History Buff's Guide to the Presidents (48 page)

The burned ruins of the Capitol stood as a glaring symbol of Madison’s inability to protect citizens during the War of 1812.

There was one saving grace for the Americans. In January 1815, on the Mississippi Delta, the Indian fighter Andrew Jackson and two thousand militia and mercenaries brutally thwarted ten thousand redcoats at the battle of New Orleans (the British attempted a massive frontal assault over open ground). The overwhelming victory transformed the War of 1812 from a tie into a great success, and it instilled a strange new emotion among Americans—a sense of nationalism. Basking in the light of triumph, few citizens bothered to notice that the battle had occurred several weeks after the peace treaty had been signed.

In the War of 1812, several U.S. frigates achieved a modicum of success. Their names would become immortal when attached to aircraft carriers in World War II—
Enterprise, Essex, Hornet, Saratoga
, and
Wasp.

7
. WILLIAM McKINLEY

PHILIPPINE-AMERICAN WAR (1899–1901)

Quick victory against the Spanish Empire brought the United States rather large prizes of war—Cuba, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Foremost was the Philippines—seven thousand islands, seven million inhabitants, with a land area roughly equivalent to Italy. Acquisition of the thousand-mile-long archipelago would mark the initiation of the United States into the order of empires. It would also test the American commitment to the principle of self-determination.

Rather than immediately grant the islands independence, McKinley felt compelled to stay and stabilize the region. His goals were to implant Western forms of democracy and capitalism so that the “backward” and long-repressed Filipinos could rule themselves. For good measure, he also expressed the intent to convert everyone to Christianity (although missionaries had been spreading Catholicism in the region for hundreds of years).
¹¹⁵

While Cuba achieved quasi independence, the Filipinos were rather upset to find the United States bringing an occupation force in 1898. Open rebellion to the American presence began in 1899, and the fighting soon descended into mutual barbarity. Guerrillas conducted hit-and-run operations. The United States established “reconcentration camps” for security purposes (much like the strategic hamlet system in Vietnam seventy years later). Both sides used torture. A common interrogation tactic for the Americans was the “water cure” (similar to CIA “water boarding” during the War on Terror).
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While McKinley was able to defeat the Spanish in less than four months, it took him more than two years to end the Filipino uprisings, and the conflict consumed forty-five hundred American dead. The number of Filipinos killed is unknown, but estimates range from two hundred thousand to six hundred thousand, mostly from starvation and disease.
¹¹⁷

Among the many Americans adamantly opposed to the annexation of the Philippines were the industrialist Andrew Carnegie, the presidents of Stanford and Harvard, and author Mark Twain.

8
. BARACK OBAMA

AFGHANISTAN (2009–)

In June 2010, while Barack Obama was in his second year in office, the conflict in Afghanistan officially surpassed Vietnam as the longest war in U.S. history—eight years, eight months, and counting. Two years later, the Obama administration was hoping that U.S. military personnel would be able to leave—in two more years.
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There would be successes. On May 2, 2011, U.S. Navy SEALs killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in his private compound, although that hideout was deep inside a metropolitan area of Pakistan, a declared U.S. ally in the War on Terror. In December 2011, the American military ended operations in Iraq, though presidential candidate Obama had promised to reach that goal by July 2010.
¹¹⁹

True to his campaign pledge, President Obama switched the military focus from the “war of choice” in Iraq to the “war of necessity” in Afghanistan. Bush never had more than 35,000 U.S. troops in the country. Obama increased the levels to a peak of 97,000 by early 2012.

Aiding them were an additional 40,000 other foreign troops, mostly well-trained and well-equipped western Europeans, plus 130,000 officers and men in the Afghan Army. Their targets were tenacious but modest in number. At most, there were 30,000 poorly armed insurgents, of which not more than 100 were al-Qaeda operatives.
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Yet in many ways, the Taliban and al-Qaeda represented symptoms as much as sources of instability in the region. As dysfunctional as Iraq appeared, Afghanistan belonged in a completely different category, and millennium, entrenched with problems that military might could not resolve.

Trust between the people and their government was a difficult proposition, considering that the Hamid Karzai regime (installed in 2001) had not always conducted itself judiciously; in 2011, Transparency International deemed Afghanistan the third-most corrupt nation on earth, just behind North Korea and Somalia. A traditionally tribal people also struggled to connect with each other, especially since most of them could not read or write; in analyzing the country’s social structure, the CIA estimated that 43 percent of males and less than 13% of females were functionally literate. Hope itself was a rare commodity, considering that even before the war began, Afghans had a life expectancy of less than fifty years and the highest infant mortality rate in the world.
¹²¹

In the fight to save Afghanistan from itself, mortality had become an issue for the U.S. military as well. As the war entered 2012, more than a decade old, over 1,900 American servicemen had lost their lives, 1,200 of which perished during the first three years of the Obama presidency.
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By the end of 2012, the U.S. military had spent more time fighting in Afghanistan than it had in the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War combined.

