The Forever War Presidents

Ryan Haylett

You ever notice how every time we get a new president, we’re promised something different—but somehow, the wars keep runnin’ like a subscription you can’t cancel?

Ryan Haylett

Bush came in with his “shock and awe,” Obama promised hope and change—people really thought he was gonna end it all. Everyone’s hugging, crying, chanting Yes We Can, and a few months later, boom—troop surge in Afghanistan.

Ryan Haylett

Then Trump shows up talkin’ about ending endless wars, and what happens? He starts playing Call of Duty in real life—drone strikes through the roof. And Biden? Sure, he pulled out of Afghanistan, but he didn’t exactly turn off the bombs. It’s like a gym membership for death—you stop goin’, but they keep charging your card.

Ryan Haylett

I remember that 2008 inauguration—people were convinced peace broke out just because the guy had a nicer smile. Nope. More boots, more bombs. Makes you wonder who’s really writin’ the damn script, ’cause it sure as hell ain’t you and I.

Ryan Haylett

Alright, let’s talk about the real stars of the show—the military-industrial complex. This isn’t some tinfoil-hat conspiracy; Eisenhower, a literal five-star general, warned us back in ’61: beware of misplaced power. Translation—watch your wallet, and maybe your democracy.

Ryan Haylett

You got Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing—all these companies makin’ billions selling the same missiles we then have to buy again when they get “upgraded.” Congress loves it. They call it “defense spending.” I call it “corporate welfare with explosions.”

Ryan Haylett

And the revolving door? It’s like musical chairs between the Pentagon and the boardroom. One day they’re approving contracts, the next they’re cashing stock options. It’s legal bribery with a flag wrapped around it. Everyone pretends it’s complicated, but it’s really simple: war pays. Peace doesn’t.

Ryan Haylett

Now, money alone doesn’t sell war—you need the right marketing. Fear, baby. Sprinkle in some patriotism, wave a few flags, and suddenly you’ve got a blockbuster.

Ryan Haylett

Remember what happened to them Dixie Chicks? They had valid criticism of Bush, and boom—career evaporated. People treated dissent like it was treason. “Support the troops!” becomes code for “don’t ask questions.”

Ryan Haylett

Presidents love this one simple trick: “national security,” “defending freedom,” “protecting American interests.” None of it means jack-shit. It’s just a way to keep people scared enough to shut up and pay taxes that fund more bombs. Nobody wants to be labeled un-American, so we nod along while the machine keeps humpin’. It’s psychological warfare used against us.

Ryan Haylett

And who were the puppet orchestrators of this symphony of destruction? I hope you're sitting down.

Ryan Haylett

...George Herbert Walker Bush, 1989 to 1993...

Ryan Haylett

Bush Senior kicks it off with the Panama invasion, a.k.a. “Operation Just Cause.”

Ryan Haylett

Supposedly about restoring democracy by ousting Noriega—which, okay, Noriega was a brutal dictator we helped prop up before he outlived his usefulness—but hundreds of Panamanian civilians were killed. And the justification was, once again, “democracy, freedom.” It was about putting the U.S. stamp down in Central America.

Ryan Haylett

Then, the Gulf War. We bring together this massive coalition to smack Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Huge bombing campaigns. Iraqi civilian infrastructure gets hammered. The short-term war was “won,” but then came the sanctions. These weren’t just paper threats—these were policies that starved people out. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children died from malnutrition and disease. Honestly, we rarely hear about that part.

Ryan Haylett

Then Somalia—the groundwork was laid under Bush.

Ryan Haylett

“Humanitarian intervention,” that phrase, gets thrown around a lot. But underneath was always American interests, projecting power into Africa. Humanitarianism and geopolitics, thinly separated by a talking point.

Ryan Haylett

...Bill Clinton 1993 to 2001...

Ryan Haylett

Clinton inherits Somalia and gives us the Black Hawk Down disaster. Civilians got caught in the crossfire when U.S. forces retaliated, and it soured public opinion. But America didn’t stop getting involved overseas—he just picked his wars differently.

