Here's an interesting tidbit you might not know: who is the least warlike recent US president? In the following list you get one point added for each war you started and one point subtracted for ending someone else's war. I've included only sizeable wars that featured either American boots on the ground or substantial air activity. If it was just occasional drones or missiles or a few dozen advisors, it doesn't count. Here's the scorecard:
- Reagan: +2 (Lebanon, Grenada).
- Bush: +3 (Panama, Iraq, Somalia).
- Clinton: +2 (Bosnia, Haiti, ended Somalia, Kosovo).
- Bush: +3 (Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia).
- Obama: +2 (ended Iraq war, Libya, Niger, ISIS).
- Trump: -1 (ended ISIS).
- Biden: -3 (ended Afghanistan, ended drone strikes, ended Niger).
This doesn't paint the whole picture, of course. Some wars are bigger than others. Some are multilateral. And events are different from administration to administration.
All that said, however, George W. Bush was our most interventionist president. He's technically tied with his father but his wars were considerably bigger and longer-lasting. Joe Biden has been by far the least interventionist president of our lifetimes.
Ok, so Biden and Harris have OMG NEGATIVE THREE UNDERMINED AMERICAN SECURITY!!11!!, and (2) NOTHING bad would have happened or could happen under the Felon because of his awesome awesomeness, and also something something Jesus something Chosen One something.
Have I got that about right?
Don’t forget how the felon rewarded the Kurds for their sacrifices in beating ISIS
But hey, we got a Trump Hotel, good trade Don
Defense of Israel?
I would rank these presidents on not the quantity of military interventions, but the quality (minimal loss of US blood and treasure, accomplishing a necessary objective, improves US stature in the world). After the Vietnam debacle, George W's Iraq and Afghanistan policy has had the most negative impact on US foreign policy and had a large cost in terms of blood and treasure. George H's Iraq war could be viewed as a necessity, given the West could not economically allow Saddam control of all that oil, and it was a very successful operation. Reagan's Lebanon policy was asinine and cost significant US lives.
Captain Bone Spur's second term could result in the significant degradation of NATO and the Atlantic alliance, and his position with respect to Ukraine may be a redux of Chamberlain in Munich, 1938. Probably would cut Taiwan loose if China gives lets him build a few golf courses there.
"George H's Iraq war could be viewed as a necessity, given the West could not economically allow Saddam control of all that oil, and it was a very successful operation. "
Realpolitik might suggest that by removing Saddam and reducing Iraq's military capability to bare self-defence size, Bush removed the brakes on Iran. Without Saddam to guard against, they're free to run wild in the region.
George H didn't remove Saddam or topple his regime. He stopped at the liberation of Kuwait (whole lot of oil). His idiot son George W invaded Iraq, toppled Saddam's regime, and eventually he was executed. I agree that the impact was significantly beneficial to Iran, and made the US look like a bunch of fucking idiots.
From the time of the runup to W’s fiasco until now, I have thought that Saddam Hussein’s caginess about possessing WMDs was entirely about not exposing a vulnerability to Iran, a pretty understandable stance. Which the US did not take into account.
A lot of experts I have read agree with your assessment and I bet the Bushies understood that fact.
George H gave Saddam a green light to invade Kuwait. Saddam went out of his way to directly ask our ambassador, April Glaspie, what the US position on his border dispute with Kuwait was. She told him what she was instructed to say — that the US had no position on that conflict. In addition the State Department spokesperson publicly asserted we had no defense treaty with Kuwait. Then Bush went to the G - 4,5,6? summit and Margaret Thatcher told him to “not go wobbly” and, according to John Connolly also reminded him that her approval ratings went from terrible to strongly positive after the Falklans War. Bush returned to DC and shocked people by suddenly declaring Saddam was Hitler and had to be stopped. A very reasonable case can be made that Bush could have prevented the whole thing by telling Saddam we strongly opposed any attack on Kuwait and offering to help negotiate.
There was good evidence that Saddam had a reason to go after Kuwait for drilling under the border into Iraq’s oil fields and also for Kuwait refusing to honor its pledges to help Iraq pay the costs of its war with Iran.
After Bush decided to go after Saddam the tobacco PR firm Hill and Knowlton was brought on board to help sell the war to the public. H&K got a young woman to testify about Iraqi soldiers taking Kuwaiti newborns from incubators and leaving on the floor to die. That testimony was effective but a huge fraud. Turned out that the young woman was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and had been nowhere near Kuwait when it was invaded. So Dubya lying us into war was just him following his father’s administration’s example.
