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Here’s how much of your life the United States has been at war
- phyalow 11y ago"We've always been at war with Eastasia".
- erdojo 11y agoThis is not true. The US hasn't been at war since WWII. Everything since has been a conflict. Even Vietnam.
- tedunangst 11y agoIt's too bad the article didn't say "Using somewhat subjective definitions of "at war"".
- positr0n 11y ago"Using somewhat subjective definitions of "at war" -- Korea counts but Kosovo doesn't in our analysis, for example"
- staunch 11y agoVietnam meets anyone's definition of war.
- kazazes 11y agoExcept United States' technical definition of war, which must be authroized by Congress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_Unit...
- staunch 11y ago> However, that passage provides no specific format for what form legislation must have in order to be considered a "declaration of war" nor does the Constitution itself use this term.
- hudibras 11y agoFurthermore, there's no doubt that the U.S. can be at war without an official declaration by Congress: those instances when another country formally declares war on the U.S. first. For example, the U.S. was officially at war with Japan from 7-8 December 1941, for a few hours with Germany and Italy on 11 December following their declaration of war against the U.S., and from 13 December 1941 to 6 June 1942 against Bulgaria. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_declaration_of_war_upon_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_declaration_of_w... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_declaration_of_war_upon_Germany_(1941) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_declaration_of_wa... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_declaration_of_war_upon_Bulgaria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_declaration_of_wa...
- hudibras 11y agoThe American Civil War doesn't count either, then?
- MWil 11y agoIt would be rare to see any civil war count as anything other than infighting. The American Civil War was considered an insurrection by the victor (Lincoln), thus that's what it'll go down as in the history books.
- lawnchair_larry 11y agoSo it's an illegal war. Still a war.
- Symmetry 11y agoNo, Congress explicitly authorized all the conflicts the article is talking about.
- mpyne 11y agoDebates like these are why international law now tends to speak of 'armed conflict' instead of 'war'. Certainly the casualty count on both sides makes Vietnam count as a 'war'. And yet, Congress actually declaring a state of war would have given Presidents Kennedy or Johnson vast and sweeping powers, which was something that Congress would be loath to do when the President was already able to kill Commies sufficiently well by simply letting him engage in 'armed conflict' without the state of 'war'.
- ScottBurson 11y agoHow could we be at war? We don't even have a War Department anymore.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- tedunangst 11y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Janus_%28Roman_Forum%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Janus_%28Roman_Forum%...
- rbehrends 11y agoOdd that they don't seem to count the Cold War. I understand that their measure of what they count as a war is subjective, but surely the Cold War impacted the average person's life at least as much as the War on Terror and had a significantly bigger economic impact.
- walterbell 11y ago> Young Americans have lived in a country at war for almost their whole lives, but they have to be reminded of it. This statement would benefit from a historical chart of journalism practices in war reporting.
- angersock 11y agoThere's something more to it, though. America has such a massive commercial and industrial apparatus (regardless of what anybody trying to puff up the Chinese or Russians might say) that we have effectively made it entirely possible to maintain a relatively high state of war without the general economy really ever feeling it. In concert with this, the clever manipulation of the populace by both mainstream media, government agencies, and also by internet news outlets has allowed the populace to at once constantly fear for their safety while never actually building to the point of questioning why, exactly, the same officials and policies are held day in and day out. This isn't the matter of conspiracies, mind you, it's simply business. The utterly terrifying thing is that, in the meanwhile, all of us nice techies have been training people to accept ubiquitous surveillance and even outright writing the tools ourselves. And so, the credible foreign enemies gone, we see all this apparatus beginning to turn inwards.
- walterbell 11y agoCan us nice techies put our minds towards a non-violent economic migration plan for the entire military-industrial complex :) Other industries are regularly lectured on the merits of adapting to a changing economy.
- meatysnapper 11y agoThe best way to think of the military industrial complex is a giant social and corporate welfare program. Just like there are prison towns, where the entire non-imprisoned population depends on the prisoners for jobs, there are entire swaths of our country dependent on military bases, contractors, etc.
- MWil 11y agoActually, because Congress or the President have not yet acted, we have been in a period of war since 1990. http://www.benefits.va.gov/pension/wartimeperiod.asp http://www.benefits.va.gov/pension/wartimeperiod.asp source: am Veteran/Military lawyer
- drawkbox 11y agoGood information, so essentially the Gulf War never ended, and war powers have been active since 1990. > Mexican Border Period (May 9, 1916 – April 5, 1917 for Veterans who served in Mexico, on its borders, or adjacent waters) > World War I (April 6, 1917 – November 11, 1918) > World War II (December 7, 1941 – December 31, 1946) > Korean conflict (June 27, 1950 – January 31, 1955) > Vietnam era (February 28, 1961 – May 7, 1975 for Veterans who served in the Republic of Vietnam during that period; otherwise August 5, 1964 – May 7, 1975) > Gulf War (August 2, 1990 – through a future date to be set by law or Presidential Proclamation) That makes the Gulf War the longest war combined with the terror wars from the article (2001-present). We are only 15 years into this century and already have seen as much war as last century which included the world wars. I guess perpetual war has already started.