Ryan Haylett

Heading over to Rwanda, that’s a whole different kind of shame. Instead of doing too much, the U.S. did nothing as a genocide unfolded. All the “international community” talk got tossed aside in favor of “non-involvement,” and only later did Clinton admit it was a moral failing.

Ryan Haylett

In the Balkans, NATO bombings in Bosnia and Kosovo—those weren’t authorized by Congress, by the way—flattened infrastructure and killed civilians, again using “humanitarian” language. Iraq? Operation Desert Fox: four days straight of bombing, “WMDs” cited long before that became a household phrase under Bush. Meanwhile, sanctions kept cooking civilians in slow motion, maintaining the same policies Bush started.

Ryan Haylett

...George W. Bush 2001 to 2009...

Ryan Haylett

"Bush 2, Electric Boogaloo" takes office, 9/11 hits, and everything shifts gears. The invasion of Afghanistan launches the longest war in U.S. history. The “war on terror” banner meant nearly anything could be justified. Civilian deaths? We're talking over 170,000—and that’s just what gets counted.

Ryan Haylett

Iraq? We invaded on cooked-up “weapons of mass destruction,” destabilized the Middle East, and caused a death toll that, by some estimates, hits over a million. That’s not just soldiers. Those are families, kids, infrastructure—entire lives hammered into rubble.

Ryan Haylett

Torture programs became routine: Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, the CIA’s secret black sites. We got “enhanced interrogation,” which is a sanitized phrase for war crimes. And then, the drones—Bush set the table for that kind of warfare, and Obama would run with it. Don’t forget the Patriot Act. Suddenly, civil liberties are a luxury item. The “forever war” didn’t just mean boots overseas, it meant watching and tracking Americans here at home. The machine was running full tilt.

Ryan Haylett

...Barack Obama 2009 to 2017...

Ryan Haylett

Obama walks in like the adult in the room, promising hope, change, maybe a cease-fire with reality. Instead—drone strikes. Over 500 of ’em. Bureaucrats sitting in office chairs deciding who lives and dies by joystick. Civilians, weddings, funerals—gone. “Signature strikes” meant we didn’t even know who we were killing.

Ryan Haylett

Then Libya—NATO goes in, Gaddafi’s gone, but the whole country collapses into chaos. There are literal open-air slave markets now. In Syria, proxy wars and arming so-called “moderate rebels,” who later join up with extremist factions.

Ryan Haylett

Yemen? We backed Saudi bombings that produced one of the century’s worst humanitarian disasters.

Ryan Haylett

Iraq and Afghanistan? Obama’s deadlines to leave kept slipping.

Ryan Haylett

And back home? Surveillance expands. The war goes remote—outta sight, outta mind. Obama made it easier for Americans to ignore the wars while they scrolled Instagram. Efficient, I’ll give him that.

Ryan Haylett

...Donald Trump 2017 to 2021...

Ryan Haylett

Trump shows up promising to “end endless wars,” and then…drone use increases even more. He relaxes the targeting restrictions, and, predictably, civilian casualties spike. We get headlines about the targeted killing of Qasem Soleimani, and the U.S.–Iran situation nearly jumps off a cliff.

Ryan Haylett

Yemen? Same hell as Obama’s era, still supporting Saudi bombings. Bombing in Syria and Iraq keeps rolling—sometimes without even pretending to have legal authorization. Even the withdrawal promises were fuzzy; as soon as troops started moving out, deployments ramped up somewhere else.

Ryan Haylett

And the private contractors? Oh, they’re partying. The man ran foreign policy like a reality show—loud, impulsive, ratings-driven—but the war machine didn’t miss a beat.

Ryan Haylett

Different tweets, same explosions.

Ryan Haylett

...Joe Biden, 2021 to 2025...

Ryan Haylett

Biden pulls off the big Afghanistan exit, but don’t get it twisted—airstrikes don’t go away. The wars just get quieter, outsourced, maybe automated. What's less visible is the massive fallout: societies shattered by decades of war, economies knocked sideways, and not just “over there.”

