You could say we’re bad at war. I know that’ll seem really weird thing to say. But it’s absolutely true. Americans love to fight, and we’re great at fighting. We’re great at making military theatre. But since WWII, we are 1 for 4. Unless you consider Iraq one and two to be part of the same war like the wingnuts. If you believe that, then we are 0 for 3.
First of all, Americans in general don’t suffer from a lack of historical knowledge. In fact we benefit from a lack of knowledge. We are blissfully beating war drums while we have a foggy memory of the tribulations and outright failures of other military campaigns.
Let’s take the knee jerk obsession every last American has to say well "well we won World War II." We certainly helped. We certainly made a HUGE difference. We produced hundreds of thousands of aircraft and armoured vehicles and other weaponry that made a huge difference. But the US did not fight alone. Little Britain fought in Europe and North Africa and in the South Pacific and even averted an invasion by Germany. Don’t forget that the war raged for over two years before we even put a man in the field. Or that the Soviets had killed over a million German soldiers before Pearl Harbor. Don’t forget that it wasn’t just the Normandy invasion that created problems for Hitler, it was half his armoured force and about sixth tenths of his ground forces were already trapped in Russian by winter, Hitler’s obsession to own the oil fields in the south and a resurgent Red Army.
Our role in Second World War was pivotal no doubt. But from talking to wingnuts, it was as if we fought it by ourselves.
So yes, WWII is a giant peacock feather in our bonnet.
But let’s follow that with Korea. A masterful counterpunch invasion of Inchon was followed by a half million Chinese infantry trapping our troops in pockets and driving the rest of the (mostly US) United Nations army south again. This stalemate is oft called the forgotten war. But it does not go into the Win column.
How about Vietnam? We had to have a president spin his plan into a "retreat with honor", and then humiliatingly negotiate for it. Then we left on the skids of helicopters. Does not go into the Win column.
Iraq One. Clear W. We even made money on it. Bush Senior billed it out at $85 million and spent only $80 million. Tiny casualty list in field of fire, massive casualty list in Gulf War Syndrome. So, in many ways, Iraq One was far more expensive that it appeared. It was probably a mistake to keep the no fly zones in place as they made it easier to manufacture a casus beli.
Many wingnuts make the case that we are just finishing the first Iraq War. Not recently of course, but in the first two years of the war, Faux News was publishing this ‘fact’ all the time. If that is the case, then this is the worst late inning upset I have ever seen.
What else does that leave us? Well Granada for one. That was actually a bloody-battle that few realize was formidably resisted by local guerillas. But if you look at the mostly Special Operations rescue, in the scheme of things, if things went really bad, we could still have prevailed. If you involved the whole Division it would be like the 101 Army Rangers versus Club Med.
Panama was also a mostly Special Operations force and it was also a lot harder and bloodier than many realize. But it was the Panama Canal that had always bee under our purview versus a former CIA informer and his tiny army.
Serbia/Kosovo was a multinational effort with mostly an American bombing campaign under Clinton that won. It was not a ground war. It was an airwar that really runed the tide not by bombing Serbian war assets-but by bombing the assets of the billionairs who supported Milosevic. Once we bombed his backer's big concrete factory, his billionaire concrete mogul that backed him pulled his support. It was floating down a river. Kosovo might be considered a win in retrospect. But it will be painted in history as a limited police action, not a war. And we had multinational support- English, French and German and Canadian planes flew with us.
There have been a few more. Skirmishes mostly, US Navy A-6 Intruders sank Libyas Navy in about an hour; F-14s twice took down Libyan jets twice and F-111s killed Kaddafis grand daughter.
At the end of the day we have Iraq II, wherein we are now trapped in a lose-lose proposition. A horribly bloody and confusing bear trap that was set by our enemies and gingerly stepped into by the willfully blind and witless extremists who took over our government.
Most anyone with a three brain cells to rub together knows that there is nowhere this will go but down.
Yet watch the cottage industries we create that celebrate warfare and in particular, our muscular brand of warfare without regard to the fact that with few exceptions, we do not often win.
The Military Channel, to which I am addicted, proudly displays a mix of good programs that give us three dimensional views of historically significant battles. It also show us great footage of 7.62 mm UH-60 guns firing off out of helicopters doors, burlap straps flying, lit cigarettes hanging out of mouths, accompanied by martial music. We see shows that celebrate the combat efforts of US patrols in Iraq within the last few years at the same time we are not allowed to see the caskets coming in at Dover Air Force Base. We see our tanks fire at insurgents and listen to recruits howl and whistle and laugh when our airstikes hit their targets-despite the fact that this same war is essentially lost.
Think about the airshows at NASCAR, and the military appreciation days around the world where US citizens get a chance to look at US military power and feel awed by it, despite the fact that on the actual field of battle, we often come to uncertain finishes, hugely expensive and washed over casualty lists, blowback from conflicts in other regions, legions of injured troops left behind and a GDP that is mostly weaponry.
The final point is this. We spend more on winning on the battlefield than anyone in the world, or everyone else combined. With over 40% of our GDP spent on weaponry and weapon systems, we get less results from our money that comparatively what other tax payers around the world pay for THEIR armies.
I think it’s time for us to re-examine our martial culture from the bottom up and ask ourselves if we are too ready to go to war. Or better yet, see what we really get out of going to war other than a little temporary high that swelling pride makes you feel. Because our ROI on warfare sucks in this country. We do not need the F-22 Raptor. We do not need the Seawolf submarine. We need an Army that is reconstituted from the ground up, starting with kids who have not committed felonies or have serious mental illnesses. We have to see that we have, in the words of General Batiste, "broken the Army and Marines". We need better reasons to pull triggers. We have to stop remembering revised histories and look at the facts of the world and see that war is really not getting us as far as everyone thinks. It’s expensive, and messy, and hurtful, and probably not worth 40% of the richest country in the world’s blood sweat tears or gold.