WWII had no viable alternative. Wars since then have been optional.
Sarcasm noted, but yes, let's check the intelligence before we go off on another Gulf of Tonkien incident war. You don't (shouldn't anyway) go to war lightly.
If that's the objective, then let's be up front about it.
And when the objective has been met, let's go home.
Just what was the objective in Iraq, anyway?
Then, why is it that the "police action" in Vietnam was never called a "war"?
The war in Iraq was at least called that, but there was no commitment on the part of the people of the United States to attack Iraq.
(Had to shorten, sorry. It wouldn't post.) pure democracy in which every single citizen exercises a complete veto over major foreign policy decisions? No thanks.
Agreed. Intelligence upon which major decisions are based should be as thorough and as rigorously tested as possible, time permitting.
concur
Sure. But hitting a ball requires follow through. Simply plucking a dude, saying "well, you're in charge now, don't forget to be a (d)emocrat and respect women and stuff like that!" isn't actually achieving the goal anything other than nominally. It's planning to fail.
See that earlier bit about regime replacement? US National policy since the Clinton era.
Funny. I google "Vietnam War" and all sorts of hits come up. It looks like people got purple hearts for it, we authorized funds for it... there's even a war memorial for it.
In May of 2003, no less than 79% of Americans thought the war was Justified. You can't get 79% of Americans to agree that ice cream is delicious. It was authorized in a bi-partisan nature by both Houses of Congress and carried out by a (yes) duly elected Executive. :shrug:
time in history means nothing it happened they did it. there for to point it out should not get anyone upset...Yes, they did. A loooooong time ago. But not exactly this....burning a captured man who poses no threat. It's that the timing was bad, and he failed to point out the here and now of the ISIS actions towards innocent people.
Of course, a pure democracy in which every single citizen exercises a complete veto is unworkable regardless of the issue being decided. That's why we have a Constitution that names the commander in chief and gives the power to declare war to Congress.
No better options... I suppose you could say that. A last and final resort would be better put. We don't go to war except as a last resort, but when we do, we go all the way to win. In WWII, the alternative to war was to let the Imperial Japanese and their allies, the Nazis, to take over the world, which would no doubt have resulted in a war between those two powers eventually. We tried to stay out of it, but were faced with a last resort decision.
In the civil war, the option was to allow the states to decide whether or not to stay in the union. Are the states now forced to be a part of the US whether they want to or not? It appears that they are.
Going to war is like going in for major surgery. It's the last resort, could be fatal, is bound to be painful and costly, but may be the best alternative.
If the goal is nation building, then that's true. If that is the goal, then let's say up front that we plan to go in, stay in for decades, and build a democratic nation. It may take a hundred years, as McCain finally said it might, but if that's really the goal, let's go in with that in mind.
Yep. Nowadays, it's referred to as the war in Vietnam. At the time, it was not officially called a war, as it was unconstitutional and the architects of the war knew it.
Yes, that's true. A vast majority of Americans thought that a war that was only going to last for six weeks or less and in which we'd be greeted as liberators was a good idea. Moreover, we couldn't allow a loose cannon like Saddam to develop nuclear weapons, could we?
That doesn't work either, you require a "or what". A last resort in order to avoid X. Otherwise you are left (see above) with no situation in which fighting is legitimate. You have to define the X if you want to describe war as the last option that one pursues prior to acceding to it.
It's like saying "Well, war is still a better option". In some cases (than enslavement, than death, than allowing Japan to attack us without response, than allowing Germany to dominate Europe) that can be true. But you have to lay out the than if you want to have an honest sentence. Otherwise war becomes superior to everything, just as in your formulation it becomes inferior to everything.
The Vietnam War has more in common than the Korea War than the Iraq War in terms of "better or worse than". You had a northern, Communist neighbor explicitly intending to conquer and absorb it's more western-leaning southern neighbor. In both cases the answer was that war was better than that, but we were successful in our efforts in Korea, while we were unsuccessful in Vietnam. But people take the later loss of Vietnam (and both wars were unpopular) to mean that somehow failed results must flow from failed intentions. That's no more the case in Vietnam than it is that our successful efforts in Korea indicate that our better than was correct in the latter.
True, but letting the southern states leave and slavery continue was a viable option. We chose otherwise, and I, for one, am glad that we did.
gain, "last resort" is a cliche that is meaningless. But I like the "surgery" analogy.
The question of time should be weighed against commitment. For example, we don't have very many troops in Japan now making sure that they remain a democracy (we have plenty making sure that North Korea and China don't go full nutso). Ditto Germany. Had we remained committed in Iraq, we would have required a relatively light footprint to ensure that AQI/ISIL wasn't able to revive in country and to give us the credibility to shepherd the continuing power-sharing between Sunni, Shia, and Kurd. We lose very few people in South Korea these days, despite those two nations still officially being at war. Committing to a longer tail-end doesn't mean that one will be required to engage in large combat operations ad infinitum.
Congress authorized it, the President led it. I think you would have a hard case to make that it was unconstitutional.
Hm. Where is the polling that says a vast majority thought we would only be there for 6 weeks?
he was just pointing out a fact of historyThey did, and they have no merit on anything going on at the present moment. If anything they undermine the threat posed to the West by ISIS. Simple as that.
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