The Wars of the Bushes: A Father and Son as Military Leaders Book

Over the past three decades, the United States has had only two presidents who excelled at waging war, wielding our armed forces in aggressive, decisive and victorious campaigns. And oddly enough for the world's foremost democracy, these two men have been a father and son. To date, the two presidents Bush-in terms of vanquished regimes-have been equally successful. Yet with a touch of Shakespearean irony, the son has all but rejected the guiding principles of his father and steered America according to concepts of war making unique to U.S. history. This book examines the wars of both men beginning with Panama, the first fully uninhibited flex of U.S. muscle since WWII. In the Gulf War, the first President Bush assembled the greatest international coalition ever seen, and employed it further for humanitarian reasons in Somalia. Perhaps too successful in foreign policy, the elder Bush fell from office when voters switched their attention to his domestic one. Bill Clinton continued his internationalist concept, with a new parallel goal to avoid risking military casualties, until Bush's son, George W., took back the presidency. The younger Bush was shaken on September 11, 2001 by the most devastating surprise attack in American experience. In the ensuing war in Afghanistan, he enjoyed a deeper reservoir of world support than his father had achieved, even as the U.S. military demonstrated a global striking power far beyond that of any of its allies. Having announced, "You're either with us or against us," Bush was soon preparing for a new war on the premise that the U.S. not only did not need a broad coalition of allies, it could act more decisively without them. The Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in March 2003 unraveled the international order that had once seemed so promising at the end of the Cold War. Baghdad fell in three weeks; however for the broader War on Terrorism, the United States suddenly found it had shed many of its allies, even as it assumed a new commitment to hold down 50 million Muslims across half of southern Asia. In "The Wars of the Bushes," historian Stephen Tanner looks at the precipitous rise of the U.S. military since the 1980s, as well as the tactical, strategic and political issues surrounding each of the subsequent wars. Most essentially he examines the disparate war making philosophies of the two Bushes, father and son, and where each may lead America in the future.Read More