Clinton’s intervention in the Bosnian War was very effective with no American soldiers’ lives were lost in combat. That peace is still holding despite Putin’s attempts to destabilize it. Because the war was not a debacle most people have forgotten it and Clinton gets no credit. Ditto for his deep personal involvement in the Northern Ireland Peace Accord negotiations. The people of Northern Ireland, on the other hand, give both Clintons a lot of credit.
So Biden doesn't own the foul-ups of the pull-out from Afghanistan because Trump's plan, but he gets credit for pulling-out from Afghanistan here?
Don't confuse that with any sort of defense of Trump, it is simply a reaction to what appears to be an attempt at having cake and eating it too.
No, KD is being consistent in applying his scoring. Also, deaths suffered in the course of leaving Afghanistan were 0.5% of the deaths consequent on starting the war there. Before and after the war, the Taliban ruled the country, as they do today. Further, the mastermind and financier of 9/11 was killed without a full-scale invasion of the nation in which he was hiding.
There were no foul-ups in the pull-out.
number one - what foul-ups? significant, of course.
number two - even given that there were foul-ups, which I'm not giving, what was your, or anyone else's plan to avoid same?
Charts are fun for Kevin, but this is just dumb. FDR got us into WWII. Does that make him the most militaristic president in history?
Clinton got us into Eastern Europe to stop the slaughter and to enable a free and independent country, and he succeeded against all odds. Does that make him one step closer to lying our way into wars with Bush 2 that Biden could only endure the MSM's wrath for ending? Nixon and Kissinger stretchd out the Vietnam for at least five years but didn't start it and caused an astounding massacre in Cambodia, which they ignored. Does that make them peaceniks? Use your head.
WordPress munched my brilliant comment, then logged me off, so I'll restrict this to what I wrote at the end:
Can we please stop using middle names (or initials) to distinguish between a father and son with the same first and last name? If John Francis Edward Thomas David Macmillan Smith had a son named John Edward Dennis Macmillan Rockley Smith, do we want to refer to them as John F. E. T. D. M. Smith and John E. T. D. M. R. Smith?
John Smith Sr. and John Smith Jr. should suffice. Same for George Bush Sr. and George Bush Jr.
So even if they differ by a middle initial, one should be Sr. and the other Jr.?
I think so, but am aware that's not the current usage. So, you'd have to do what I outlined in the scenario above.
Further thought: Why give your child his father’s name as an honorific but be offended if someone calls him junior (which people do)?
I like Bush the Elder and Bush the Younger.
I think that last sentence goes a long way towards explaining why the MSM hates Biden so much. The Blob loves their wars.
I'm unclear on this: you give Clinton a overall score of +2 (started two wars). But you list him as having started two wars (Bosnia and Haiti) and having ENDED two wars (Somalia and Kosovo). So shouldn't his score be zero -- positive 2 plus negative 2? What am I missing? I suppose it's something obvious to everyone else, making me look a bit dull, but at this moment I really don't see how his +2 score was derived.
I'm with you.
"....ENDED two wars (Somalia and Kosovo). ..."
Kosovo is a war started not ended. So it is 3-1=2.
Since wars are of different scale and impact, just counting them up doesn't make sense to me. Equating Iraq with Niger? Really?
How about counting up lives lost in a conflict (American and others)? "Credit" for carry-over wars go to the initiating president.
It’s pretty strange to me too. Does this mean FDR “started” two wars? Truman ended two but started one?
1980="Our lifetimes"?
Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy and Eisenhower would like a word.
Truman for me, though I was born months before Dewey defeated him. Heh.
I probably just made Truman if you count conception (Republicans sure do!). No hard data, but I was born not quite eight months after Eisenhower was inaugurated.
Oh, and to paraphrase a very good TV show (based on an even better movie) of that era: There are eight million stupid and useless graphical posts in the naked Kevin Drum blog. This has been one of them.
And Carter, and Ford.
I don't understand the math. If Clinton started two and ended two, shouldn't he be a net zero? And didn't Reagan both start and end Lebanon and Grenada? Why get credit only for ending somebody else's war? It was better for Reagan to leave those two countries than to keep troops there throughout his administration. And if Biden gets credit for ending drone strikes, doesn't somebody have to get a +1:for starting them?
Plus, the whole idea is silly.
Doesn't Reagan at least get a half point for changing the Cold War drastically?*
And some of these were reactions, not preemptive. What gives?
*Even it wasn't "ended "
Add them up and that list ends with Republicans 7, Democrats 1.
Add Ukraine and Syria to Obama's account. Add Ukraine and Gaza to Biden's.
Jesus please. Biden is the least militaristic president? He's currently sponsoring an invasion of Russia!
We can't start new wars because after Iraq and Afghanistan, families are not as willing to send their kids off to be cannon fodder. We do wars by proxy now.
Kevin this is a little bit poorly framed.