In the World of Obama, There is War Without End

Obama phones in his war in Libya.

Writing in The American Conservative, Daniel Larison outlines Barack Obama’s shocking wars-without-end foreign policy disgrace.

Earlier this week, I said that Obama’s legacy was war without end.

I said that because I think that will be his most enduring foreign policy legacy, and because it is the part of his record that receives relatively little attention. What I didn’t mention in the previous post was that every war that the U.S. started or joined on Obama’s watch was not necessary for the security of the United States.

Obama famously rode his opposition to a war of choice all the way to the White House, but has committed the U.S. to several completely unnecessary wars. I don’t think these wars were necessary for the security of our allies and clients.

The U.S. intervened in Libya in 2011 in the name of the “responsibility to protect.” No one even tried to pretend that U.S. interests were at stake in the Libyan war, and yet Obama committed the U.S. to an avoidable war anyway.

The U.S. started ISIS bombing targets in Iraq and then in Syria. ISIS didn’t pose a threat to the U.S. then and still doesn’t, but Obama ordered a bombing campaign against them all the same.

The U.S. wasn’t threatened by the Houthis in Yemen, but Obama has backed the Saudi-led war on Yemen in order to “reassure” Riyadh even though it is making the region more unstable and it is making America more enemies than we had before.