@CB

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_the_United_States

@Strife Delivery

into two world wars got the reputation of being weak.

Simply put, though many aspects do exist, is fear.

There seems to be this perception amongst Presidents that they utterly despise being perceived as weak. We saw this with Truman in trying to strong arm negotiations against USSR, though he was utterly ignorant on the topics he was talking about. The diplomats were disgusted by him though Truman thought he showed those Russians a thing or two.

War is strength.
Peace is weak.
That's our mantra.

@native

as being like the two sides of a single coin. Their seeming opposition conceals the truth that both are composed of the very same substance. They operate in tandem, and one could not exist without the other. Being interdependent, they share certain fundamental, mutually-reinforcing goals -- one of which is global US economic and military domination.

Taken together they form a Duopoly that represents, not primarily the people of America, but primarily Power itself: Which is to say, the ability to control the nation's principal institutions. In the USA, power is exercised mostly by controlling the distribution and flow of money among the nation's various constituencies. Both political Parties share a vested interest in maintaining a single, unified system or hierarchy by which Power is shared and alternated between the two, and only between the two of them.

War for the USA has long been primarily a projection of Power; an augmentation and expansion of American power beyond the boundaries of America itself. Both Parties are essentially in agreement that such power projection is beneficial to their own interests, and to the interests of the nation as a whole. Since both Parties see themselves (taken together) as representing the entirety of America's political will, their unanimity of opinion in this regard is assumed to legitimize any and all foreign wars that might be undertaken.

To say that US-sponsored wars in places like Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen and so on are defensive in nature, is of course patently absurd. Yet this is what the American public is being told -- again and again and again -- by the leaders of both political Parties, and by the near entirety of mainstream media. To say that this apparent consensus represents collusion among powerful interests both D and R, would be a gross understatement. What it actually represents is the frightening degree of control that corporate and State interests exercise over the collective consciousness of the American body politic.

@sojourns

When will they ever learn? (Speaking of hippies.)

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-kTXBp_2iw]

I think it was the Vietnam war that seeded the Democrats to become hawkish. Republicans were sorely peeved at the hippies and determined to do something about it after Carter. That is when the Dems began to creep to the right began to include more tolerance to not only participating but encouraging military responses beginning with minor, contrived skirmishes such as Granada; brought to you by Ronald Alzheimer's Reagan which put yet more pressure on the dems. Other things poisoned the well also, such as the Democrats never having enough money, so why not cozy up Wall Street where war can be supported indirectly? I also believe that these incidents and others during this time is what solidified the modern day duopoly.

It's a mess.

@PhilK

https://caucus99percent.com/content/did-obama-draw-red-line-syrian-sand-...

Ignoring the Constitution sickens me. However, I don't think it matters if war opponents have time or not. I do not think war demonstrations or speeches change a single Congressional vote. Whatever may or may not have been the case in the Sixties, they ended almost a half century ago.

I don't know much about your author, but I like what he says about obeying the Constitution. I very much do want people who have to run for office every two years to be on the hook for a war vote. However, that is all by the boards now.

As long as the POTUS checks in with the Speaker of the House, the President Pro Tem of the Senate and maybe a few other leaders, as Obama was finally forced to do about Syria, no one is going to worry about war vote. They are so inconvenient when one has to run. Look at how helping Bush lie us into war plagued poor Her both times she tried to be POTUS. No one in politics wants that.

The problem that I have with some anti-war conservatives--mostly libertarians--is that they seem to decide about war based solely on how much it costs. Then again, I suppose I don't really care why they decide against it, as long as they decide against it.

I keep saying that we--rank and file left--need to find a way to work with rank and file rightists on an issue-by-issue basis. Opposing war and holding those who foster it accountable at the polls may be an issue where common ground is possible.

BTW. I don't think giving war opponents time matters.

I usually find more sanity and common sense from Daniel Larison at The American Conservative than from most so-called liberal or left-wing sites. A sample from Why War Opponents Usually Lose:

War opponents always operate with a number of disadvantages, and one of the most important of these is the lack of sufficient time to organize before the war has already begun. With the notable exception of the backlash against the proposed bombing of Syria in 2013, the U.S. often goes to war so quickly before the issue has been debated that there is never a chance to stop U.S. involvement until after the damage has already been done. In that case, the U.S. would have been at war with the Syrian government without any debate at all if the House of Commons had not recoiled from another unnecessary intervention. The lesson interventionists learned from that episode was that elected representatives should just be bypassed, and so they have been. In several recent instances, the U.S. has simply started or joined a war without authorization from Congress, and there is never an occasion when war opponents might voice their objections.

The biggest disadvantage that American war opponents may have today is that keeping out of other nations’ wars is no longer considered the normal and traditional role for the U.S. as it was a century ago. Americans that have grown up in the last three decades would have almost no memory of a time when the U.S. wasn’t actively engaged in hostilities overseas for most of their lifetimes, and few of us can recall a time when the U.S. was continuously at peace with the rest of the world for more than a decade. The extraordinary thing is that virtually every war that the U.S. has fought over the last century has been one that our government chose to fight when it didn’t have to.

I usually agree with what Larison writes; most of the other writers there, not so much.

@snoopydawg

He took the fall because he was an indie by then and on his way out anyway. No Democrat could be blamed.

In reality, Rahm and Obama had settled the structure of that bill with industry lobbyists--individual and employer mandates, no drug re-importation, no strong public option, no meaningful controls on medical costs or on insurance costs. A health insurance bailout bill masquerading as a health care bill. The only truthful part of the ACA's name was "Act." It was not affordable care. Helluva act, though. (Barump bum)

Why would Obama rein in blue dogs? The "pragmatic" Third Way has a lot more in common with, and solicitation for, the blue dogs than with the left. And they enable people like Obama and Hillary to call themselves progressives because, oh, shucks, if it isn't Republicans foiling all their wonderful intentions, it's the blue dogs foiling them. If only they had free reign rein, everyone's life would be all ice cream, puppies and rainbows.

Just like Obama was able to hide behind the republicans obstructing his legislation which is repeatedly stated over and over, the democrats hide behind We don't want to look weak to the rest of the country when it comes to wars. Just another smoke screen.
Just like Obama could have passed his agendas during the first two years of his presidency when the democrats had the majority if he would have come down harder on the blue dogs, the democrats had the power to cut the funding for the illegal wars after they were the majority party in 2006 which they ran on doing.

As for the Russian interfered with the election bullshit and that members of Trump's cabinet met with Russian officials, it's another propaganda false story to get people to believe that the war with Russia is justified. They don't care that the war had been planned long before Russia interfered with the election.

Over at DK which I'm calling the New Red State, they are believing everything that the intelligent agencies say, just like Red State believed the WMDs false stories.
I can't believe that this was written on that site.

The intelligence community is made up of some of the most dedicated civil servants out there; they work almost exclusively to protect the country and its citizens, they do it proudly, yet receive little to no recognition for it.