# Can America win wars anymore? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 30, 2017, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204 "2017-06-30T16:30:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2017, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204/61 "2017-07-03T02:02:08Z")
> [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](#): > > [Bolding mine] > > Does GCC stand for Gruyere Cheese Crucibles? I for one will welcome our new cheesy overlords. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2017, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204/62 "2017-07-03T02:27:29Z")
I would also add that if “winning a war” means “destroying the enemy’s technological/industrial ability to fight,” then that means that, by that definition, the North Vietnamese/Vietcong didn’t really defeat the USA in the Vietnam War, since the United States still retained its military-industrial capacity for waging war. ---
**Author:** ![Weisshund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@Weisshund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weisshund)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2017, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204/63 "2017-07-03T02:45:08Z")
Win a war? Yes In a way that would currently be seen as acceptable on many levels? Probably not right now. I don’t think there are any really pretty ways to win a war, and i dont think there would be a lot of popular support for the very ugly right now. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2017, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204/64 "2017-07-03T03:51:50Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I don’t think “winning a war” can or should be defined as “securing a good post-war peace.” It better be unless you want to re-fight it in a few years. Yes, Israel won the Six Day War, and the Yom Kipper War, and the War of Attrition (1967-1970), the 1982 Lebanon War, the First Intifada, the Second Intifada, the Gaza War (2008-2009) and maybe a half dozen other wars and military operations in Lebanon and the Gaza strip. At some point it seems to me you want to think about fixing the underlying problem. > [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > The thing is, we can project power on the other side of the world. You know, with subs and aircraft carriers and whatnot; so we can do “righteous retribution” _right then,_ as it were. By contrast, if we bomb some _other_ nation’s capital while bombing their local facilities, they’ll – what? Sail a fleet of warships across the ocean at us? Send a squadron of bombers on its way, thousands of miles through the air? > > Seemed to me the consensus here was that we’d smash anything of the sort with ease; we’re awesome at winning the submarines-and-stealth-bombers part, we’re just not great at winning the boots-on-the-ground follow-up. So I was asking about a situation where we’d stick to the part we’re good at, and not bother with the other part: in my hypothetical, bombing another county is _easy_; it’s easy to do first, and it’s still easy to do if someone somehow hits back. > > **In your hypothetical, how did they hit back?** How have they hit back? Hijack airplanes. Attack hotels and shopping malls or magazine headquarters with machineguns and suicide bombers. Drive a boat full of explosives into a destroyer while it’s in port. Drive trucks into crowds. Hack infrastructure with cyber attacks. Influence popular opinion and radicalize the disenfranchised with social media. > [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Where? Where you are most vulnerable. Again, it seems to me that our big problem of late has been, we smash the other side’s conventional military while bombing their country, and then we don’t do so hot when asymmetrical forces hit our boots-on-the-ground types over there; which is why I ask, _okay, so what if there are no boots on the ground?_ > [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Well, you know, you reinforce cockpit doors, and make it harder to bring weapons onto a plane, and chuckle ruefully at the days when people thought ‘hijacker’ meant ‘some guy you let run amuck’, and you probably institute some kind of travel ban, and so on. How many terrorist attacks have there been globally since 9/11? How many involved aircraft? > [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > By contrast, what do you do when folks telling you to knock it off can rain bombs down on you from up on high? Do you ban them from your country? That’s, uh, not really a thing. Do you scan them for weapons? Well, no; anti-hijacking policies can just be put in place, but the defense against bombers is – what? The defense against bombers is you disburse your critical targets all over the country and hide them in caves, abandoned mines, under highway overpasses, next to hospitals and schools, wherever. And then you wait until the USA gets tired of flinging million dollar cruise missiles and jeeps and trucks and tents and abandoned aircraft facilities. You show a bunch of video footage of widows and orphans injured by drones and stealth bombers. If and when Americans put troops on the ground, you attack them with IEDs and sniper ambushes to frustrate and demoralize them for the next decade. You get the American people so frustrated they elect the most incompetent morons they can find just because they promise to “win the war”. And then you sit back and laugh while they alienate their allies and fight among themselves. