The clip has gained some infamy in retrospect, but back then, it was no big deal. We had just completed the invasion of Iraq, Bush’s approval rating hovered around 70 percent, and we were on our way to dumping $5 trillion and just under 7,000 American lives into a series of failed conflicts.

Stories of how Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld manipulated Bush abound, but Bush was naturally no dove himself. “Somebody has got to be risk averse in this process … because I’m sure not,” he said to a group of advisors in 2007.

With the current administration, we no longer have a top brass that relies on career military men and Dick Cheney to provide restraint—and yes, we have someone who may draw on his intellectual experiences as a law professor, rather than just his “literary sensibilities,” however adept they may be.

Often this has meant moderate, sage decisions to preserve American life and money—opening limited diplomatic channels in the process—rather than re-plunging our nation into unwinnable conflicts, in which we attempt to confront social problems with military force. Often it’s meant refraining from what President Obama calls the “whack-a-mole” strategy of military intervention.

“The Pentagon was used to getting what it wanted,” the president recently said to the New Yorker. Now, Americans have a source of pushback.

Apparently, that’s a cause of irritation for Brooks, Petraeus, Mullen, Gates, Krauthammer, and a slew of pundits and military men keen to forget the past decade. 

But as for me, I’m pretty thankful for it.

 

J. Gram Slattery ’15, a Crimson editorial writer, is a social studies concentrator. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays. Follow him on Twitter @G_Slattery.