Last Thursday, President Donald J. Trump assembled senior advisers in the Oval Office to ask them whether he could take action against Iran’s most important nuclear weapons site within the coming weeks, The New York Times reported on Monday. “A range of senior advisers dissuaded the president from moving ahead with a military strike. The advisers — […]
People get too hung up on the idea of a single good or bad president having control over US foreign policy, when the truth is that the military industrial complex is a better organized, more competent body that will go to war wherever it damn well pleases regardless of who was the president. Obama flat out did not want to get involved in Syria - there were US troops in Syria before the end of his term. The idea that one president being dumb could somehow foil the plans of the biggest group of war profiteers on the planet is absurd.
Yeah I think the choices Obama or whoever are making are less "what do you want for dinner?" and more "do you want carrots or peas?"
Forgive me for the parenting technique analogy, but the point is there is no real choice from the executive, the war machine has its own momentum and bureaucracy. Players like Bush may have more influence but only because they or their immediate connections are part of that bureaucracy.
People get too hung up on the idea of a single good or bad president having control over US foreign policy, when the truth is that the military industrial complex is a better organized, more competent body that will go to war wherever it damn well pleases regardless of who was the president. Obama flat out did not want to get involved in Syria - there were US troops in Syria before the end of his term. The idea that one president being dumb could somehow foil the plans of the biggest group of war profiteers on the planet is absurd.
Yeah I think the choices Obama or whoever are making are less "what do you want for dinner?" and more "do you want carrots or peas?"
Forgive me for the parenting technique analogy, but the point is there is no real choice from the executive, the war machine has its own momentum and bureaucracy. Players like Bush may have more influence but only because they or their immediate connections are part of that bureaucracy.