@reflex@retrogaming.social @incompitence@mindly.social Thank you for the earnest response, this gave me the chance to look deeper into Carter's term and it indeed didn't have as many military engagements as pretty much all the other presidential terms. I had grown to view the US military as a state within a state, operating largely independently and on a much longer time scale than American presidential terms. Maybe presidents do have an influence, although I'm not confortable pointing at Obama specifically. I believe he was a quite precarious political position as a Black man in the US, which may have adversely impacted his margin of maneuver (hence the expansion of executive power to somewhat remediate that). I also was aware about the other points you mentioned but I have trouble associating them with the Obamas probably because they never made it a focus of their public interventions.