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204/65 "2017-07-05T00:15:15Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Well, you know, you reinforce cockpit doors, and make it harder to bring weapons onto a plane, and chuckle ruefully at the days when people thought ‘hijacker’ meant ‘some guy you let run amuck’, and you probably institute some kind of travel ban, and so on. By contrast, what do you do when folks telling you to knock it off can rain bombs down on you from up on high? Do you ban them from your country? That’s, uh, not really a thing. Do you scan them for weapons? Well, no; anti-hijacking policies can just be put in place, but **the defense against bombers is – what?** F/A-18 Hornets 😛 ---
**Author:** ![up\_the\_junction](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f1d935/32.png) [@up\_the\_junction](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/up_the_junction)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204/66 "2017-07-05T02:24:39Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I would also add that if “winning a war” means “destroying the enemy’s technological/industrial ability to fight,” then that means that, by that definition, the North Vietnamese/Vietcong didn’t really defeat the USA in the Vietnam War, since the United States still retained its military-industrial capacity for waging war. They kind of got their country back, which was pretty much the point for them i.e the US imperialists exited by the roof of the embassy. I don’t know how that looked on your tv but I’d hazard the world was pretty clear as to the outcome of that war. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204/67 "2017-07-05T02:46:38Z")
> [@up\_the\_junction](#): > > They kind of got their country back, which was pretty much the point for them i.e the US imperialists exited by the roof of the embassy. > > I don’t know how that looked on your tv but I’d hazard the world was pretty clear as to the outcome of that war. Exactly. That’s the point I was making - victory does \*\*\*not \*\*\*necessarily have to entail “preventing the enemy from materially able to wage future war again.” The comment I was replying to was this: > [@](#): > > We also have to destroy their infrastructure to make new tanks, ships and aircraft. > > The we have to destroy the infrastructure that would let them build up the infrastructure to build up tanks, ships, and aircraft. > > Then we have to monitor them, and destroy any infrastructure they try to build in the future. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204/68 "2017-07-05T02:52:19Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > you wait until the USA gets tired of flinging million dollar cruise missiles and jeeps and trucks and tents and abandoned aircraft facilities. You show a bunch of video footage of widows and orphans injured by drones and stealth bombers. If and when Americans put troops on the ground, **you attack them with IEDs and sniper ambushes to frustrate and demoralize them for the next decade. You get the American people so frustrated they elect the most incompetent morons they can find just because they promise to “win the war”. And then you sit back and laugh while they alienate their allies and fight among themselves.** You make it sound almost as if being the bombed side is the preferable side. As if, if you were to give a lot of people a choice: _“OK, you get to be Side A or Side B in a war. Side A has the bombers, the drones, the satellites, the missiles, the aircraft carriers, every technological advantage, the half-trillion dollar defense budget. Side B has the caves, the IEDs, the tunnels, the insurgents, the Third World income/standard of living, the widows and orphans, the lack of medicines, the Kalashnikovs,”_ that people would be lining up in droves to sign up for Side B. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204/69 "2017-07-05T10:08:20Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > You make it sound almost as if being the bombed side is the preferable side. I’m not sure why you would say that. > [@Velocity](#): > > As if, if you were to give a lot of people a choice: _“OK, you get to be Side A or Side B in a war. Side A has the bombers, the drones, the satellites, the missiles, the aircraft carriers, every technological advantage, the half-trillion dollar defense budget. Side B has the caves, the IEDs, the tunnels, the insurgents, the Third World income/standard of living, the widows and orphans, the lack of medicines, the Kalashnikovs,”_ that people would be lining up in droves to sign up for Side B. Kind of makes you wonder why we need all those billion dollar weapon systems to attack third world countries? And point of fact, some people who have a choice are choosing “Side B”. Check out this documentary on Showtime about radicalized domestic Islamic terrorists: [http://www.sho.com/titles/3443632/american-jihad](http://www.sho.com/titles/3443632/american-jihad). > [@Velocity](#): > > Exactly. That’s the point I was making - victory does not necessarily have to entail “preventing the enemy from materially able to wage future war again.” No. Removing their desire to make war against you again is also sufficient. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204/70 "2017-07-05T13:29:01Z")
