> long history of more wars from both parties

Which wars were started by Democratic presidents in the last half-century?

opo 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Depends on what you call a “war” since the last time the US declared war was in WW II.. In terms of military operations, a partial list would probably include:

Democrat Presidents: Bosnia, Haiti, Iran, Kosovo, Libya, Niger, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.

Republican Presidents: Afghanistan, Cambodia, Grenada, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Panama, Somalia, Syria, and Venezuela.

It is outside the 50 year timeframe, but go back another 10 years and you have Viet Nam which caused more deaths than all the rest combined.

	▲	rurp 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Seems balanced when you put them in a simple list like that, so it might not be obvious that the republican started wars cost many, many orders of magnitude more lives and treasure than the tiny actions attributed to dems.
	▲	runako 35 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48109360 > go back another 10 years and you have Viet Nam Eisenhower was a Republican when he committed forces to Vietnam.

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ryeats 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Syria, Libya, Kosovo probably more I am just naming the ones off the top of my head.

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runako 3 hours ago | parent [-]

"started by" here was used to indicate that there was not already a shooting war in progress.

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parineum 3 hours ago | parent [-]

If you want to get technical, the US hasn't been involved in a war since WW2. See how annoying that is?

No more wars means stop putting Americans at risk to kill foreigners.

	▲	runako 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If you're going to get technical, you need to pick apart the AUMF for Iraq. In any case, I personally don't think the US interventions in Bosnia or Haiti rose to the level of the colloquial understanding of "no more wars." This is to the extent that the public of 2024 was even broadly aware of those interventions. Major point is this: in the last 50 years, every GOP president has started a trillion-dollar boondoggle in the Middle East that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths or more (count is still running in Iran, which the President credibly threatens to nuke every other week). Democratic presidents have initiated e.g. peacekeeping missions or the like with definite endpoints and missions. "Both sides" elides all of this as if they are the remotely equivalent. (I'm on record suggesting that the US military should be reduced to a footprint necessary to defend only the US states and not foreign interests. 75%+ cuts in budget as a start. 11 carrier battle groups to ~4, two per coast. etc.)

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zulux 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Vietnam.

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KptMarchewa 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

While Kennedy and then Johnson escalated US support to South Vietnam significantly, Eisenhower started it.

	▲	triceratops 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		And Nixon prolonged it in order to win an election. [1] Regular people would call that treason. 1. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/06/nixon-vie...
	▲	runako 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		This point came up in a discussion of whether the Iran war is the first US war to be started and lost by the exact same team. Vietnam was floated, but they had a few shift changes before defeat was clear.

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triceratops 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That was more than a half-century ago.