Let us discuss our nation's wars, armed conflicts, etc, from the beginning of our history to today.

Which conflicts do you think were justified in their inception? Which conflicts were executed properly? In which conflicts do you think the intended end justified the means?

Bonus points for lists ITT.

2/1/2017 12:03:32 AM

Morally right:
WW2
Civil War
(although both of these really only proven morally right after the fact, we didn't get into WW2 to stop the Holocaust or the Civil War to free the slaves)

Justified:
Revolutionary War

Slightly justified in a realpolitik sense:
War of 1812
Spanish–American War
Mexican–American War
Gulf War
Afghanistan

Waste of time, money, and American lives:
Iraq
Vietnam
Korea
WW1

[Edited on February 1, 2017 at 12:38 AM. Reason : ]

2/1/2017 12:37:42 AM

absolutely nothin

2/1/2017 6:17:32 AM

Good God y'all

2/1/2017 10:25:53 AM

Helping the grass grow.

2/1/2017 5:05:18 PM

Morally right:
WW2
Civil War (was it? While slavery may have been a motivation for succession, the US didn't go to war to free slaves....)

Justified:
Revolutionary War
Afghanistan

Slightly justified in a realpolitik sense:
War of 1812
Mexican–American War
Gulf War


Waste of time, money, and American lives:
Iraq
Spanish–American War
Vietnam
Korea
WW1

2/1/2017 6:09:40 PM

I believe we would not have functioned at the same capacity in WW2 without first being involved and witnessing WW1.

it was justified in retrospect.

[Edited on February 2, 2017 at 7:20 AM. Reason : Zzzz]

2/2/2017 7:20:02 AM

Moral: American-Australian

2/2/2017 7:41:09 AM

I don't understand the view some of you seem to take to the First World War. Germany was blowing up our people and trying to get our neighbors to invade us. While I don't think they had any special culpability in starting the war, they did plenty to justify our entry. And it enabled the U.S. to advocate (albeit largely without success) for some very moral positions after the war.

WWII was morally right from the beginning. Even if we didn't get into it to stop the Holocaust, we could see that there were dictators taking over shit. Plus the other guys started it, and a big part of the reason they started it was because we took the morally justifiable action of embargoing them after the Rape of Nanking.

It's facile to claim that "we didn't fight the Civil War to free the slaves." Yes, maintaining the Union was the larger part of that, but the abolitionist component was significant and became more so through the course of the war.

Korea was fought in the morally laudable cause of preventing the conquest of one country by a lunatic neighbor, as was the Gulf War.

So in my "Good War" column, we have:
WWI
WWII
Korean War
Gulf War

Then there's a category of mix-bag conflicts. I'm glad that the United States is an independent republic. But the justifications we used for fighting the Revolutionary War were mostly flimsy, and often boiled down to an affluent class grumbling about (frankly reasonable) taxes. We can look at Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to see examples of countries getting their freedom from Britain without need of conflict. On the other hand, part of the reason Britain facilitated those peaceful separations was to avoid a repeat of our fight.

With the Revolutionary War I suppose I think it was not so much moral or even justified, at least from before the fact, as it was inevitable. At that point there wasn't a precedent or avenue for peaceful separation, and the locus of power had shifted too much in favor of the colonies for them to remain dependent. Judging the morality of the war itself, in that situation, is like judging the morality of the weather.

Something similar could be said for the Mexican-American War. It was an inevitable consequence of the balance of power in the region. The justifications were dubious at best, but it doesn't really matter. The same could be said about the fact of the Indian Wars, though not the conduct of them (or of the peaces between them).

Bad:

The Spanish-American War was not inevitable, and as fought was not good. Ditto Vietnam.

I do not think that military action against Afghanistan or Iraq was wrong, but in both cases the execution was so poor that I can't call them anything but bad.

2/2/2017 8:10:48 PM

What about the seemingly impending war with Iran?

Trump and bannon have referenced military action, but Russia is irans friend to an extent and trump seems to want to team with Russia with the expectation they will increase attacks on isis.

Will Russia soothe Iran hate, or will they turn their back on Iran?

2/2/2017 8:27:13 PM

Waste of time, money, and American lives? The War on Drugs.

Why do some folks think our entry into WWII was a choice? Sure there's the conspiracy that we allowed the attack on Pearl Harbor (I don't believe it) but after we were attacked, what choice did we have? We either fought back, or tucked our tails between our legs and took whatever came next. Granted, had Pearl Harbor not happened, Churchill probably would have eventually talked American leaders into joining, but as history stands written, we didn't really have a choice.

