"The Democrats were in charge during the wars, they could have refused to enter into those wars but asked congress to enter into the wars. If people keep suggesting that Republicans are always the ones starting wars I just want everyone to understand just who it was that put America at war instead of keeping America out of the wars. Democrats were the ones in charge and they were totally responsible for becomming involved, not the Republicans. " The difference is, for the most part, some wars are needed, some aren't. What if Roosevelt hadn't entered WW2 after Pearl Harbor? What if we had let the Germans take over Europe in either war? It wasn't Democrats saying, "Gee, i feel like going to war today." It was necessary in order to aid our allies. You can't really say that a Democrat started a war, when it was retaliation for an attack on us. Now, I haven't studied Vietnam as much as other wars, but it seems to me that it was a war that was not necessary, and in that case Kennedy should not have gone to war, it was a mistake by a Democrat. I also agree with the war in Afghanistan, as it is a retaliation for an attack on the U.S., but remember, we are warring on certian groups there, not the country. The thing that makes people think the Republicans are war like is war-mongering. Iraq is a very good example of this. Bush did not have a justified reason for going into this war. He used the anger and ignorance of the people of the U.S. to gain support for the war, but overall, this was not a necessary war. They didn't attack us first, and despite what the administration fed the media, they don't seem to have any way to have attacked us. For what ever reason, this is a war that Bush wanted to go into, this is a war that, unlike the world wars, really was started by the president. So, despite who was in control, this is a war that a Republican is solely responsible for.
But would it be obsolete against another developed nation? Imagine a war between America and China in twenty years (and China is rearming and modernising bloody fast), it would be carnage. Like before the world wars, they guessed wrong the forms that those wars would take and both were slaughters.
I guess that this all comes down to justification of fear. I think that fear was justified during WWII, but not so much recently in Iraq. Yet, for all the railing I've done against this war, i hope that the interim government makes things better.
I don't think a conventional war will ever be fought between the US and China due to nuclear weapons. Would either side risk total destruction?
BTW, Vietnam was never technically a war (as congress never declared war). The troops Kennedy sent over were training South Vietnamese, and it went downhill from there - fast. (Oversimplification, but you'll survive)
Spidergoat- what do you mean conventional warfare is not going to last much longer? I see no particular change in actual warfare for decades. Sure, increased availability of NBC warfare will change things a little, but you'll still need men on the ground with guns.
The United States involvement in Vietnam predates the Kennedy Administration by quite some time. http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/vietnam/timeline.htm http://www.moreorless.au.com/heroes/ho.htm We supported the government of South Vietnam in suspending the election because we thought "our" side would lose. How's that for expressing faith in democracy?
Yeah, South Korea was a sort of proto-fascist dictatorship too i think... But if both sides have nuclear weapons, do they sort of cancel each other out? Because neither side wants to risk destructive retaliation. And im thinking a sino-american war would probably be on the Korean peninsula, or less likely Taiwan.
"Spidergoat- what do you mean conventional warfare is not going to last much longer? I see no particular change in actual warfare for decades. Sure, increased availability of NBC warfare will change things a little, but you'll still need men on the ground with guns. " Conventional warfare with tanks and crew-operated weapons and coordinated maneuvers versus guerrilla war or LIC low intensity conflict, which still requires men on the ground, but less sophisticated (and expensive) weapons. I've been reading The Transformation of War, by Martin Van Creveld. What he described in 1991 is coming true.
check your history man, it was Eisenhower that sent the first advisors from: http://www.landscaper.net/timelin.htm
Spidergoat- you mean that it is most likely that the next few wars will be ones of proto imperialism, with the use of guerilla tactics? If so, I would agree. But its only a phase. These things come and go. If things solidify again, as I am sure they will in a few decades, we'll end up back in cold war type situations.
What Creveld describes is the end of warfare between state entities, the end of imperialism (he mentions the gulf war as the last gasp, but that was before Bush & Co. went "retro"), and the return of warfare to the forms it took during the middle ages, before the invention of the state. The threat of nuclear destruction between states will keep large scale conventional wars from taking place.
Errrmm, I cant think of a major war that wasnt in some way backed or organised by a state. (I'm including the papacy as a state.) I assume the middle ages to mean more like the medieval period. About the only non state backed warfare I can think of is the Vikings. And perhaps some of the people who gave Byzantium so much trouble, but they were tribal, so already half way to states. I generally agree about nukes inhibiting large scale warfare, but what about little African countries that dont have them?
Johnson and Kennedy simply were continuing the Cold War policy of 'rollback' that had been established with Paul Nitze's NSC-68 during the Truman administration, the notion that the US couldn't simply 'contain' communism, but must defeat it. Certainly we know in hindsight that the escalation of force was a mistake, based on faulty assumptions, even probably some outright lies at some level, but that's not's what is so troubling. What is troubling is the fact that later administrations seem to learn nothing from past mistakes in history. As far as Nixon ending the war, there is evidence that he successfully threw a wrench into Johnson's attempt at ending the war through talks in '68, by having Anna Chenault, a Republican party 'higher up' with high level connections in South Vietnam, convince Thieu to cancel the talks and that Thieu could get a better deal through the Republicans if they were elected. Wilson kept the US out of WW1 for almost 3 years, but was under tremendous pressure from Republicans in Congress led by Senate majority leader Henry Cabot Lodge, and also Teddy Roosevelt, for the US to enter the war, particularly after Germany broke the Sussex and Arabic Pledges and the Zimerman Telegram was released to the newspapers. FDR had little choice either. Japan declared war at roughly the same time that the strike on Pearl Harbor took place. There was no way a sitting president could have pleaded with Congress NOT to declare war under the circumstances.
