What we support and defend

[Bob's World]

I'm not sure what wars Bob was referring to either when he mentioned relatively low casualties. My point on casualties is a poorly prepared Army, like the one that invaded North Africa to fight the Germans, Vichy French, and Italians during WWII will take higher casualties than need/acceptable due to incompetence. I believe we'll be asking for a repeat of history if we rely on the militia.

U.S. Killed:

War of 1812 (approximately 20,000 KIA)
Mexican American War (13,283 KIA)
Spanish American War (2,446 KIA)
WWI (116,516 KIA)
WWII (405,399 KIA)
Vietnam (58,209 KIA)
Iraq (4,484 KIA)


These include numbers for non-combat deaths due to disease, etc.

Come Bill, just step back and open the aperture a bit. All history does not evolve around the US, nor does the clock on conflicts begin and end with the arrival and departure of the US Army.

Yes, WWI was a bloody hell. It was a bloody hell that began on 29 July 1914, and that ended with the Armistice on 11 November 1918. Four years and 3+ months of heavy fighting. Many powerful voices, such as the very popular former President Teddy Roosevelt began clamoring for the US to enter the fighting from the very start. But we did not have a large army, and we were able to hold off on declaring war until 6 April 1917. I hate to think how many European died in their war between Aug 1914 - May 1917, in those nearly 3 years of war many millions were killed and many millions more were wounded. Few Americans were.

By June 1918 American units began gaining experience fighting under allied commands, and it was not until September 1918 that Pershing led Americans as a separate command in the final, decisive, fighting of the war. About 5 months of combat total, 2 months of combat as an American force.

How can you say that our lack of a standing army did not save lives in WWI? Yet we sat at the final table as a victorious signatory.

WWII was very similar. The war did not begin on 7 December 1941. Japan took Manchuria virtually unopposed in 1931, and began active combat against China proper in 1937. Germany went into Poland in September of 1939. The US Army landed in North Africa in November 1942. I won't belabor the historical facts, but write this only to point out that our interpretation of the facts is highly skewed.

We argue how a lack of a standing army made it slow for the US to arrive in a fighting form in these wars. True and moot. The US was also never significantly threatened in those wars, certainly not of ground invasion, and the US was the decisive total force of military power (industry, naval, air, land) in both. But we avoided years of fighting the fights of others, and millions of casualties in the same. That is just smart. Today's strategy is not smart. It is not American.

The Army made the same arguments between every war for why they needed to stay large, and the Army lost those arguments. Today, with 60+ years of Cold War and post Cold War bias under our belt we have a hard time remembering who we are and the whys and hows of that. It is time to get back to basics and return to our geostrategic roots. This was not "Isolationist" it was just not overly arrogant and adventurist. We need to step away from the false historical arguments and the name calling and apply sound, calm, informed strategic logic.

This will make our allies squirm. They love not having to secure their own interests and have been pissing away the American peace dividend like drunken sailors while we fore go that dividend and outspend the world on a system of global defense funded solely by us. This is illogical and unsustainable. This is the worst kind of leadership as well. We need to lead by example, not by physically jumping into every conflict, not by setting moral standards, not by providing all the hardware and most of the manpower.

Oh yeah, and our current approach is also arguably unconstitutional.