2/2/2017 9:36:22 PM

Quote :

"What about the seemingly impending war with Iran?"

Our relationship with Iran has WAAAY more to do with our relationship with the Arab nations in the region (Saudis, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Jordan) and Israel, than it does with Russia. Iran really should be the regional hegemony based on their population and economy, but the US and the Arab nations have aligned themselves to prevent that.

There's also something to be said about our dependence on foreign oil but I don't think that's as much of a factor as is commonly believed.


I don't think War with Iran is particularly likely, unless they do something to start WWIII. But maybe that's not super far-fetched. I heard the AF Chief of Staff say today that the world is as unstable as it's been since the 1960's so...

2/2/2017 10:46:18 PM

Quote :

"I do not think that military action against Afghanistan or Iraq was wrong, but in both cases the execution was so poor that I can't call them anything but bad. "

I would say that initially, Afghanistan was a pretty impressive operation. It was a bunch of SOF, airstrikes, and the Northern Alliance.

Then we decided to try to nation-build the damned place.



Iraq...as envisioned by the GWB administration, it was bad from the start. It was a dumb idea, executed poorly. That said, aside from the fact that Saddam Hussein was a despotic tyrant, I think we were justified in whipping that ass just for a decade's worth of flagrantly, massively violating terms of ceasefire. They had an asskicking coming to them...we just shouldn't have turned it into a takeover of the country and subsequent nation-building effort, let alone one where the phase IV plan was something along the lines of "after we freedom the shit out of 'em, they're gonna be ecstatic and things will pretty much fall into place. Boom. Done."

2/2/2017 11:11:50 PM

Quote :

" They had an asskicking coming to them...we just shouldn't have turned it into a takeover of the country and subsequent nation-building effort"

How do you do one without the other?

2/3/2017 12:52:21 AM

It is a way for Christians to justify killing

2/3/2017 8:54:43 AM

^What does that even mean??

^^ We forced terms in Vietnam without nation building... arguably they didn't have any staying power, but it happened. Also, we could have just disabled their IAD system, and their military force so they were incapable of shooting at anything. I recognize that gets tricky if the Kurds decide to do anything against Saddam's govt, and they have no way to defend themselves, thus you get a civil war similar to what we created anyway, but if nothing else , it would have been less expensive.

2/3/2017 10:11:46 PM

^^^At the other end of the spectrum, we bombed Libya back in the 1986; we made strikes in Iraq in the 90s; Desert Fox was even more extensive, I think.

A number of South American leaders turned up dead (plane crashes, etc) back in the day, too.

2/3/2017 10:36:40 PM

Quote :

"We forced terms in Vietnam without nation building"

We lost that war, and thus weren't involved in rebuilding a place we didn't completely destruct.

Quote :

"At the other end of the spectrum, we bombed Libya back in the 1986; we made strikes in Iraq in the 90s;"

You don't usually power a regime change through bombing alone.

2/3/2017 10:54:05 PM

How was the Mexican-American war in any way justified? The whole chain of events stems from US citizens essentially moving to Mexico, ignoring their laws and customs, going to war creating an independent country with the intent of joining America.

A big part of that because Mexico didn't allow slavery and Americans buying up their cheap land wanted slaves and we simply felt it was our God given right to that land. After Texas becomes a state US troops are patrolling disputed territory with the purpose of provoking Mexico into a war so we had an excuse to attack them after they refused to sell us like 1/3 of their territory for what would be roughly 1 billion in today's money. Obviously the end result was good for our nation and massive land acquisition so in that sense you could say "justified" but none of it was provoked by Mexico without justification and Mexico's response at each phase was perfectly reasonable.

[Edited on February 3, 2017 at 11:31 PM. Reason : .]

2/3/2017 11:25:20 PM

^^ who said anything about regime change?

2/4/2017 12:27:40 AM

im going to go out on a limb and suggest violence/killing people is only ok in self defense

2/4/2017 8:13:57 AM

Quote :

"We lost that war [Vietnam], and thus weren't involved in rebuilding a place we didn't completely destruct."

I think you should review exactly how we ended our involvement in that conflict. Operation Linebacker II which involved conventional bombardment of North Vietnamese cities was a considerable coercive factor in bringing about the Paris Peace accords.

Quote :

"im going to go out on a limb and suggest violence/killing people is only ok in self defense"

I think that's a short sighted philosophy. I believe that violence is morally acceptable in the defense of others, and there are times where it's okay in defense of property. How do you deter violence against yourself or others? What about the threat of violence? i would say that it may be morally acceptable to act against a known threat (including intent and capability) of violence with violence.