- abecedarius 11y agoSo the durations increased monotonically, except for WWII as kind-of-surprisingly defined to last through 1946 making it edge out Korea. I didn't expect such a simple pattern.
- barsonme 11y ago> But that state of war, we are told (I am too young to know better) feels different than America during World War II... Whenever my dad or grandparents would talk about war, they'd always mention how less involved our current wars are. During those wars, it was an all-out effort on the homefront and you were constantly reminded that you were under attack. It's crazy how shut-off we are from current conflicts because of 1) the scale, and 2) the distance. Even though the news _constantly_ reported on the Iraq War and the conflicts over in the Middle East, it wasn't something I thought about while I was growing up. I wonder how much more respect our soldiers would see, and how less willing we'd be to go to war if we actually felt impacts day-to-day. (E.g., rationing, everybody knowing somebody overseas, women taking over factories, etc.)
- harryh 11y agoThe fact that the conflicts of today are much much smaller (by any measure you choose to use) than those of last century is a WONDERFUL THING. It's not crazy. It's AWESOME. Fewer people are dying or being injured. It's costing less money. Fewer people's lived are impacted. It's one of the biggest areas of progress for mankind. Celebrate it!
- angersock 11y agoAs shown elsewhere, especially from the American side, this is simply not true. Your assertion about fewer people's lives being impacted is also quite false--just look at any airport on holiday. This is no progress at all. Instead, we've gotten to the point where we can maintain any number of flashpoints we like, at any time, with any amount of media coverage desired, and all without ever having to have a useful policy discussion about it with our citizens. The thing about the large wars of the past? After a while the citizenry lost their taste for it, because it cost them directly. Our current state of affairs is, sadly, not evolving in that direction.
- harryh 11y agoHaving to trudge through slightly more annoying security is vastly different than 400,000 Americans (give or take) that died in combat during WW2. I by no means am saying things are perfect, but if you can't see progress in this chart than you're holding your hands over your eyes: http://d35brb9zkkbdsd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Pinker.jpg http://d35brb9zkkbdsd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013... It's Maslow's hierarchy of needs man. We're doing a hell of a lot better on the bottom level of the pyramid. It's gonna take some time to work it's way up to the top.
- harryh 11y agoThis is dumb. Being "at war" is not binary and it's silly to think of it as such. Call the US's involvement whatever you want, but saying it's the same thing as WWI or WWII is insane.
- angersock 11y agoIt's not at all, at least from a financial standpoint: http://cironline.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/June2010CRScostofuswars.pdf http://cironline.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/June20... We've spent more on the Middle East than WW1 and Vietnam combined.
- harryh 11y agoNot in terms of % of GDP which is the only measure that actually matters.
- angersock 11y agoIt doesn't strike you as, I don't know, a little odd, that we have paid for a Vietnam and a WW1 without noticing it? Yes, the sheer performance of the rest of the economy has enabled the % GDP to be smaller than previously, but that doesn't make the scale of the thing any less impressive.
- harryh 11y agoIt doesn't strike me as odd at all. We are vastly richer now than we were in the 1970s. When I was 12 years old $10 was a huge amount of money for me. Now it's lunch. You've gotta look at things relatively, not on an absolute scale.
- clarky07 11y agoit doesn't strike me as odd that 1% is less than 13%. We have a lot more money now. WWI had 116k deaths. Vietnam had 58k deaths. Post 9/11 wars have had about 6500. All of them are tragic, but the fact that we spent a similar amount of inflation adjusted money is not really that important. 1. the human loss of life isn't remotely comparable. 2. as a % of GDP, it's still significantly less. I think it would be hard to grow up during WWI and not notice. I've been an adult for most of the post 9/11 wars, and it's only had a small effect on my life as I've had close friends who have gone to Iraq and Afghanistan (and thankfully returned). If not for those few friends, it would have had almost no effect on me.
