"Democrat Presidents Start Wars"

Back in 1964 I was a junior (third-year student) at Amherst College in Massachusetts.  There was a campaign for President that year between Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, and Barry Goldwater of Arizona, a Republican.  I remember being appalled to learn that my mother Carol Brueggeman McDougall (1914-1968) was supporting Goldwater.  "Why in the world would you do that," I asked.  "He is talking about nuking people back to the Stone Age," I said.*

Carol Brueggeman McDougall, 1914-1968

Carol (who preferred we call her "Carol," rather than "Mother") answered that she had four sons, three of whom had reached draft age (18), or soon would, "And Democrat Presidents start wars."

In her lifetime, it had been all too true.

President Woodrow Wilson had run for re-election in 1916 on the slogan, "He kept us out of war," but in 1917 committed huge American forces to the bloody battlefields of World War I.  Some 116,500 (Wikipedia) Americans had died "over there."

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, waited for the attack on Pearl Harbor, in order to ensure national unity in taking us into war in 1941. There is evidence that thanks to our code-breakers, he and Secretary of War Stimson knew the attack was imminent, but did not warn Admiral Kimmel in Hawaii on the night of December 6th, preferring the resulting surprise attack on an unsuspecting Sunday morning Navy base to increase the national outrage. (Tolland, Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath) In World War II, America lost over 405,000, with over 670,000 more wounded.

President Harry S. Truman, a Democrat, took us into the Korean Conflict. We lost 36,500 killed.

After that set of observations, my mother's opinion was understandable.  But, to my satisfaction, the country repudiated Goldwater as an apparent war-monger, and re-elected Johnson.

But, it had been President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, who took us into Vietnam, and it was his successor Lyndon B. Johnson, also a Democrat, who used the discredited excuse of an attack on a U.S. Navy ship in the Gulf of Tonkin to justify the sending of a force of over 500,000 into the Vietnam War.  The names of those lost there number 58,209, most carved into a tragic black-marble monument on the Mall in Washington.

So, what?  Wasn't it the Bushes, Republicans, who have taken America into wars most recently?  Yes.

President George H. W. Bush, a Republican, took us into "The Gulf War," to free Kuwait from occupation by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. A total of 294 Americans died in that action (including the Navy fighter pilot son of my HBS friend and section-mate, Major Gerald (Nail 55) Dwyer. who had been a forward air controller (FAC) in Vietnam.  That Gulf War lasted only about ten days.

George W. Bush, also a Republican, took us into Afghanistan following the al-Qaida terrorist attacks on the U.S. Mainland of September 11th, 2001.  We are still fighting there, and have lost a total of fewer than 3000 American lives there.

Then, on highly questionable evidence of Iraq having "weapons of mass destruction," "W." chose to invade Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein.  The war was over quickly, though to my mind, America grossly mishandled the aftermath. Had we the industries of post-WWII to call on, Bush could have sent in Westinghouse and GE and had the electricity on for the vast majority of Iraqis within six months.  Rebuilding would have gone swiftly, and the country might have seen the benefits of modernity. But as it was, the process dragged on for years, and ancient ethnic hostilities regained the population's mind.  Hence, the present nightmare of ISIS invasion, and ongoing Sunni-Shia-Kurdish strife.  Still, in all, over ten or more years, American deaths in Iraq total only about 4,500.

This chart from the Wikipedia link is a telling one:

Wars ranked by total number of U.S. military deaths
Rank War Years Deaths Deaths per Day US Population in First Year of War Deaths per Population 1 American Civil War 1861–1865 625,000 420 31,443,000 1.988% (1860) 2 World War II 1941–1945 405,399 297 133,402,000 0.307% (1940) 3 World War I 1917–1918 116,516 279 103,268,000 0.110% (1920) 4 Vietnam War 1961–1975 58,209 11 179,323,175 (1960) 0.030% (1970) 5 Korean War 1950–1953 36,516 45 151,325,000 0.020% (1950) 6 American Revolutionary War 1775–1783 25,000 11 2,500,000 0.899% (1780) 7 War of 1812 1812–1815 15,000 15 8,000,000 0.207% (1810) 8 Mexican–American War 1846–1848 13,283 29 21,406,000 0.057% (1850) 9 War on Terror 2001–present 6,717 1.57 294,043,000 0.002% (2010) 10 Philippine–American War 1899–1902 4,196 3.8 72,129,001 0.006% (1900)

In sum, over the past 100 years, wars entered by the U.S.A. under Democrat Presidents have cost some 616,000 American lives, while those started under Republican Presidents have cost under 8,000 American lives.  Carol seems to have had a point.

So today, as I see American advisors going back into Iraq, and American air power in use there, with a Democrat President with poor job approval ratings especially in terms of his foreign policies, and with a midterm election approaching wherein the Democrats are in danger of losing their majority in the Senate, I have to wonder. Might the President be prone to escalating our role in the Middle East for domestic political purposes?

The longer I live, the more I come to respect the wisdom of my beautiful and loving mother. May God rest her soul.
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*President Johnson, formerly the Vice President under John F. Kennedy, was a Texan who had held the Presidency since 22 November 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.  Johnson won re-election in a landslide after his campaign ran ads such as this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDTBnsqxZ3k&feature=youtu.be