Elusive Victories_ The American Presidency at War-Oxford University Press (2012)

332 e lusive v ictories only 20,000. Yet the sobering truth is that Obama and his advisors haggled over issues—small variations ...

i nheriting a b ad h and 333 force based in Afghanistan had infl icted a severe toll on Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership.  ( Th ...

334 e lusive v ictories to keep schools open, and more.  American diplomats had tried every- thing from soothing words to blun ...

i nheriting a b ad h and 335 American offi cials admitted that they lacked leverage to secure, no mil- itary campaign in Afghani ...

336 e lusive v ictories to make. The president instead settled for a lesser goal: the United States would seek merely to degrade ...

i nheriting a b ad h and 337 decision to deploy the additional 30,000 troops to the American people on December 1, 2009. The pre ...

338 e lusive v ictories of such a vast country. McChrystal’s command imploded when members of his staff were quoted disparaging ...

i nheriting a b ad h and 339 service evidently continue to see the Taliban has a useful instrument for influencing political dev ...

340  wars test presidents, perhaps more severely than any other respon- sibility they face. A wartime president bears the burde ...

c onclusion 341 Revisiting the Puzzles In the introduction, I framed several puzzles involving wartime presi- dential leadership ...

342 e lusive v ictories touch the core power of the president as commander in chief to position American forces. In the wake of ...

c onclusion 343 operations in Vietnam. Th ese yielded casualties for no gain. He was much more deeply involved in supervising ai ...

344 e lusive v ictories achieve the national political objectives he set in going to war. To put it another way, there is no war ...

c onclusion 345 did his best to avoid frank discussion of subjects that might alienate significant constituencies, such as the r ...

346 e lusive v ictories expand the war into Cambodia in spring 1970 revived the antiwar movement because the military operation ...

c onclusion 347 terms. For Lincoln, peace-building meant measures to lift the freedmen from their position of racial subordinati ...

348 e lusive v ictories Other forces also limit the control a president can exercise at the end of a confl ict. Domestic politic ...

c onclusion 349 A fourth puzzle is why wartime presidents, even those elected by huge margins, suffer the defeat of their domest ...

350 e lusive v ictories been approved shortly before 9/11: the widening federal defi cit (largely a product of the cut and war-r ...

c onclusion 351 Here, though, the war so deeply divided the party’s ranks as to doom any prospect that Democrats might cooperate ...