Obama Promised to End America’s Wars—Has He?
In his recent cover story for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg notes that when Barack Obama first entered the White House, with George W. Bush’s long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq ongoing, “he was not seeking new dragons to slay.” Just the opposite: He fit the mold, Goldberg argues, of a “retrenchment president” elected to scale back America’s commitments overseas and shift responsibilities to allies. But you could be forgiven for thinking the dragons have stubbornly remained, and even multiplied, on Obama’s watch.
To cite just some recent examples: In October, the president authorized the of U.S. special-operations forces to Syria to complement his air campaign against the Islamic State. In January, reports emerged that the Obama administration was rethinking its troop drawdown in Afghanistan, given the deteriorating security situation there, and sending more troops to that included an increase of $2.5 billion over the previous year to expand the fight with ISIS to North and West Africa, and billions more for sending heavy weapons, armored vehicles, and other equipment to Eastern and Central Europe to counter Russian aggression. In the past several weeks alone, we’ve learned of Pentagon plans to dispatch military advisers to against the jihadist group Boko Haram and to launch an aerial offensive in against the Islamic State. U.S. bombing raids recently killed 150 suspected militants in and over 40 in . By one measure, in fact, the U.S. military is now actively engaged in more countries than when Obama took office.
