American war presidents engage in ruthless and merciless warfare that is devastating and complete, resulting in total annihilation, and, if possible, short: from the American Revolution through World War II this was the case. As a matter of fact, the American war tradition is in line with the Western manner of warfare.
Cf. The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece, Victor Davis Hanson, University of California Press (2009):
http://www.librarything.com/work/1755303/53908828
Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power, Victor Hanson, Anchor (2002):
http://www.librarything.com/work/25331
However, during the Korean War Eisenhower accepted a truce but this agreement can be understood to his credit. It shortened the conflict and resulted in an enduring peace. Once a Republican president made peace in Korea, not one American serviceman was killed in action during the remaining seven and a half years of his presidency. No American president since Ike can make that claim.
Something significant must have occurred during the Eisenhower years. In fact, Eisenhower himself warned about the change: the military-industrial complex. In 1961, Eisenhower warned the Americans about a permanent armament establishment which is unique and new in American history.
Cf. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY&feature=player_embedded
Eisenhower warned against "unwarranted influence" in the world and the "disastrous rise of misplaced power" (Eisenhower, 17 January 1961, Farewell Address to the Nation). Americans did not heed the warning.
There is plenty of blame to go around for both parties but Democratic presidents have been particularly prone to re-make the world in their image. Both John F. Kennedy but particularly Lyndon Baines Johnson escalated the war in Vietnam while deceiving Americans about the real costs and ultimate number of casualties in the war.
Cf. Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam, H. R. McMaster, Harper Perennial (1998):
http://www.librarything.com/work/13326/42305403
Since 1980 there has been a dramatic increase in United States military operations which is in direct contrast with the pre-1960 period. Both political parties and subsequent administrations have engaged in military operations with abandon in an attempt to engage in nation building and creating the world in our image. For those Americans born after 1960 and 1980 or for those who operate from an ahistorical perspective it must be particularly difficult for them to grasp that this new normal is out of step with the American war tradition in our history.
The normative U.S. war-making machine is now fully engaged and we are paying a hefty human and economic price for our folly. The folly of our ways is not obvious with a vibrant economy but it certainly should be by now. As Max Boot states:"In the emerging global division of labor, the richest economies have prospered based not on the possession of natural resources or vast populations, as in the past, but by creating a favorable climate for innovation and investment – for the exploitation of human, not physical, capital" (Cf. War Made New: Weapons, Warriors, and the Making of the Modern World, Max Boot, Gotham [2007], p.214:
http://www.librarything.com/work/1397318/summary/48789047 ). Formerly, America could rely on our natural resources or growing population but neither are enough any more and we are no longer the world's leader of innovation and private capital investment.
"Fewer [Americans] still drew any correlation between economic distress at home and the predicament into which the United States had worked itself abroad. As far as Washington was concerned (either George W. Bush's or Barack Obama's), domestic and foreign policies continued to occupy two different, largely unrelated spheres. Nothing that had occurred during the eight years of the second Bush era, it seemed, had overturned that conviction. . . . If President Obama remains similarly oblivious to any correlation between the nation's economic woes and the flawed national security policies he inherited, that will be far more puzzling, however. After all, the moment you acknowledge the linkage between Bush's ill-advised global war and our current economic disarray, whole new avenues of analysis open up. Getting to root causes suddenly becomes a possibility. It's akin to recognizing that smoking causes cancer or that prolonged alcohol abuse can produce liver damage: to make the connection is to redefine the problem. New strategies of prevention present themselves. The chief one: avoid patently self-destructive behavior. . . . Only then will it become possible to avoid the patently self-destructive behavior that today finds America facing the prospect of perpetual conflict that neither our army nor our economy can sustain" (Cf. The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, Andrew Bacevich, Metropolitan Books [2008], pp. 184-186):
http://www.librarything.com/work/5654532/43172030
Obama has enthusiastically promoted the military-industrial complex and no significant improvement in United States foreign policy has occurred. Although Obama inherited a largely pacified Iraq, he has no reliable and safe exit strategy from the region, a situation that to Bush's credit, he had largely mollified before Obama's inauguration. Moreover, Obama dramatically escalated the war in Afghanistan, and involved us in Libya which presented no vital national security threat. On several fronts Obama has weakened our national security which we will be paying for in the years to come (Cf. How The Obama Administration Threatens Our National Security, Victor Davis Hanson, Encounter Books (2009): http://www.librarything.com/work/9556105/59090613).
I'll confine myself to Libya for the sake of space but Obama lied as Johnson misled the American people about boots on the ground (Cf. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/12/us-boots-on-ground-in-libya-pentagon-confirms/ ), lost around 20,000 surface-to-air missiles (Cf. http://www.wlsam.com/Article.asp?id=2281782&spid= ), and has not prevented sharia law and its
Islamist proponents from gaining power in a post-Gadaffi Libya (Cf. http://www.scribd.com/doc/62823350/Libya-Draft-Constitutional-Charter-for-the-Transitional-Stage ). An almost identical set of conditions led to the escalation of placing American troops in harm's way in Afghanistan. Obama has committed the same mistakes of history in Libya.
We are committed now in perpetual, global warfare that makes us not a twit safer or secure. An adult American conversation that distinguishes between military adventurism as engaged in by both Obama and Bush needs to take place. We have an incredibly talented and totally competent American military which is being squandered in global fiascoes that have little hope of return on our investment of blood and treasure.
Is 9/11 a fight worth fighting? Absolutely. Do I hear any of the eight Republican candidates question that that fight is not worth fighting? No, I don't hear that.
To our advantage we have a trained and fit military that, despite the lack of leadership by subsequent Commanders-in-Chief, is expert in interdicting high-value targets, stopping drug-running, discovering caches of weapons, rooting out false identities, securing borders and protecting civilians. And, where are these wonders of virtue, commitment, and teamwork? It is the incredible American military that is squandered by placing them in Libya, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in places where their efforts are not appreciated nor welcomed.
Imagine for just a moment if these troops were deployed along the Southern border and you can begin to imagine an America where our borders are secure; the military is used to best advantage, protecting American citizens, and our investments pay off in technological innovation and expertise because it directly benefits an enlightened and aware America that desperately needs jobs and economic growth.
If you can imagine American troops being deployed for America, and on behalf of Americans, you begin to appreciate what the Founders envisioned for their descendents: "We the People of the United States, in Order to . . . insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
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