Post by Deleted on Feb 2, 2017 22:50:24 GMT
Not my words, found this while reading something else and found it interesting. Take what you want from it. 
President Obama, who hoped to sow peace, instead led the nation in war
Before he took office in 2008, Barack Obama vowed to end America’s grueling conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. During his second term, he pledged to take the country off what he called a permanent war footing.
“Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue,” he said in May 2013. “But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. It’s what our democracy demands.”
But Obama leaves a very different legacy as he prepares to hand his commander-in-chief responsibilities to Donald Trump.
U.S. military forces have been at war for all eight years of Obama’s tenure, the first two-term president with that distinction. He launched airstrikes or military raids in at least seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.
Yet the U.S. faces more threats in more places than at any time since the Cold War, according to U.S. intelligence. For the first time in decades, there is at least the potential of an armed clash with America’s largest adversaries, Russia and China.
Obama slashed the number of U.S. troops in war zones from 150,000 to 14,000, and stopped the flow of American soldiers coming home in body bags. He also used diplomacy, not war, to defuse a tense nuclear standoff with Iran.
But he vastly expanded the role of elite commando units and the use of new technology, including armed drones and cyber weapons.
“The whole concept of war has changed under Obama,” said Jon Alterman, Middle East specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonprofit think tank in Washington.
Obama “got the country out of ‘war,’ at least as we used to see it,” Alterman said. “We’re now wrapped up in all these different conflicts, at a low level and with no end in sight.”
Continue reading here
President Obama, who hoped to sow peace, instead led the nation in war
Before he took office in 2008, Barack Obama vowed to end America’s grueling conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. During his second term, he pledged to take the country off what he called a permanent war footing.
“Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue,” he said in May 2013. “But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. It’s what our democracy demands.”
But Obama leaves a very different legacy as he prepares to hand his commander-in-chief responsibilities to Donald Trump.
U.S. military forces have been at war for all eight years of Obama’s tenure, the first two-term president with that distinction. He launched airstrikes or military raids in at least seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.
Yet the U.S. faces more threats in more places than at any time since the Cold War, according to U.S. intelligence. For the first time in decades, there is at least the potential of an armed clash with America’s largest adversaries, Russia and China.
Obama slashed the number of U.S. troops in war zones from 150,000 to 14,000, and stopped the flow of American soldiers coming home in body bags. He also used diplomacy, not war, to defuse a tense nuclear standoff with Iran.
But he vastly expanded the role of elite commando units and the use of new technology, including armed drones and cyber weapons.
“The whole concept of war has changed under Obama,” said Jon Alterman, Middle East specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonprofit think tank in Washington.
Obama “got the country out of ‘war,’ at least as we used to see it,” Alterman said. “We’re now wrapped up in all these different conflicts, at a low level and with no end in sight.”
Continue reading here
