As the sole superpower in the world, the United States of America has the unique ability to conduct foreign affairs on a scale well above any other country in the world. With this ability, the President of the United States has the difficult task of determining how, when, and where the United States will use its powerful reach to influence world affairs. This can be done through economic agreements, industrial partnerships, or in some cases, direct and indirect military action. The President, as stated in Article II of the Constitution, “shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States”.[1] With this clause, the President has the ability to conduct military affairs in a manner in which they see fit up to the point of actually declaring war, which is still the responsibility of Congress. However, with regards to the two most recent military conflicts, Iraq and Libya, the path to committing military forces has been very different, much as are the men who made those decisions, George W Bush and Barrack Obama.
Iraq and Saddam Hussein had been a thorn in the side of US and Arab affairs for the better part of three decades by the time George Bush took his oath of office in January of 2001. After the attacks on 9/11, the case for removing this threat was made even stronger, although in the end, President Bush ended up delaying the decision to invade Iraq until after al Qaeda was dealt with in Afghanistan.[2] With the successful elimination of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Bush administration moved its sights to the new “Axis of Evil”, first described in President Bush’s State of the Union address in January of 2002.[3] During the next fourteen months before the actual invasion, President Bush and his advisors laid out a very specific argument to the American people to try and convince them that invading Iraq was the right decision. Without question, the most infamous of these attempts to convince the American people was then Secretary...