Obama: The US president who was at war the longest
While Obama came to office pledging to end George W. Bush’s wars, he left office having been at war longer than any president in US history. He is also the only president to serve two complete terms with the nation at war.
President Obama did reduce the number of US soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he dramatically expanded aerial warfare and the use of special operations forces around the globe.
In 2016, the US military’s special forces could be found in 70% of the world’s nations, 138 countries – a staggering jump of 130% since the days of the Bush administration.
Looking back at President Obama’s legacy, the Council on Foreign Relation’s Micah Zenko added up the defense department’s data on airstrikes and made a startling revelation: in 2016 alone, the Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs.
This means that every day last year, the US military targeted combatants or civilians overseas with 72 bombs; that’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day. While most of these air attacks were in Syria and Iraq, US bombs also rained down on people in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan. That’s seven Muslim-majority countries.
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