What is the domestic damage done by a country that lurches from war to war? Chris Hedges proposes an answer at Truthdig.com: countries that are perennially at war get eaten up from the inside out:

It is a state of permanent war that is finishing off the liberal traditions in Israel and the United States. The moral and intellectual trolls—the Dick Cheneys, the Avigdor Liebermans, the Mahmoud Ahmadinejads—personify the moral nihilism of perpetual war. They manipulate fear and paranoia. They abolish civil liberties in the name of national security. They crush legitimate dissent. They bilk state treasuries. They stoke racism.

“War,” Randolph Bourne commented acidly, “is the health of the state.”

Hedges further alleges that Obama is not in a hurry to stop the wars, because it's too much of an uphill climb and it's, in the long run, beneficial to Obama (as it was to Bush):

They support its destructive fury because it funds them. They validate its evil assumptions because to take them on is political suicide. They repeat the narrative of fear because it keeps us dormant. They do this because they have become weaker than the corporate forces that profit from permanent war.