I am totally confident the United States could win any conventional war it felt was important enough to win. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204/71 "2017-07-05T13:41:01Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > I wonder if it is a case of us having become too powerful for our own good. When we fight we pull our punches and try to act reasonably. Like for example if the civil war had been fought today Sherman’s burning of Atlanta and march to the sea would have gotten him arrested and his troops probably wouldn’t have supported him. Oh, and while I’m late to this comment - Sherman’s March to the Sea was, by 20th and 21st century standards, a very tame event. While the Army of the Tennessee destroyed infrastructure and property, it engaged in almost no killing of civilians at all and had very strict rules of engagement. Sherman’s orders went so far as to specifically say Union troops were forbidden from entering anyone’s home, and that only major generals or above could authorize the destruction of homes and then only in response to guerrilla attacks. For the most part those orders were obeyed. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was vastly more destructive to the Iraqi population than the Union Army was to Georgia’s. The reason the March to the Sea is so infamous is simply that the Civil War was very unusual for the time in its sheer size and proportion; it’s been written by men smarter than me that as of that point in time it was the largest territory over which a single definable war had ever been fought to gain or retain possession of. The wars people at the time remembered were Napoleonic in nature, where countries would assemble armies that would meet each other on a battlefield, fight it out for a day, and that would be it for a few months. The huge, sweeping, strategic actions of the Civil War were very unlike that, and shocked people. But that was modern war; Grant and Sherman saw and understood what others did not. > [@](#): > > The firebombing of Dresden and Japan did a lot to break the local people’s will to resist and as a result we didn’t see long insurgencies develop. And five years later the USAF engaged in near-genocidal bombing of North Korea, and it didn’t defeat the Communists. They achieved the goal of defending South Korea, but the war did end in stalemate. You never know. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204/72 "2017-07-05T17:56:39Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Oh, and while I’m late to this comment - Sherman’s March to the Sea was, by 20th and 21st century standards, a very tame event. While the Army of the Tennessee destroyed infrastructure and property, it engaged in almost no killing of civilians at all and had very strict rules of engagement. Sherman’s orders went so far as to specifically say Union troops were forbidden from entering anyone’s home, and that only major generals or above could authorize the destruction of homes and then only in response to guerrilla attacks. For the most part those orders were obeyed. > > The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was vastly more destructive to the Iraqi population than the Union Army was to Georgia’s. The reason the March to the Sea is so infamous is simply that the Civil War was very unusual for the time in its sheer size and proportion; it’s been written by men smarter than me that as of that point in time it was the largest territory over which a single definable war had ever been fought to gain or retain possession of. The wars people at the time remembered were Napoleonic in nature, where countries would assemble armies that would meet each other on a battlefield, fight it out for a day, and that would be it for a few months. The huge, sweeping, strategic actions of the Civil War were very unlike that, and shocked people. But that was modern war; Grant and Sherman saw and understood what others did not. Hijack: I agree that Sherman’s March was, by and large, a war against property and war-making potential instead of human lives. That said, it hearkened back to a much older tradition: the medieval [chevauchée](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevauch%C3%A9e). Although Sherman’s March was, if anything, more “civilized” than the terror-inspiring chevauchée, both had