Barack Obama, war president

There is no real debate over whether Obama is a war president. The question is why he is a war president.

First, war is the health of the state, and belief in war reflects belief in the state. The 2012 Democratic motto “Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive,” can be understood as a Profession of Faith in Government. Government can save all worthy subjects and slay the unworthy. Obama — who bristles at the suggestion that there are limits to what government can accomplish — has profound faith in the state.

Second, personnel is policy. Obama has surrounded himself with pro-war personnel. Samantha Power and Susan Rice are ideologically dedicated to humanitarian military interventions. This humanitarian war impulse drove Obama in Libya, and seems to have motivated him again against ISIS.

Third, conservative hawks have another explanation for why Obama finds himself at war again: He’s too passive, and weakness invites violence. In particular, Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq may have made room for ISIS’s expansion there, and his hesitance in 2012 to enter Syria could have been costly in two ways; strengthening Assad and radicalizing the rebels. By shying from decisive action, the argument goes, Obama has invited war.

But on one level, it may have been inevitable that Obama would become a war president.