9
. WOODROW WILSON (FIRST TERM)

MEXICO (1914–17)

He is seen as the tragic defender of peace, the scholar who would rather change the world through ideals than through force. But a closer look reveals that Dr. Thomas Woodrow Wilson happened to be one of the most active commanders in chief the country has ever elected. In addition to the First World War, he sent armed forces into China, Croatia, Cuba, Guatemala, Panama, Russia, and Turkey, among other nations.

For such a studious man, Wilson knew little about Central and South America, where most of his military injections were administered. Mexico especially perplexed him. He consequently became confused when the overthrow of Gen. Victoriano Huerta in 1914 produced a power struggle. In a rush to recognize someone as the new head of state, the Wilson administration chose to back strongman Venustiano Carranza, the archenemy of northern revolutionary Francisco “Pancho” Villa. In retaliation, Villa crossed into Columbus, New Mexico, and clashed with U.S. soldiers and civilians, killing seventeen and looting the town.
¹²³

Pancho Villa (noted with an X) rose to prominence in Mexico. A falling out with Washington led to a massive manhunt by the U.S. Army, who failed to catch him. Villa was later murdered in 1923.

The following American “expedition” to capture Villa lasted nearly a year and failed miserably. At one point, more than ten thousand U.S. soldiers, sailors, and marines were roaming through Mexico, slowly and loudly scouring the countryside in search of a solitary man, who later became a national hero in the wake of the bumbling manhunt. On several occasions, the expedition nearly caused a war between the two countries. Accidental clashes with the Carranza regime escalated into a mobilization of troops on both sides. In 1916, Wilson federalized the National Guard in all forty-eight states and ordered them to the southern border of Texas in preparation for a full-scale conflict.

Fearing the worst, both sides moved toward de-escalation, and Wilson agreed to withdraw. By February 1917, the search was canceled. The effort cost the United States more than $130 million and scores of lives.
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In 1961, the Department of Defense honored the memory of Woodrow Wilson by having a nuclear submarine named after him.

10
. JOHN F. KENNEDY

CUBA (1961, 1962), VIETNAM (1961–63)

“How could I have been so stupid, to let them go ahead?” The question was rhetorical, but Jack Kennedy and close adviser Ted Sorensen knew it was also valid. False assumptions, poor intelligence, underestimation of Cuba’s defense system, and simply bad planning led to complete failure at the Bay of Pigs on April 17, 1961. Kennedy had inherited the clandestine CIA operation from the Eisenhower administration, and when told the attack could not wait, he ordered it to proceed.
¹²⁵

Overwhelming defeat for the Cuban insurgents and the excessive embarrassment for the United States provided Kennedy with a valuable lesson, one he would not soon forget. From then on, the president would be far more reserved in applying the K
ENNEDY
D
OCTRINE
to “assure the survival and success of liberty.”

On December 29, 1962, Kennedy appeared at a face-saving rally in Miami’s Orange Bowl for the Cuban brigade that invaded the Bay of Pigs. When he received the unit’s battle flag, he vowed, “This flag will be returned to this brigade in a free Havana.”
Kennedy Library and Museum

The first test came in civil-war wracked Laos, where Dwight Eisenhower had warned him of a possible communist takeover. Comprehending the high risk and minimal benefits of getting involved in an unstable area, Kennedy opted for an international recognition of Laotian neutrality. Next was Thailand, where JFK deployed a security force of several thousand to prevent leftist infiltration. The operation lasted a modest ten weeks. Then came the potentially lethal C
UBAN
M
ISSILE
C
RISIS
. Created in large part because of U.S. deployment of nuclear missiles in Turkey, the Soviet countermove threatened to end the existence of Washington itself. Rather than push for a confrontation, Kennedy wisely orchestrated a naval “quarantine” of incoming Soviet ships, a less belligerent maneuver than a blockade (an internationally recognized act of war).

For a president who promised to “pay any price, bear any burden,” he was showing considerable restraint—until Vietnam. In 1961, his administration was pumping in millions of dollars and hundreds of advisers to buttress the teetering regime of right-winger Ngo Dinh Diem. By 1963, the cash flow was into the billions, and a few hundred advisers had turned into more than fifteen thousand. Kennedy officials also permitted the ousting of Diem, who was overthrown and assassinated on November 2, 1963. When communist leader Ho Chi Minh heard of the destabilizing coup, he purportedly said, “I can scarcely believe the Americans would be so stupid.”
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In 1955, Ngo Dinh Diem rigged the South Vietnamese elections and won the presidency with nearly 100 percent of the vote. In Saigon, he took over 130 percent. The following year, Senator Jack Kennedy called Vietnam “the cornerstone of the Free World in Southeast Asia.”