Professor Cornel West was a guest on Tavis Smiley’s radio show Thursday and expressed his disgust with President Obama’s justification (or lack thereof) for drone attacks in the Middle East.

West has been an outspoken proponent of movements like Occupy Wall Street, and currently a professor of African American Studies at Princeton. His work often focuses on race, class, and gender in the United States.

Via Mediate:

“Your thoughts on this so-called license to kill?” Smiley asked West.

“The chickens are coming home to roost,” West replied. “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.”

“I think we have to be very honest, let us not be deceived — Nixon, Bush, Obama, they’re war criminals,” West continued. “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.”

Listen here: