In 2008, Barack Obama won the US presidency, in part, by campaigning against the seemingly perpetual wars of George W. Bush in Afghanistan and Iraq. Slowly, Obama did end the Iraqi war in 2012. But he adopted the Afghan war as his own and pushed a military "surge" to gain back ground against the Taliban that Bush had lost in 2002.

Of course, after nearly five years, Obama is ending the Afghan war as well.

American troops are handing over responsibility for internal security to Afghan troops, and the US should be out of the country by 2014.

Speaking in Berlin on June 19, 2013, Obama showed, however, that he was still able to learn the lessons of history. Before a crowd of 6,000, Obama elucidated his once-and-future foreign policy on warfare. That is -- a policy against perpetual war.

"For over a decade, America has been at war," said Obama. "Yet much has now changed over the five years since I last spoke here in Berlin. The Iraq war is now over. The Afghan war is coming to an end. Osama bin Laden is no more. Our efforts against Al Qaeda are evolving." That word "evolving" shows that Obama isn't giving up on the war on terror, just that he's changing his mind on some things.

Madison Was Right

Obama said that he consulted the past as he made his decisions. "I drew inspiration from one of our founding fathers, James Madison, who wrote, 'No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare'," said Obama.

"James Madison is right," he continued, "which is why, even as we remain vigilant about the threat of terrorism, we must move beyond a mindset of perpetual war."

Obama was right. Madison and the other Founding Fathers knew that mankind has a propensity for war, perhaps a predisposition for it. Part of the rationale American revolutionaries used to break from European monarchical government was John Locke's and Thomas Paine's arguments that monarchies fought wars without regard for the effect on the public.

The authors of the Constitution had been through the eight-year-long American Revolution; they had seen war weariness set in the public; they had seen war drain way what little national treasure the American states had. While warfare exists on the extreme right of any nation's foreign policy, the Founding Fathers also knew that future wars could do inadvertent harm to the republic.

That's why they made war-making difficult. They put the decision to go to war in the hands of Congress, not the president, so it could be a slow, deliberative process. They envisioned a small army, paid for at the discretion of that same Congress.

Had the Founding Fathers been alive in 1973, at the end of that other divisive, seemingly endless war in Vietnam, they would have applauded Congress' attempts to take war-making powers back with the War Powers Act. They would also be angered over the attempts of every president since then to circumvent that Act.

Wisdom From Washington

George Washington would have told Obama the same thing. Washington had been both on the battlefield and in the presidential office. He knew some wars had to be fought; they also needed to be ended quickly. Prolonged wars, he knew, led to "overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty."

Washington also urged Americans to guard against fiery attitudes that could provoke wars. "The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim," said Washington.

Adams and Jefferson, Too

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams (neither a Founding Father, since they did not help draft the Constitution) also had similar thoughts.

Jefferson wrote much on a variety of governmental topics. His thoughts on war are summed up here: "Determined as we are to avoid, if possible, wasting the energies of our people in war and destruction, we shall avoid implicating ourselves with the powers of Europe, even in support of principles which we mean to pursue. They have so many other interests different from ours, that we must avoid being entangled in them. We believe we can enforce these principles as to ourselves by peaceable means, now that we are likely to have our public councils detached from foreign views.

Note that, in Jefferson's time, Europe was the only other place of real political consequence to the US. He believed, as did Washington, that warfare with Europe also entangled the US in Europe's myriad of political problems. That was something the US best avoided. (Hmmm, sounds like beginning a war in Iraq then getting involved in a Sunni-Shi'ite struggle.)

Of course, any war means building up national power, then entrusting that power be used judiciously. Perhaps John Adams put it best, saying "Power must never be trusted without a check."

Today's Practical Realities

The world of the Founding Fathers, of course, was not as complicated as today's. They never envisioned a World War II, or an atomic age, or global, digital interconnectedness. Their caution is still valid, however.

Obama said his decisions against perpetual war mean "redoubling our efforts to close the prison at Guantanamo. It means tightly controlling our use of new technologies like drones. It means balancing the pursuit of security with the protection of privacy."

"I'm confident that that balance can be struck," said Obama. "I'm confident . . . we can keep each other safe while at the same time maintaining those essential values for which we fought. "

<sub>Sources:

George Washington's Farewell Address. Accessed June 21, 2013.

John Adams Quotes. Accessed June 21, 2013.

Thomas Jefferson Quotes On Politics. Accessed June 21, 2013.

White House. Obama's Speech At Brandenburg Gate, June 19, 2013. Accessed June 21, 2013.</sub>