The US Has Been at War My Entire Life. Will the Wars Ever End?

[rangerrebew]

 

The US Has Been at War My Entire Life. Will the Wars Ever End?
Reflections from a lifetime at war.
By Tom Engelhardt
May 6, 2021
 

Here’s the strange thing in an ever-stranger world: I was born in July 1944 in the midst of a devastating world war. That war ended in August 1945 with the atomic obliteration of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by the most devastating bombs in history up to that moment, given the sweet code names “Little Boy” and “Fat Man.”

I was the littlest of boys at the time. More than three-quarters of a century has passed since, on September 2, 1945, Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and General Yoshijiro Umezu signed the Instrument of Surrender on the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, officially ending World War II. That was V-J (for Victory over Japan) Day, but in a sense for me, my whole generation, and this country, war never really ended.

The United States has been at war, or at least in armed conflicts of various sorts, often in distant lands, for more or less my entire life. Yes, for some of those years, that war was “cold” (which often meant that such carnage, regularly sponsored by the CIA, happened largely off-screen and out of sight), but war as a way of life never really ended, not to this very moment.

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/lifetime-at-war-engelhardt/

[jmyrlefuller]

If that is your definition of war, then no. We have never NOT been at war, and on a finite planet with seven billion people, there will naturally be way too many disagreements to have anything resembling peace. War will never end until there is only one person left on this planet.

[Sighlass]

If that is your definition of war, then no. We have never NOT been at war, and on a finite planet with seven billion people, there will naturally be way too many disagreements to have anything resembling peace. War will never end until there is only one person left on this planet.

Basically what jmyrlefuller said, free will and corrupt hearts. Only Jesus will stop one day. 

[AARguy]

From the end of the Viet Nam War until Desert Storm (over 20 years) there was no war. Yes, there was a rescue mission in Grenada and a skirmish in Panama but no sign of a war in the traditional sense of thousands of troop, tanks, massive air operations etc. I'm West Point Class of 1975. I spent my career checking oil levels in the Motor Pool, inspecting the barracks and preparing for the war that never came.

[Absalom]

A reflection.
From our Founding till 1917, some 125 years passed during which we prospered
dramatically, yet quietly, while remaining politically insular on the world stage.
On occasion, we engaged in foreign conflict; w/Mexico, then Spain at the turn of 1900.
Then, in 1912, we elected the most incompetent jackass to ever occupy the WH
a consequence we continue to pay for every day of our existence.
The Great War, arguably the greatest Man made disaster that ever occurred was:
NONE OF OUR GOD-DAMMED BUSINESS, yet Schmuck-in-Chief Wilson, made it so.
Consequently it internationalized our previously insular politics which is the essence of why
we have been engaged/involved w/chronic/continuous foreign military adventures ever since.
How so??? Because one of the most basic impulses in Human Nature is Self-interest.
The Pentagon may have many descriptions, yet one is for certain as it is a political bastion
and perpetually seeking to curry favor w/our Congressional Cronies.
How better to achieve this than to present them w/economic opportunities, real or imagined,
that involve a physical presence in Place X or Y or Z around the world. Doubt it ?????

[rangerrebew]

The Romans had Pax Romana but not without troops stationed around the world.