full weight given the duty was absolute and domestic)

Lives-Saved Offset (displayed, never netted):

• PEPFAR (2003) — the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is credibly estimated to have saved roughly 25 million lives, the largest life-saving program any president has ever run. Both things are true of the same man. That tension is the point of this website.

Toll Assessment:

• Avoidable Deaths: ~650,000
• Unavoidable Deaths: ~650,000

Shitbird Score Breakdown:

• Base Score (avoidable death toll): 59
• Ethics Penalty: +25 (torture program, fabricated war justification)
• Constitutional Destruction Bonus: +10
• Final Shitbird Score: 94

"Mission accomplished."
The mission was lies, the accomplishment was catastrophe, and the banner hung over a war with 18 years left on the clock.

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Barack Obama: Shitbird Score 75

Ethical & Moral Breakdown:
Obama is the Shitbird paradox: charming, articulate, the best communicator to hold the office in modern memory — and a man who personally approved weekly kill lists, bombed seven countries, and deported more people than any predecessor while being celebrated as a progressive. He authorized the assassination of a U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, without trial; a separate strike killed al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son two weeks later. He bombed an MSF hospital in Kunduz — 42 dead. He prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all prior presidents combined, and declined to prosecute a single torture architect, cementing presidential impunity.

Libya toppled Gaddafi and produced a failed state with open slave markets. And the entry the previous version of this page handed entirely to his successor: the Yemen war started on Obama's watch. In March 2015 his administration greenlit the Saudi-led campaign and supplied the refueling, targeting assistance, and munitions that made it possible. Roughly two years of that war — and its blockade-driven starvation machinery — belong on his ledger at the enabling tier.

Key Policies & Their Toll:

• Drone program (7 countries) — thousands killed incl. hundreds of civilians; zero meaningful accountability (direct)
• Libya intervention (2011) — 10,000–30,000 killed; failed state and slave markets counted downstream
• Yemen war, 2015–17 share — greenlit and materially sustained the Saudi campaign; enabling tier (50%): ~20,000 (reallocated from Trump)
• Record deportations — ~3 million removals (DHS counting caveats noted)
• Impunity for torture architects — normalized; scored as ethics

Lives-Saved Offset (displayed, never netted):

• PEPFAR continuation and the 2014 Ebola response — significant life-saving at scale.

Toll Assessment:

• Avoidable Deaths: ~250,000
• Unavoidable Deaths: ~200,000

Shitbird Score Breakdown:

• Base Score (avoidable death toll): 50
• Ethics Penalty: +20 (extrajudicial killing, Libya collapse, impunity protection)
• Expectation Gap Bonus: +5
• Final Shitbird Score: 75

"Yes we can."
We could bomb seven countries, start an eighth war by proxy, deport 3 million people, and protect torturers — all while making it look dignified. And we did.

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Donald J. Trump (First Term): Shitbird Score 83

Ethical & Moral Breakdown:
Trump's first term was a masterclass in deliberate cruelty as policy. His COVID-19 response killed through conscious choice: downplaying the virus on tape while admitting its danger in private, undermining public health guidance, and politicizing masks and vaccines. An honest accounting has to use honest windows, so here it is: roughly 410,000 Americans died of COVID during his actual term, of which the Lancet Commission's analysis implies roughly 40% — about 165,000 — were avoidable with average peer-nation performance. On top of that, the vaccine hesitancy his movement manufactured kept killing after he left: studies attribute well over 200,000 unvaccinated-American deaths to vaccine refusal after shots were freely available, and half that carryover is charged to the man who politicized the needle. (The previous version's ~1 million figure quietly annexed deaths from his successor's term. Fixed.)

His family separation policy deliberately traumatized thousands of children as a deterrent. He escalated the Yemen war and vetoed the War Powers resolution meant to end U.S. participation — his four-year share is charged here, with the war's start reallocated to Obama, who greenlit it. His loosened rules of engagement in the Mosul and Raqqa campaigns produced documented civilian tolls in the thousands. He incited an insurrection to overturn an election he lost.

Key Policies & Their Toll:

• COVID-19 mismanagement — ~165,000 avoidable in-term deaths + ~115,000 attributed carryover from manufactured vaccine hesitancy: ~280,000
• Yemen war, 2017–21 share — escalation, blockade support, War Powers veto; enabling tier: ~60,000
• Mosul/Raqqa loosened ROE — thousands of documented civilian deaths (direct conduct)
• Family separation — thousands of children detained; hundreds never reunited; scored as ethics
• Jan 6 / election subversion — scored as ethics and democratic-subversion bonus

Lives-Saved Offset (displayed, never netted):

• Operation Warp Speed — funded and accelerated the fastest vaccine development in history, saving lives worldwide. He then spent years signaling his own supporters not to take it. Both facts stay on the page.

Toll Assessment (First Term):

• Avoidable Deaths: ~350,000
• Unavoidable Deaths: ~300,000

Shitbird Score Breakdown:

• Base Score (avoidable death toll): 53
• Ethics Penalty: +20 (deliberate cruelty, disinformation, family separation)
• Democratic Subversion Bonus: +10
• Final Shitbird Score: 83

"I alone can fix it."
Bro, you broke the steering wheel of the bus and then pissed on the wreckage. Second term scored separately when the numbers are in.

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Joe Biden: Shitbird Score 66

Ethical & Moral Breakdown:
Joe Biden campaigned on restoring America's soul and delivered technocratic continuity with better manners — and the blood never stopped flowing. His central moral catastrophe was Gaza: unconditional material support for the 2023–25 campaign — weapons expedited, UN ceasefire resolutions vetoed, diplomatic cover sustained — through a war whose reported death toll during his term reached the mid-40-thousands by January 2025, with excess-mortality studies indicating the true figure runs meaningfully higher. He didn't just stand by; he funded it, armed it, and defended it, and this ledger charges the U.S.-enabled share at the enabling tier.

He executed the Afghanistan withdrawal — a timeline and prisoner release he inherited from his predecessor's Doha deal, but an evacuation he botched: 13 U.S. troops and ~170 civilians killed at Abbey Gate, allies stranded, the Taliban in Kabul in days. He then froze $7 billion in Afghan central bank funds as the economy collapsed and children starved in hospitals. And while wealthy nations hoarded doses, his administration's slow movement on global vaccine equity — waiver support that came late, exports that came later — left preventable Global South deaths in the hundreds of thousands, charged here at the inaction tier.

Key Policies & Their Toll:

• Gaza war support (2023–25) — in-term reported toll ~46,000 with studies indicating undercount; U.S.-enabled share (50%): ~23,000 (figure updated from the stale 30k snapshot)
• Global vaccine inequity — ~200,000 preventable deaths in scope; inaction tier (25%): ~50,000
• Afghan funds freeze — famine-driven mortality share: ~20,000 (downstream)
• Kabul withdrawal — 183 dead at Abbey Gate (direct); chaos co-owned with the Doha deal's author

Toll Assessment:

• Avoidable Deaths: ~95,000
• Unavoidable Deaths: ~50,000

Shitbird Score Breakdown:

• Base Score (avoidable death toll): 41
• Ethics Penalty: +20 (Gaza complicity, Afghan chaos, vaccine apartheid)
• Humanitarian Execution Penalty: +5
• Final Shitbird Score: 66

"America is back."
Back to arming the siege, freezing the famine, and calling it leadership.