2/4/2017 2:57:07 PM

Quote :

"I don't understand the view some of you seem to take to the First World War. Germany was blowing up our people and trying to get our neighbors to invade us."

Had Germany not used Belgium as a shortcut into France, thus dragging the UK into WW1, I'd argue Germany-Austria stood more on the high-ground
in WW1 both morally and realpolitik standpoints.

Quote :

"Korea was fought in the morally laudable cause of preventing the conquest of one country by a lunatic neighbor, as was the Gulf War. "

I'd almost recognize Korea as being "OK" protecting our invaded ally. Whereas Vietnam was outright wrong, we entered Nam to support
a hated dictator simply because he sucked the cock of American Big Business.

Gulf war is very questionable if you look at the background. We used Saddam against the Iranians then got upset when his invasion of
Kuwait interrupted our best interests in the oil "game".

Quote :

"Mexican-American War"

The justification of the Mexican-American war is no different than Russia saying it deserves a big hung of the Ukraine because the Russians
there aren't being treated fairly.

Quote :

"Indian Wars"

Genocide. It's ok when American does it though!

Quote :

" do not think that military action against Afghanistan or Iraq was wrong"

Afghanistan i could argue on simply a revenge or a regional stability standpoint. Iraq was sold to America was a lie and not justified.

2/7/2017 5:49:29 PM

Quote :

"beatsunc: im going to go out on a limb and suggest violence/killing people is only ok in self defense"

Woah woah... that's very radical man, don't go all communist on us!!!

2/7/2017 5:52:31 PM

The revolutionary war would not be acceptable by today's standards. A bunch of people who had been part of the system can't suddenly opt out violently and resort to guerilla warfare. These antics are highly frowned upon by today's society. I'm pretty certain the world would have ended up being a better place without it. The area would be more like Canada.

The civil war didn't need to be fought either. If state votes to leave, you should let them leave. Isn't that democracy by definition? They shouldn't take up arms over it though. I guess thats the American way.

World war 2 in Europe is the only one I can really get behind. Otherwise, just because someone attacks you, doesn't mean you have to join an all-out global conflict against them. A proportional response should be enough. The historical justifications for these wars are probably propaganda and at best, heavily biased/fear-mongered thinking.


Its easy to denounce every war after WW2 though. We had to immediately attack every communist country to create the narrative that "communism doesn't work". Meanwhile, we had to pour billions of aid to their capitalist counterparts to show the world that capitalism "works"

That is pre 9/11 American foreign policy in a nutshell.

Since then, we've been going back cleaning up all of the "bad guys" we created in the process. Most of the suffering in the world today is a direct result of American foreign policy. I concede that you could say the same about most of the extreme wealth as well. They are intertwined.

[Edited on April 17, 2017 at 10:37 AM. Reason : America's Vietnam war ranks 2nd behind the holocaust centers for greatest 20th century evil]

4/17/2017 10:32:51 AM

Quote :

"The revolutionary war would not be acceptable by today's standards. A bunch of people who had been part of the system can't suddenly opt out violently and resort to guerilla warfare. These antics are highly frowned upon by today's society. I'm pretty certain the world would have ended up being a better place without it. The area would be more like Canada. The civil war didn't need to be fought either. If state votes to leave, you should let them leave. Isn't that democracy by definition? They shouldn't take up arms over it though. I guess thats the American way."

are these ideas incongruous?

4/17/2017 7:08:57 PM

Both sides can be in the wrong. Human conflict isn't usually the binary good vs. evil you were taught in school. Notice how the American government presents all of these wars as good vs. evil with the Americans conveniently presented as the force for good every time. It can be difficult to analyse wars from previous centuries but even Iraq is presented that way and we can be certain about the truth of that war now.

4/18/2017 12:17:11 AM

War is absolute hell, and despite it's rare usefulness, I feel unending sadness for our men and women who have died in service of this country, and equally for civilians who have been killed in said hell. Mostly, I have anger for those who fiercely advocate for military action without recognizing the human costs, on both sides of any conflict.

Happy Memorial Day. War is hell.

5/29/2018 3:09:30 AM

Good to hear we're getting out of the Yemen War business.

12/19/2018 2:18:06 AM

Quote :

" I would say that initially, Afghanistan was a pretty impressive operation. It was a bunch of SOF, airstrikes, and the Northern Alliance. Then we decided to try to nation-build the damned place."

