Voters Who Oppose Wars of Choice Have Nowhere to Turn

"Barack Obama and Donald Trump have this in common: Both owe their political ascents in part to blunt attacks on leaders who sent America to war. Obama dubbed Iraq "a dumb war" before it began; by the time he defeated Hillary Clinton and John McCain in 2008, the war they had voted to authorize as senators had become unpopular. Eight years later, when Trump was first seeking the presidency, many Republicans continued to defend George W. Bush's foreign policy."

"Yet both presidents took a different approach in office. After denigrating the judgment of Iraq War hawks, Obama appointed Clinton as his first secretary of state, and she became the top official urging him to wage the 2011 war in Libya that yielded regime change. Trump chose the Iraq War supporter John Bolton as one of his first-term national security advisers, failed to end the war in Afghanistan, and picked Marco Rubio, a hawkish interventionist, as his second-term secretary of state."

Both Barack Obama and Donald Trump advantaged themselves politically by attacking leaders who sent the United States into the Iraq War and denouncing that war as a mistake. Each president, however, adopted more hawkish practices in office: Obama appointed Hillary Clinton, who pushed for the 2011 intervention in Libya that achieved regime change; Trump installed John Bolton, retained ongoing conflicts like Afghanistan, and later chose Marco Rubio, a hawkish interventionist, as his second-term secretary of state. Rubio has been identified as a driving force behind pressure on Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela, a claim the White House has denied. American voters show little appetite for new wars of choice.

Read at The Atlantic