the dual goals of damaging enemy warmaking potential (infrastructure, wealth, supplies) AND demonstrating to the enemy population that their government was unable to protect them. This was a an intentional feature of chevauchée, from a period when loyalties to individual nobles or rulers were stronger than loyalties to nation-states, and people could be expected to “switch sides” if war went against them. In his communications to Grant and Halleck before and during the March, Sherman explicitly invoked the idea that he hoped his actions would demonstrate to Confederate loyalists the inability of the Confederate military to resist the Union armies, and thus the futility of further resistance. (Of interest here because it clarifies that the March was intended to accomplish both the traditional goals of chevauchée.) [QUOTE=William Tecumseh Sherman] We are not only fighting armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies. I know that this recent movement of mine through Georgia has had a wonderful effect in this respect. Thousands who had been deceived by their lying papers into the belief that we were being whipped all the time, realized the truth, and have no appetite for a repetition of the same experience. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204/73 "2017-07-05T19:03:20Z")
Let’s look at this from another angle. Why is it that when you invade and conquer one country they pretty much give up and genuinely cooperate, and when you invade and conquer another country they keep being a pain in the ass? Or to be more specific, as was mentioned in the OP when we occupied Germany and Japan after crushing their armed forced, they had given up. And it wasn’t just a trick or temporary stratagem, they had really and for real given up. And then when we occupied Iraq after crushing Iraq’s armed forces, they hadn’t given up, not really. Sure, we brushed aside Saddam’s army, but pretty soon there were people shooting and bombing our occupying soldiers and collaborating locals. For one thing, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had for a decade mythologized war as the supreme test of national character. They whipped up the populace and marched out to conquer their neighbors. And after some initial success, they eventually got their asses handed to them. By the time 1945 rolled around, everyone who wanted to continue to fight was already dead. There was a national consensus in both countries that they had well and truly lost, and had suffered devastating catastrophe as a consequence of their previous militaristic ways. On the other hand, look at Iraq. The Iraqi army was brushed aside, yes, but they didn’t really put up a fight, most soldiers tried to surrender as soon as possible. And the Iraqis didn’t imagine that they as a people had been beaten, they felt more that Saddam and his cronies had been beaten. And American propaganda at the time agreed with them. We were there to kick Saddam’s ass and HELP the people of Iraq and give them freedom and democracy and apple pie. So the country wasn’t beaten, Saddam’s personal regime was beaten. Saddam’s regime had never surrendered, but so what, because Saddam’s regime had no legitimacy anyway. And then came the reconstruction, and it didn’t go so well. And there are still American soldiers occupying the country. Saddam is gone, so why are they still here? Weren’t you just going to liberate us? Except it turned out that our preferred leaders of the future client state of Iraq weren’t actually as popular as we had hoped. And Iran across the border, although pleased as punch that Saddam was gone, had absolutely no interest in an American client state in Iraq. And while we had deposed Saddam, there were plenty of people in the Arabic speaking world who didn’t like America who started filtering in to Iraq to join the resistance. And of course since most of Saddam’s army didn’t actually fight back, all those weapons were still around. And if the Americans are setting up a local Iraqi government and giving out weapons, how can you be sure those weapons you gave to your ostensible allies won’t wind up being used against you? And how do you tell the difference between a pro-America Iraqi and an anti-America Iraqi who’s temporarily pretending to be pro-America? It was a completely different situation. