Democrats, Republicans, warmongers and wars

I recently read some comments on websites which talked about warmongering Republicans always dragging the country into wars. It seemed to me that attitude is probably a remnant of the protests against Bush's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Strange how those protests evaporated after Obama's election, even though Obama adopted Bush's strategy in toto, and even though casualties have gone up.

Research suggests that the Democrat and Republican parties, in their current form, go back to about the era of the Civil War. The Civil War does not really provide any useful information on this question, since you can blame Lincoln, the Republican, for violating state rights in driving the nation to war to end slavery, or you can blame the Democrats for starting the war to keep slavery. In either event, both parties were directly involved.

Starting after the American Civil War, we find the following wars and incursions:

Spanish-American War (1898), McKinley, Republican

World War I (1914-1918), Wilson, Democrat

World War II (1939-1945), Roosevelt, Democrat

Korean War (1950-1953), Truman, Democrat

Bay of Pigs (1961), Kennedy, Democrat

Vietnam War (1964-1975), Johnson, Democrat, and Nixon, Republican

Grenada (1983), Reagan, Republican

Panama (1989), Bush, Republican

Persian Gulf War (1990-1991), Bush, Republican

Bosnia (1995-1996), Clinton, Democrat

Afghanistan (2001-present), Bush (W), Republican, and Obama, Democrat

Iraq (2003-present), Bush II, Republican, and Obama, Democrat

Libya (2011), Obama, Democrat

One could also include Carter's (D) failed attempt to recover the hostages from Iran, Reagan's (R) bombing of Libyan military installations, or Obama's (D) incursion into Pakistan to attack Bin Laden, but these were primarily one-time military operations designed to achieve specific goals rather than ongoing wars or incursions.

Even a cursory examination of this list gives the lie to any statement that one party or the other is more guilty of warmongering, although, to be honest, if I were a liberal, I would be careful to avoid taking casualty totals into account

It seems like this information would be common knowledge for anyone who has studied a bit of history, but it also seems that some people (usually, I suspect, of the liberal bent) are anxious enough to avoid the impact of facts on their beliefs that they will "revise" history to avoid any examination of actual history. It is important to have the right view of history in regard to questions such as this.