> He’s likely to show what a swaggering macho bigshot he is by going to war. <
That’s a real possibility. Bill Clinton once said that his biggest regret was that he was not a war president. All the great presidents (Washington, Lincoln, FDR) ran wars, and Clinton regretted that he wasn’t able to join that group.
Clinton did get involved in the bombing of Kosovo. But I guess Kosovo wasn’t a big enough war for him.
Anyway, only one recent president didn’t aspire to be a great “war president”. And that was of course Donald Trump.
The closest he came was the "Black Hawk Down" and he F'ed that up.
The nation lost some dedicated patriots in the line of duty: of course, Clinton blamed it on Secretary of Defense Les Aspin.