Ryan Haylett

At home? We’ve got skyrocketing veteran homelessness, PTSD, overburdened healthcare. Wars don’t end for the folks who fought them; they just come home to fight new battles inside their heads or on the street.

Ryan Haylett

And then there’s Ukraine and Israel — the two giant geopolitical anvils Biden spent most of his term juggling like he was in some kind of foreign-policy circus.

Ryan Haylett

Ukraine becomes this open checkbook situation: billions in weapons, billions more in “aid,” half of Congress treating Raytheon like it’s a charity in need of donations. Every speech is about “defending democracy,” even though half the stuff we ship over ends up on some arms-trafficking spreadsheet six months later.

Ryan Haylett

Then Israel — Biden’s standing there giving the usual “ironclad support” speech while Gaza gets turned into dust. Thousands of civilians dead, hospitals flattened, and any time someone asks, “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t fund all of this?” they’re treated like they’re burning a flag on the White House lawn. It’s the same playbook: moral language on top, military hardware underneath, and the bill goes straight to the American taxpayer while corporations pop champagne.

Ryan Haylett

Biden steps away from Afghanistan, but the footprint just shifts. It’s not that the wars stop — it’s that they get spread out. Distributed. Franchise-model warfare. Ukraine, Israel, Somalia, Syria — pick a spot on the map. The machine keeps running, and Biden just greases the gears with friendlier press conferences.

Ryan Haylett

...Donald Trump, Once Again...

Ryan Haylett

Trump comes back in 2025 like a Pennsylvanian pothole, and everything Biden had on medium heat suddenly gets cranked to high. Israel? He’s not just supporting them — he’s practically letting Netanyahu drive the tank. The bombs drop harder, faster, and with fewer questions asked. Any talk of ceasefires gets spun into anti-semitism. Trump turns U.S. foreign policy into a WWE tag-team match: America and Israel versus Anyone Who Blinks Wrong.

Ryan Haylett

And Ukraine? Forget nuance. Trump flips between “Europe should handle it” and “Let’s just end this war by force,” depending on what side of the bed he wakes up on. One day he’s threatening to cut funding, the next he’s supplying them like Zelenskyy bought the ‘War in Bulk’ pallet at Costco.

Ryan Haylett

It’s unstable, unpredictable, and absolutely perfect for defense contractors, who are probably building gold statues of the guy in their lobbies.

Ryan Haylett

And now we hit Venezuela. He dusts off that old regime-change energy like it’s a greatest-hits track. Starts talking about “restoring freedom,” which we all know is political-speak for “they’ve got oil and I want to look tough.” Suddenly there’s troop movements, naval deployments, sanctions thick enough to choke an economy, and it’s all wrapped in that Trump showmanship like he’s hyping up the next pay-per-view, live from the newly renovated, White House Colosseum.

Ryan Haylett

Here’s the reality check—the “forever war” didn’t retire with Bush, Obama, Trump, or Biden. The machine adapted. The contractors, the think tanks, the intelligence agencies—they’re the constants, no matter the puppet in the big chair. What changed is the economy around it. Perpetual conflict is now Wall Street’s asset, not Main Street’s shield.

Ryan Haylett

Environmentally, the U.S. military is one of the world’s biggest polluters. Bombings, fuel spills, toxic waste—ecosystems destroyed, unexploded bombs littering landscapes. These are the forever costs we rarely tally. Raising awareness? That’s step one. Holding the war machine and the companies who profit accountable? That’s supposed to be step two, but, well, it's always “next year’s problem.”

Ryan Haylett

Next the wars are going digital—cyber attacks, AI weapons, algorithmic “kill lists,” and silent surveillance that makes boots on the ground look quaint by comparison. Quiet wars for power, fought with data and code instead of just bombs and troops.

Ryan Haylett

You wanna end forever wars? Make ’em unprofitable. Stop buying the propaganda. Stop calling it “defense” when it’s a stock portfolio with camouflage.

Ryan Haylett

Don’t fund it, don’t vote for it, don’t fall for the slogans. That’s where real change might start—not when a new president gives a speech, but when we, all of us, stop confusing military spending with patriotism. Until then, we’re stuck in the rerun.