Presidents at War

The most expensive war president in American history. Bush launched two major wars — Afghanistan and Iraq — plus expanded counterterrorism operations across the globe. The Iraq War was launched on the basis of fabricated intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. No WMDs were ever found.

The combined cost of Bush's wars, including long-term veteran care and interest on war debt, exceeds $6 trillion. Iraq alone killed 4,599 Americans and over 300,000 Iraqi civilians. Afghanistan became the longest war in American history (until the withdrawal in 2021). The 2001 AUMF that Bush used as his primary legal authority remains in effect today — 25 years later.

Obama campaigned as the anti-war candidate and won the Nobel Peace Prize in his first year. He then bombed seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan. He authorized 563 drone strikes — nearly 10× the number under Bush (57).

Obama's Libya intervention in 2011 was conducted without any congressional authorization at all. When it exceeded the War Powers Resolution's 60-day limit, his administration argued that dropping bombs from aircraft didn't constitute “hostilities.” His own Office of Legal Counsel disagreed. He overruled them.

The drone program killed an estimated 1,700+ civilians, including American citizens killed without trial. Obama normalized remote-control killing as a routine instrument of foreign policy — conducted in secret, with no congressional oversight, and no accountability for civilian deaths.

Johnson inherited Kennedy's advisory mission in Vietnam and turned it into a full-scale war. Using the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution — based on an incident that likely didn't happen — he escalated from 23,000 advisors to 536,000 combat troops. He bombed North Vietnam relentlessly in Operation Rolling Thunder, dropping more tonnage than was used in all of WWII.

Johnson knew the war was unwinnable. The Pentagon Papers — leaked in 1971 — revealed that the administration systematically lied to Congress and the public about the war's progress. Johnson declined to run for re-election in 1968, broken by the war he created.

Nixon campaigned on a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War. Instead, he expanded it — secretly bombing Cambodia for 14 months (Operation Menu) without telling Congress. The bombing killed an estimated 100,000-150,000 Cambodian civilians and destabilized the country, contributing directly to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, whose genocide killed 2 million people.

Nixon also orchestrated the 1973 CIA-backed coup in Chile that overthrew the democratically elected Salvador Allende and installed General Augusto Pinochet, whose 17-year dictatorship killed over 3,000 people and tortured tens of thousands more.

Trump campaigned as the anti-interventionist candidate, criticizing the Iraq War and promising to bring troops home. In office, he escalated drone strikes (removing Obama-era transparency requirements), assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani without congressional authorization, vetoed a congressional resolution to end US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, and dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat (the MOAB in Afghanistan).

In his second term, Trump has escalated tensions with Iran into open military conflict without seeking new congressional authorization — citing the same 2001 and 2002 AUMFs that have justified every war for a quarter century. The pattern continues.

Reagan presided over the largest peacetime military buildup in American history, increasing the defense budget from $134 billion to $253 billion — an 89% increase. He launched military operations in Lebanon (1982-84, resulting in 241 Marines killed in the Beirut barracks bombing), invaded Grenada (1983), bombed Libya (1986), and most notoriously, ran the Iran-Contra affair.

Iran-Contra was arguably the most brazen executive power grab in modern history: the Reagan administration secretly sold weapons to Iran — then under an arms embargo — and used the proceeds to illegally fund the Contras in Nicaragua, in direct violation of the Boland Amendment passed by Congress. When exposed, 14 administration officials were indicted. Reagan claimed he couldn't remember. Oliver North shredded documents. George H.W. Bush pardoned everyone.

The Contra war itself killed an estimated 30,000 Nicaraguans. The International Court of Justice ruled in 1986 that the US had violated international law by mining Nicaraguan harbors and supporting the Contras. The US refused to recognize the court's jurisdiction.

Clinton is often remembered as a peacetime president. He wasn't. He deployed military force more frequently than any Cold War president, conducting airstrikes against Iraq throughout his presidency (Operation Desert Fox alone launched 415 cruise missiles in 1998), intervened militarily in Haiti (1994), Bosnia (1995), and Kosovo (1999), and launched cruise missile strikes against Sudan and Afghanistan (1998).

The Kosovo intervention was conducted without UN Security Council authorization and without congressional approval. NATO bombed Serbia for 78 days, killing an estimated 500 civilians. Clinton's legal justification was remarkably thin — he simply asserted that the president had inherent authority to bomb a country that posed no threat to the United States.

The 1998 cruise missile strike on the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan — which the administration claimed was producing chemical weapons — destroyed the source of approximately 50% of Sudan's pharmaceutical supply. Subsequent investigations found no evidence of chemical weapons production. The strike may have contributed to tens of thousands of preventable deaths from lack of medicine. The timing — three days after Clinton testified about Monica Lewinsky — led to accusations of “Wag the Dog” distraction.

Truman made the decision to use nuclear weapons — the only person in history to have done so. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945) killed an estimated 110,000-210,000 people, the vast majority civilians. The debate over whether the bombings were militarily necessary continues to this day, but the revisionist consensus among historians — drawing on Japanese diplomatic records — suggests Japan was already seeking to surrender.

Truman also launched the Korean War without a congressional declaration — calling it a “police action” under UN authority. The war killed 36,574 Americans and an estimated 2-3 million Korean and Chinese soldiers and civilians. It set the precedent for presidential war-making without congressional approval that has been followed ever since.

Truman created the CIA (1947), founded NATO (1949), and established the national security state architecture that would enable 75 years of global military intervention. The Truman Doctrine — pledging to “support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation” — became the template for every Cold War and post-Cold War intervention.

Eisenhower — the general who led D-Day — understood war better than any 20th-century president. He ended the Korean War, avoided military intervention in Vietnam (overruling advisors who wanted to use nuclear weapons at Dien Bien Phu), and spent relatively modestly on defense given the Cold War context.

But his presidency also saw the CIA's most consequential covert operations: the 1953 coup in Iran (Operation Ajax) that overthrew Prime Minister Mossadegh and installed the Shah, and the 1954 coup in Guatemala (Operation PBSUCCESS) that overthrew President Árbenz and triggered 36 years of civil war and 200,000 deaths. Both operations were “successes” by Cold War standards — and catastrophes by every other measure.

Eisenhower's greatest contribution may have been his farewell address, in which he coined the term “military-industrial complex” and warned that its “acquisition of unwarranted influence” posed a grave threat to democratic government. Every one of his successors has proven him right.

Biden's defining military decision — the chaotic August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan — ended America's longest war but at an enormous cost: 13 US service members killed in the Abbey Gate bombing, billions in abandoned military equipment, and the immediate collapse of the Afghan government to the Taliban, undoing 20 years of nation-building.

Biden then provided unconditional military support for Israel's devastating campaign in Gaza following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack — including billions in weapons, intelligence sharing, and diplomatic cover at the UN. Over 40,000 Palestinians were killed in the subsequent 16-month campaign, including thousands of children. Biden continued to supply weapons even as his own State Department documented potential violations of international humanitarian law.

He also conducted airstrikes in Syria, Iraq, Somalia, and Yemen, and launched Operation Prosperity Guardian in the Red Sea against Houthi militants — all without new congressional authorization. Biden, like every predecessor, relied on existing AUMFs and claimed inherent executive authority.