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

It is a remarkable twist in history that over a period of 30 years the only full-fledged military campaigns waged by the United States have been initiated by a father and son –the two presidents Bush. Yet rather than representing a continuity in American policy, the wars launched by the Bushes have revealed a vast chasm between those who believe the New World should stand as a beacon for global freedom, and those who think that America should become its unilateral enforcer. In the Wars of the Bushes: A Father and Son as Military leaders, historian Stephen Tanner describes the four major conflicts waged by the presidents Bush. He begins with the invasion of Panama and the Gulf war, both of which were characterized by overwhelming force, matching military capability of geopolitical goals with decisive results. Having positioned America as the moral, as well as military, leader of the world, the elder Bush also cushioned the collapse of the Soviet union with diplomacy rather than warface, which may have been his greatest triumph. In bush the son, Tanner has found it difficult to recognize the father. Standing apart from other analysts, he criticizes the American war in Afghanistan, in which Bush the younger claimed a hollow victory while allowing the leadership of the taliban and, most importantly, Al Queda to escape. He then examines the long build-up to the invasion of Iraq, during which the younger Bush divested America of Global respect in order to prosecute a war that had nothing to do with 9/11. The great WMD scare of 2002 is described in all its propagandistic intensity, as well as America’s ensuing invasion and occupation. In Iraq, according to tanner, the United States has undertaken its first war in which it creates more enemies than it can destroy. With engaging prose and illuminating analogies, Te Wars of the Bushes provides a juxtaposition between the father’s vision of America’s role in the world and the son’s sole remaining superpower as an admired nation on the cusp of a Pax Americana, and on the mistrusted head of a disparate Coalition of the Willing. As the American armed forces currently fight their longest, bloodiest war since Vietnam, this book provides a valuable perspective by comparing the presidencies of two men related by blood but not by experience, character, or by a shared view of America’s unique qualities. Tanner posits that the United Sates has recently taken a detour along its path to true greatness. But to solve the problem, he believes, Bush the son need only look back slightly of American policies and principles once held by his father.