The peace candidate who became a war president

President Barack Obama called for an end to America's "perpetual war-time footing." Now he has ordered the U.S. military into position for an aerial strike in Syria.

With neither a United Nations mandate nor the expected British military support, the Obama administration faces the prospect of undertaking military action against Syria with even less international and domestic support than George W. Bush had for the Iraq war, which Obama voted against.

Once in the White House, he quickly turned the military's focus from Iraq to Afghanistan, which his aides had touted as the "good war" in the fight against Islamic militants.

In 2010, he surged 33,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, but gave his generals fewer troops and less time than they wanted. The last of the surge troops returned home a year ago, and Obama plans to have U.S. combat forces out by late 2014.

Obama sharply expanded the Bush administration's program of drone strikes, and the presidential "kill list" proved effective in taking out al Qaeda militants in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen without putting U.S. forces in harm's way.

In May, against a background of civilian casualties, growing anti-American sentiment and escalating criticism of the drone strikes at home, Obama narrowed the targeted-killing campaign, saying it was time to step back from a "boundless global war on terror." But the strikes continued.

Obama also deployed the military in NATO's bombing campaign against Libya's Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, citing the need to avert a mass slaughter resulting from government assaults on rebel-held territory. His approach, predicated on Americans' war-weariness, was described by one White House adviser as "leading from behind," with U.S. forces supporting a British- and French-led air assault. But the mission succeeded

source  reuters.com