Hi twfowler; Re: "Some of it. But that discription [effete] doesn't accurately describe our military or for that matter many of our civilians."
Yes, we have the strongest (and best) military that the world has ever seen, but no, we're not a warlike nation, or a nation of warriors.
We're a nation of people who care far too much about the safety of our own skins. Everyone is saying "whatever it takes", but they ain't quoting any numbers, dates or figures, and there's a reason for that. The only reason we're so belligerent is because we have become very accustomed to wars where very few of us are hurt, or even inconvenienced.
I was a child during Vietnam, but I remember it fairly well, and the only inconvenience for the vast majority of us was when protesters got out of hand. The 5 or 10,000 of our soldiers that died each year was only a tiny fraction of what we lost to auto accidents.
More recently, our wars have killed fewer people than die by drowning in bathtubs or being struck by lightening.
So sure, we're more than willing to fight. Provided it's not us that has to do the dying.
The last real war (i.e. major land war where our army provided the majority of the allied divisions and fought against a capable foe) this country fought ended in 1865, and our memories are much shorter than that. Even WW2 was a cakewalk for us, with only about 60,000 dead per year.
Look, if it were the case that we will always have a military advantage of this magnitude, then a "war party" foreign policy would make sense. But war is the world's greatest teacher, and it teaches our adversaries how to play to our weaknesses.
Life is good for us, why should we fight a useless war when we can live inside our own borders and get by just fine? We only make the decision to fight when the fight is very cheap. The capture of even a single one of our soldiers makes the front page.
-- Carl |
