Liberals seem to get quieter every day that the country improves and moves towards greatness under Trump. Many of their fronts have become quiet over the weeks, and there are few desperate pockets of anti-Trumpism left. As a president, he’ll always be criticized, but the country is coming in line.
In light of that, and always needing a target for their ridiculousness, a large sect of liberals have taken to attacking George W. Bush, trying to remind the world of the negative impacts of his wars (even though they dramatically reduced global terrorism at the time). So, in response to this rallying cry, let’s have a vs. session. We’ll compare Bush to Obama and see who was the bigger war monger.
Tallying the Figures
Bush started two ongoing wars that brought the full might of the U.S. military to bear against Afghanistan and Iraq. Neither country saw a cessation of hostility by the end of his second term. It should be a no-brainer that Bush dropped more bombs and killed more people than Obama.
After being elected on a platform of reduced interventionism and winning a Nobel Peace Prize, Obama expanded Bush’s military efforts. He increased military spending, opened new fronts and overall committed more military resources than Bush.
Surprised? Most Americans are when they learn these numbers, but when you review the facts, it all makes sense. First, Obama reduced the number of boots on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq. The power vacuum led to a rise in terrorism, and Obama responded with military force, but not by returning large numbers of ground soldiers. Instead, he ramped up already aggressive bombardments. In 2016, Obama dropped more bombs on Iraq and Afghanistan than Bush did in his entire second term.
This still sells the truth short. You see, Obama’s primary military targets over the course of his tenure were not Iraq and Afghanistan. They were Syria and Libya — two countries that Bush left alone. Opening these fronts while simultaneously expanding air raids in existing battlegrounds caused Obama to exceed all of the modern presidents before him. He dropped more bombs than any other president since WWII.
Here’s a quick summary of the full comparison of numbers. Obama dropped 30 percent more bombs than Bush, sustained war efforts in almost twice as many countries, spent $20 billion a year more on active war efforts and expanded Special Forces operations by 130 percent.
To clarify, Obama more than doubled Bush’s interventionism, raising the number of countries with Special Forces operations to 138 from Bush’s total of 60.
The final number is the most damning, but it is also the most unreliable. It is virtually impossible for Obama’s 30-percent increase in airstrikes to have had fewer civilian casualties than Bush, but there was no official record kept by the Obama Administration. Instead, independent sources suggest that civilian casualties grew somewhere between 10 and 50 percent during his tenure.
Quiet Violence
Bush’s primary condemnations as a president were his military actions. While history still supports his actions in Afghanistan, the hindsight judgment of Operation Iraqi Freedom is mixed at best. Many liberals love to condemn Bush as a war criminal while they praise Obama’s peaceful reign.
The fault for this misrepresentation of the truth is not entirely theirs. The mainstream media has been largely silent in regards to Obama’s military aggression. This past year was his biggest in terms of overall attacks, and yet it hardly made any news at all.
More than expanding military power, Obama reduced accountability by decreasing the transparency that Bush established in his invasions. Records of collateral damage used to be kept meticulously, but now the official reports are impossibly optimistic, claiming that fewer than 16 civilians were killed in over 20,000 air raids. This is possibly the most bone-chilling abuse of power that came from Obama’s eight years.
Global Impact
There is no denying that Bush’s interventions redefined situations in the Middle East. There is also no denying that he took responsibility for his actions by leaving enough troops present to maintain order. It was Obama’s switch to air-led proxy wars that brought about the current level of turmoil.
He may not have literally created ISIS, but he contributed more than any other individual in the world to their rise in power.
He is also the most culpable in the instability that rocked Egypt, Libya, Syria and Guatemala. That goes with condemning his actions in a number of other countries. If you take the rational approach and look at the raw data, there is only one conclusion: Obama is the most warmongering president in the post-WWII era.
Regards,
Ethan Warrick
Editor
Wealth Authority
