I would paraphrase azstrummer and observe that Conservatives tend to be generally fearful, and see threats everywhere (if it's not Communists under the bed it's terrorists in the closet). Conservative pessimism springs from the same root: "Something bad's gonna happen, I just know it".

Fearful people tend to resort to war more than stronger people, and this tendency has reached its nadir with Bush's doctrine of preemptive war. He's so afraid of the world that he feels that his only chance is to strike first. Preemptive war is the coward's way out.

You keep trying to fall back on the singularly unimpressive "what would Kerry have done" line. We don't have to engage in fruitless speculation; let's see what history has to say about how different Presidents have handled war and peace.

I'll incorporate by reference my post above to SDAI-Tech1, focusing on the aftermath of war. It's less important to look at who was in power when a war started than who was in power when it ended.

(read it?)

Woodrow Wilson was a Democrat and presided over the entire span of WWI. When it was over he tried to create what the official biography at whitehouse.gov calls an "enduring peace". He failed due to failing health and--again straight from the official biography:

But the election of 1918 had shifted the balance in Congress to the Republicans. By seven votes the Versailles Treaty failed in the Senate.

The President, against the warnings of his doctors, had made a national tour to mobilize public sentiment for the treaty. Exhausted, he suffered a stroke and nearly died.

As a consequence of Republican isolationism, and under the stewardship of Republicans Harding, Coolidge and Hoover, the aftermath of WWI was characterized by the Great Depression and the festering wounds that created the second World War. That period could only be called "peace" in a very narrow sense.

At the end of WWII, Democrat Roosevelt was succeded by Democrat Truman, who, unimpeded by an obstructionist Republican Congress, was able to craft a lasting peace and a "new world order" to which we owe all of our present prosperity and preeminent place in the world. The Marshall Plan was a stunning success, by virtue of taking the path of generosity over retribution; but I'm hard-pressed to imagine a Republican ever coming up with a solution like that. Generosity is a weakness in the Conservative mind, never mind how often its power has been proven in the real world.

Korean War: Ended inconclusively under a Republican President, and to this day we've had to deal with the problem of North Korea. (It's amusing that you'd ask "What would be be doing about North Korea?" I dunno, Tom, what did Eisenhower do about North Korea?)

Vietnam: Ended in defeat under Republican Nixon, who withdrew us completely from SE Asia and left a vacuum into which rushed such monsters as Pol Pot. Nixon failed to make any effort to maintain US influence in the area that might have mitigated the awful aftermath. Republican Nixon had nothing left to fall back on when war failed him.

Gulf War: Ended short of victory under Republican George Bush I, preserving Saddam's rule to bedevil his two successors. The worst of both worlds: He failed to push for victory, and he failed to create the sort of postwar regime that might've reformed Iraq the way we reformed Germany and Japan under Truman.

Iraq War: ??? Bush II doesn't seem to have any definite outcome in mind and certainly no plan to get there. The smart money would follow the odds and bet on another inconclusive and problematic outcome. As has been observed many times, the war phase was prosecuted brilliantly by the military, but the postwar "nation-building" has been one debacle after another. Like Nixon, Bush can see nothing beyond war.

Looking at history, it's clear that Conservatives are utterly incompetent when it comes to creating peace. It's no wonder that you maintain that war is the only answer; it's the only thing you know. You can start the fights, but you don't have a clue how to end them constructively.

It's going to take a Democratic President to lead us out of the mess Republican Bush has gotten us into.