Library's review
Whenever it comes up in the news, it's easy to get the impression that this is a recent development. After all, Article I of the U.S. Constitution explicitly states that only Congress has the right to declare war. The value of historian Michael Beschloss's new book is to show that, in the words of Dickens, "'Twas ever thus." This is a very readable examination of the eight U.S. Presidents who presided during times of war — James Madison (War of 1812), Abraham Lincoln (Civil War), James Polk (Mexican-American War), William McKinley (Spanish-American War), Woodrow Wilson (World War I), Franklin D. Roosevelt (World War II), Harry Truman (Korea), and Lyndon B. Johnson (Vietnam) — with an eye toward how they did or did not comply with the Constitution's mandate.
What he found, predictably, was that presidents largely went to war with their own agendas and without asking Congress first, often manipulating events to create situations that "forced" the U.S. into war (see James Polk and the Mexican-American War in 1846) to accomplish goals that were kept secret from both Congress and the public (in Polk's case, the ostensible reason was to defend the recently annexed Republic of Texas; left unstated was his ambition to expand U.S. territory all the way to California). And all too often, presidents were aided and abetted by a weak Congress that shrank from making hard decisions that might prove unpopular with the general citizenry. (Boy, does that sound familiar!)
Beschloss isn't out to provide comprehensive histories of each conflict; he only briefly mentions what we now consider seminal events such as D-Day. But I learned a lot about the wars that we didn't cover much in school, such as the War of 1812 and the Mexican and Spanish conflicts. Beschloss's view seems to be that regardless of whether you view each of those war actions as justified or unjustified, the country would be stronger today if the Constitution's mandate had been more faithfully followed, allowing a vigorous, public debate about why war was necessary and what the end goals really were.
I'll add this, appropriately enough as footnote to my review: This is one book where following the footnotes rewards the diligent reader. Rather than functioning as simple listings of sources, Beschloss crams a lot of incidental, interesting information into those little asides.
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Description
History. Military. Nonfiction. HTML:From a preeminent presidential historian comes a groundbreaking and often surprising saga of America's wartime chief executives Ten years in the research and writing, Presidents of War is a fresh, magisterial, intimate look at a procession of American leaders as they took the nation into conflict and mobilized their country for victory. It brings us into the room as they make the most difficult decisions that face any President, at times sending hundreds of thousands of American men and women to their deaths. From James Madison and the War of 1812 to recent times, we see them struggling with Congress, the courts, the press, their own advisors and antiwar protesters; seeking comfort from their spouses, families and friends; and dropping to their knees in prayer. We come to understand how these Presidents were able to withstand the pressures of war�??both physically and emotionally�??or were broken by them. Beschloss's interviews with surviving participants in the drama and his findings in original letters, diaries, once-classified national security documents, and other sources help him to tell this story in a way it has not been told before. Presidents of War combines the sense of being there with the overarching context of two centuries of American history. This important book shows how far we have traveled from the time of our Founders, who tried to constrain presidential power, to our modern day, when a single leader has the potential to launch nuclear weapons that can destroy much of the human… (more)