- drawkbox 11y agoThe terror wars are the most alarming because it has also militarized our police, created a lower bar for our justice system or two justice systems, created secret courts, attacked our Constitution with the Patriot Act, abolished privacy, and the cost is more than all other wars combined. In the end, every war since WWII, where the world was decimated and we got the advantage of rebuilding, has left the country in a worse economic condition than the last. Every single war creates a sideways market and has created more imbalance. We now have the possibility of losing the people internally and that is typically how all empires fall, from within due to overextended wars and lack of spending internally. You could also throw in the War on Drugs as another war not recognized by this but that is the war that has taken the most of our freedoms since the War on Terror. Overriding the justice system to force moralistic laws, taking freedoms from individuals on a grand scale, general warrants that we crossed the ocean to get away from. There may be an end to the War on Drugs in some ways soon, but the War on Terror seems to have no end or way to end it until it has broken the US internally. If 'terrorists hate our freedoms' then why are our lawmakers taking away our rights?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- collyw 11y agoBoth wars are on abstract ideas, and are pretty unwinnable wars.
- hudibras 11y agohttp://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/story/news/local/2014/08/09/remembering-pfc-williams/13841727/ http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/story/news/local/2014/08/09... Killed last year in Afghanistan at age 19. He was six years old on 11 September 2001.
- whoisthemachine 11y agoWow that's very sad.
- krick 11y agoWhat I'm going to say seems like extremely unpopular opinion, but why exactly is it sad? Because somebody died? Yeah, sure, this part could be sad, except people die all the time. Because "Young Brave American Soldier" was killed by "the enemies"? Oh hell no. He didn't die on someone's behalf: he was the one who invaded somebody's home country and was killed by people protecting that place from people like him. I'm more grieving for people he killed, than for himself. Maybe it's sad because he died because of USA government, who is so fond of making war? For me, it doesn't seem to work either: as far as I know USA has a volunteer military, nobody forced him into it. He has consciously chosen killing others (and, possibly, being killed himself) as his professional activity. For me, the fact he voluntarily made such choice is more sad than the fact he suffered from it. So why exactly is it sad?
- chii 11y agoit's sad because the fact that he thought that his choice was the best for his country - a sort of misplaced, misguided loyalty. And it's being taken advantage of by those in power to propagate an agenda that doesn't benefit many americans at all.
- littletimmy 11y agoWould you extend the same courtesy to fighters on the other side?
- pla3rhat3r 11y agoThis is depressing.
- bryanlarsen 11y agoWhat really drove it home for me was how much my Mom freaked out when the war in Kuwait broke. I was seventeen at the time, and she was worried that I would get drafted.
- harryh 11y agoIt drove home what for you exactly? The fact that your mom was irrationally worried about something that was never going to happen? No one in the US has been drafted in over 40 years.
- bryanlarsen 11y agoThe last time it happened, people my mother's age were the ones being drafted. It really looked like a flashback experience. And if you want to insult my mother, please do it to my face. Thanks.
- MWil 11y agoMy wife didn't realize until yesterday (we're in our 30s) that all young men 18-25 still have to sign up for the Selective Service database
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- spydum 11y agowhat about the "war on drugs", which If I recall was 1990? Or the Cold war? How are these not the same as the war on terrorism (which gets some sort of recognition specially here, maybe just to make things look more dramatic)? Wars against ideals or ambiguous targets make this binary thing very difficult to pin down.
- MWil 11y agosure, the question of "what is a war?" fits what you're describing but not the question of "is the US at war?" which is a binary matter of whether Congress and the President have taken us to a war
- DoctorBit 11y ago1971 by Richard Nixon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs
- abalone 11y agoWhat's more interesting than the "definitions of 'at war'" are the definitions of "young men and women [who have] died," "children [who] lost a parent or sibling" and "life-altering injuries". Apparently ABC's Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent thinks only U.S. men, women and children are worth counting.
- rescripting 11y agoI see the country's involvement in war as an inevitability born from the continued evolution of the military industrial complex. Like any organization, a primary goal of the military is for it to self sustain. To reduce its size to a level suitable for peace time you'd need to fight back against so many incentives to keep things the way they are. It's a Herculean task. This pressure to scale it back was supposed to come from Congress but it's no secret that the public's faith is in Congress's ability to do their job is at an all time low. So now you always have to have a conflict. Slowly the bar for what merits involvement gets lower. Other comments here have echoed my fear that the bar may get so low that the focus to find a suitable enemy turns inward.
- adrice727 11y agoI spent almost six years working for the Department of Defense. From my perspective, the entire organization is engaged in a giant game with two objectives. One, funnel as much money as possible to defense contractors. Two, keep the game going for as long as possible, by any means possible.
- lsc 11y agoI don't want to diminish the difficulty and danger the soldiers at the front today face, or the danger that the civilians in those areas face, but I'm not sure that the war on terror belongs to the same category of conflict as world war two.