I'd like to amend my previous statement a little bit.

Initially, OEF was as I earlier described and militarily, was a success in the sense of quickly militarily routing al Qaeda and the Taliban. That said:

1. I don't think it was mission creep into nation building; I think that we set ourselves up for that pretty early on.

2. we did a poor job of actually annihilating al Qaeda; we killed a number of them, but allowed many of them to escape into Pakistan (who was a mix of unable to fully deliver and interested in playing us from the beginning)

3. Most importantly, we (*) went in with that excessively black & white, "with us or against us" mindset. The Taliban, for example, are absolutely abhorrent and no friends of America, but they also basically didn't give a shit about anything beyond their immediate surroundings. From Mullah Omar on down, they largely even lacked significant awareness of anything beyond their immediate surroundings. I don't think they even had a particular affinity for al Qaeda; I think they had some common ground, but from what I'm reading now in Steve Coll's Directorate S, the Taliban leadership was divided on whether or not to turn on bin Laden/al Qaeda to avoid the American onslaught. Omar himself had no particular loyalty to OBL, it seems, but felt religiously barred from turning a Muslim over to non-Muslims. While we believed what we needed to believe regarding Pakistan (that they were a better ally and less conflicted than reality--i think we believed what they told us rather than what was and always had been plainly evident), we weren't in the mood to accept anything other than total fealty from the Taliban, which was of course never going to happen. Instead of taking what we could get from them and otherwise at least not pitting them against us, we engaged in an unwinnable, mortal struggle against them, over something that was really secondary to our purpose in Afghanistan. If only history had other examples to warn us of what not to do in Afghanis...wait, never mind.


In short, everybody knows we fucked up Tora Bora. Everybody knows we fucked up by excessively trying to nation-build the place, let alone in our preferred image. Everybody knows we fucked up by taking our eye way off the Afghan ball in favor of a needless Iraqi one...

but this latest book I'm in the middle of (Coll is the same professor at Columbia who won the Pulitzer for his previous book on our involvement in Afghanistan from 1979-2001, Ghost Wars, which I highly recommend), it's even way worse than that. We fucked up so badly, so many ways, that should have been so obvious. It is depressing to read/listen to this book and think that we are STILL in that fucking place, trying to accomplish what I think we could have done within months or maybe a year to begin with, had we not been so stupid.

[Edited on December 19, 2018 at 9:59 PM. Reason : ]

[Edited on December 20, 2018 at 3:54 PM. Reason : [u], not [s]]

12/19/2018 9:58:17 PM

not everybody knows any of those things

12/20/2018 8:35:22 AM

We don't wage war for moral reasons, only economic ones.

12/20/2018 11:52:48 AM

What was economic about Grenada?

12/20/2018 1:08:59 PM

Socialism is not compatible with imperialism.

12/20/2018 1:24:27 PM

^^^^ obviously i meant "everybody paying minimal attention to our foreign affairs." Obviously the 3-toothed meth head at the Dollar Tree, or even Joe and Jane Average, tuned in exclusively to football and Dancing With the Stars, would mostly not be familiar.

12/20/2018 3:53:28 PM

Quote :

"Socialism is not compatible with imperialism."

This is obviously untrue. Nothing about the operation of the Soviet economy impaired its ability to rule its puppet states in Eastern Europe. If anything, imperialism is more of a boon to socialist economies by breaking the bi-lateral monopoly problem of two trading socialist states. But, in general, governments love imperialism regardless of how they organize their economies. If your country has a government, that government would love to invade and dictate policy of its neighbors. Full stop.

12/20/2018 4:49:28 PM

Quote :

"But, in general, governments love imperialism regardless of how they organize their economies. If your country has a government, that government would love to invade and dictate policy of its neighbors. Full stop."

I'd slightly reword this to:

But, always, the people running a country love security and staying in power regardless of how they organize their economies. If your country has people running it, those people would love to do anything that guarantees that security and power, up to and including invading and dictating the policy of any competing nation or entity. Full stop.

[Edited on December 20, 2018 at 6:36 PM. Reason : a]

12/20/2018 6:35:34 PM

Stalinism is not socialism. Socialists are not imperialists.

Let me rephrase, though: socialism is incompatible with capitalist imperialism, aka neo-colonialism.

12/20/2018 6:43:38 PM

Quote :

"socialism is incompatible with capitalist imperialism"

Kinda, sure. Of course, capitalism is similarly incompatible with socialist imperialism. But fuck yea, socialism is entirely compatible with socialist imperialism. There is no feature of Socialism which renders it all that difficult to put the words "National" or "Imperial" or any other modifier in front of it. The National Socialists of Germany had no trouble imposing their rule over much of Europe during the war. Their stated socialist ideology was no hindrance. I already mentioned the Soviets.

Quote :

"Stalinism is not socialism."

You called it Stalinism, but Stalin's #1 plank was one-state socialism. Just because the version of Socialism you keep in your head doesn't include Nationalism doesn't make that joiner impossible.

12/20/2018 11:44:57 PM

Quote :

"The National Socialists of Germany had no trouble imposing their rule over much of Europe during the war. Their stated socialist ideology was no hindrance. "

Dude, please educate yourself on socialism before you continue to spout nonsense. The Nazis privatized as much industry as possible and killed actual socialists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims#Scope_of_usage

Quote :

"Non-Jewish victims of Nazism included Slavs (e.g. Russians, Poles, Ukrainians and Serbs), Romanis (gypsies), French, Belgians, Dutch, Greeks, Italians (after 1943), LGBT people (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender);[a] the mentally or physically disabled, mentally ill;[b] Soviet POWs, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox Christians, Jehovah's Witnesses, Muslims,[c] Spanish Republicans, Freemasons,[d] people of color (especially the Afro-German Mischlinge, called "Rhineland Bastards" by Hitler and the Nazi regime); leftists, communists, trade unionists, capitalists, social democrats, socialists, anarchists, and every other minority or dissident not considered Aryan (Herrenvolk, or part of the "master race") as well as those who disagreed with the Nazi regime."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatization

Quote :

"The first mass privatization of state property occurred in Nazi Germany between 1933-37: "It is a fact that the government of the National Socialist Party sold off public ownership in several state-owned firms in the middle of the 1930s. The firms belonged to a wide range of sectors: steel, mining, banking, local public utilities, shipyard, ship-lines, railways, etc. In addition to this, delivery of some public services produced by public administrations prior to the 1930s, especially social services and services related to work, was transferred to the private sector, mainly to several organizations within the Nazi Party.""

12/20/2018 11:58:05 PM

^ I guess you're going to throw Sweden out of the Socialist club too because they privatized a bunch of stuff?

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/business/worldbusiness/05iht-private.4807230.html

But, I mean, it is true. Socialism in the sense of state ownership of the means of production just doesn't work very well. The Nazi's were only really the formidable force they were because of their productivity enhancing capitalist ways. Same with Sweden. Socialism to both of them meant what it does to self named socialists of today: State control over capitalist production. Today the welfare state is called socialism, even though the welfare state has absolutely nothing to do with the commanding heights of the economy. The capitalist economy produces, the socialists of today like the socialists of the 1930s wish to direct and redistribute.

It really is too bad we couldn't find separate words for those two concepts (welfare state socialism vs state ownership socialism).

[Edited on December 21, 2018 at 8:51 AM. Reason : .,.]

12/21/2018 8:50:12 AM

you went from "the nazis were socialists" to "the nazis were effective because they were capitalists" really fast

12/21/2018 9:07:38 AM

Ffs. State-controlled capitalism isn’t socialism.

12/21/2018 10:11:14 AM

^^ I mean, the Nazi's were more than a bit more socialist than the Scandinavian countries are. I suppose I brought them up to poke a stick in the eye of Bernie Sanders' insistence that Sweden is Socialist, when they clearly aren't. We can go back to the definition I like of "Socialism = State Ownership of the Means of Production" if you like, at which point yea, WW2 was a bunch of big government capitalist states fighting it out (with one plausible exception).

[Edited on December 21, 2018 at 1:21 PM. Reason : .,.]

12/21/2018 1:19:04 PM

All of our proxy wars were/are immoral, especially the latter-half 20th century ones. Just about every problem we have today in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Cuba, and Korea are all because two ideologically opposed megapowers insisted the entire world think like they do. I'll even take it a step farther and say Republicans are still winning elections thanks to the lingering effects of the red scare.

12/22/2018 5:31:32 AM

^amen

12/22/2018 9:07:46 AM

^^ even that is an oversimplified way to look at things. Many, many geopolitical issues also stem from the way things were carved up under the British (and sometimes other) Empire. I'm sure if you pull that thread further, it goes back more than that, too.

Wars rarely just happen out of nowhere. There is usually a ton of shit leading up and setting the stage for decades on end, and sometimes longer than that.

12/23/2018 6:57:47 PM