- littletimmy 11y agoAmerican wars will never stop precisely because the war has no great adverse impact on American lives. When other countries go to war, like Pakistan against India for example, their citizens feel the pain. So sooner or later they realize war is not all that good and they form an uneasy peace agreement. Americans have no such compulsion towards peace, because the wars they finance always ruin some other country and kill some other people. At the same time, it sustains a good war economy and keeps the public occupied. These wars are win-win from the perspective of the American establishment. As a side note, this is why 9/11 was such a monumental event from an American point of view: it was one of the very few times that Americans were in the crosshairs. As Chomsky put it "This is stuff that we do to you, you don't do it to us."
- seesomesense 11y agoThe cure for the American love of war is to have more of these wars fought on the American mainland.
- aces- 11y agoThe citizenry would be an awful lot less rah-rah over "terrorism" and bad guys if the government was forced to actually ask the public to pay for the costs of war out of pocket. Oh, Saddam is an evildoer with WMDs? Let's get him - that'll be just $5000 per household. I wonder how many people would put their money where their mouth is. Wars have costs, and when those costs are subsidized by money printing, the bulk of society doesn't associate the immense costs of war with the war itself. Therefore wars are effectively waged cost free according to the populace since the US government has monopoly rights to print the world reserve currency. If nation-states lost the ability to mint their own money out of thin air, and instead had to continuously pester and beg the populace to pay for wars out of pocket, we would have less wars. That is the cure for war, a move away from fiat money. Nothing else can be more effective than taking away the military industrial complex's right to print money out of thin air.
- zanny 11y agoThats the greatest ruse. There will never be another war on American soil. At least anything other than opportunistic strikes - suicide bombers, untraceable ICBM strikes, or attacks by non-governmental groups. You will never see Chinese, Russian, Mexican... any foreign nationalities soliders walking down the streets of New York or LA. A real war, in the modern world, without all the bullshit proxyisms and toying with lives, is resolved with nuclear arms first and foremost. Don't think for a second this country would tolerate anything less than nuclear retaliation to a ground invasion of the mainland USA by a foreign government. Hell, an organized terrorist group would see themselves nuked out of existence if they tried to do a land invasion. It is instant suicide to attack America directly. Why do you think the entire point of the Taliban during the 80s against Russia, and of all the myriad terrorist groups operating against the USA today, was to lead a band of nomads to commit suicide raids and guerrilla attacks against them? They knew they could never "win" a war. They could just make their enemy lose. They worked to help bleed the USSR dry, and are winning by all their own metrics to this day by doing the same to the USA. They hide in caves while we flush a trillion a year down the toilet in the name of security against them. And people wonder how Rome fell.
- ghostunit 11y ago"More than 6,500 young men and women died in these wars" I love how the hundreds of thousands of people WE killed somehow don't make it into this count.
- seesomesense 11y agoMILLIONS that we killed, not hundreds of thousands. The body count in just Iraq is over 200,000. https://www.iraqbodycount.org/ https://www.iraqbodycount.org/ This is the way the American world looks. Bleak and littered with corpses.
- adventured 11y agoActually the way the American world looks, is one in which no major world powers have gone to war since WW2 ended, with America maintaining the peace and protecting Western Europe from the Soviet Union. Global poverty and global violence - in fact, nearly every major negative measurement has plunged in the last 70 years during which America has reigned. The global median income and standard of living keeps rising. The world has never had it so good, as it has during the time in which America has been the leading superpower. Endless war among major nations for centuries. America becomes the global superpower, not a single major war between major nations in 70 years. Two world wars in 25 years. Zero world wars - despite vast global military armament, including two aggressive communist powers that murdered a hundred million of their own people combined - in 70 years. America has been the sole thing holding it all in check. Global wealth - at an all time high. Global charity - at an all time high. Global median income - at an all time high. Global median standard of living - at an all time high. Child death rates, at all time lows. Science, space, manufacturing, global trade, innovation, opportunity, education, pick a topic - the world has never been better off than it has been the last 70 years on average, and especially since the collapse of the USSR and old-line Communist China, both of which occurred on America's watch.
- fapjacks 11y agoThis is a very salient and valid point. Life really sucks for a lot of people, but it is very good for more of humanity than it's ever been.
- jccalhoun 11y agoThere have been very few years when the USA military wasn't engaged in a military conflict: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_milit...
- cyphunk 11y agoAppalling (from the speech): "More than 6,500 young men and women died in those wars" Strangely typical that people forget that "human" is a definition that applies to more than just "American". Just take one of the wars, the Iraq war, and include in your definition of "young men and women" at least the Iraqi civilians that also died and you should have a number above 112,000+ that died. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War This slip of the tongue speaks volumes.