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204/74 "2017-07-05T19:13:32Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > More importantly, you have to destroy their will to defy the USA. A bit harder than most people imagine. That really is the hard part. I was just talking about their capability of launching conventional war, but you are absolutely correct that the removal of their ability to launch a conventional war means that they will launch unconventional war. It is pretty much impossible to destroy someone’s will to hate or defy you at the point of the gun, in fact, the effort usually reinforces it. [quote] > [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > The thing is, we can project power on the other side of the world. You know, with subs and aircraft carriers and whatnot; so we can do “righteous retribution” _right then,_ as it were. By contrast, if we bomb some _other_ nation’s capital while bombing their local facilities, they’ll – what? Sail a fleet of warships across the ocean at us? Send a squadron of bombers on its way, thousands of miles through the air? Blow up an elementary school? > [@](#): > > Seemed to me the consensus here was that we’d smash anything of the sort with ease; we’re awesome at winning the submarines-and-stealth-bombers part, we’re just not great at winning the boots-on-the-ground follow-up. So I was asking about a situation where we’d stick to the part we’re good at, and not bother with the other part: in my hypothetical, bombing another county is _easy_; it’s easy to do first, and it’s still easy to do if someone somehow hits back. > > In your hypothetical, how did they hit back? Through various terrorist activities. They can blow up schools, churches, shoot up nightclubs or concerts. Pretty much anywhere where you have people gathering together, you can do harm to our country with relative ease. > [@](#): > > Where? Again, it seems to me that our big problem of late has been, we smash the other side’s conventional military while bombing their country, and then we don’t do so hot when asymmetrical forces hit our boots-on-the-ground types over there; which is why I ask, _okay, so what if there are no boots on the ground?_ One thing that Bush was not entirely wrong on was his “We are fighting them over there so we don’t fight them over here.” If we just bomb everyone over there, and do not put boots on the ground, they will probably not be too appreciative, and may retaliate by targeting civilian structures in our country for terrorist attacks. > [@](#): > > Well, you know, you reinforce cockpit doors, and make it harder to bring weapons onto a plane, and chuckle ruefully at the days when people thought ‘hijacker’ meant ‘some guy you let run amuck’, and you probably institute some kind of travel ban, and so on. By contrast, what do you do when folks telling you to knock it off can rain bombs down on you from up on high? Do you ban them from your country? That’s, uh, not really a thing. Do you scan them for weapons? Well, no; anti-hijacking policies can just be put in place, but the defense against bombers is – what? Anit-hijacking policies are protecting against the last terrorist attack. There are plenty of places in theis country with large gatherings of people. We need to secure every single one of them. Every school, every game, every church, every mall, every restaurant, every grocery store, every strip club… basically, any venue that regulary has more than a couple dozen people at a time is a target. Are you going to reinforce the doors of all these places, scan everyone who enters any of these places for weapons? Banning them from the country won’t do much good either. People tend to become radicalized when their families and friends are killed. People living here, maybe even citizens, could easily decide to retaliate against the country they live in, if that country is killing their loved ones. > [@Velocity](#): > > I don’t think “winning a war” can or should be defined as “securing a good post-war peace.” But it does need to be defined as having a peace treaty, and in order to get the other side to sign a peace treaty, you have to remove their ability or will to go to war. In vietnam, they managed to remove our will to continue pursuing the war. > [@](#): > > The Israelis won a smashing victory in the Six-Day War in 1967, yet certainly didn’t solve the “Arab problem;” they had to repel a strong attack just six years later in the Yom Kippur War. But the Arab tension and threat that continued to simmer after 1967 didn’t make the Six-Day War any less of a victory. > > Every war should be evaluated individually in its own right. History doesn’t work that way. WWII was a consequence of how we left WWI (at the time, known as the great war, or the war to end all wars). Vietnam and korea were a consequence of how we left WWII. The multiple wars that isreal fought were because of the way they left the previous wars. > [@Velocity](#): > > I would also add that if “winning a war” means “destroying the enemy’s technological/industrial ability to fight,” then that means that, by that definition, the North Vietnamese/Vietcong didn’t really defeat the USA in the Vietnam War, since the United States still retained its military-industrial capacity for waging war. But, that is not the only way to define winning a war. A war is won when the other side doesn’t want to fight anymore. Whether that is because it cannot due to the loss of it’s military power or industrial ability, or because it simply does not have the will to continue. The Vietcong did not defeat the US, the instead successfully made our invasion and occupation of their territory too costly for us to continue. > [@Velocity](#): > > Exactly. That’s the point I was making - victory does \*\*\*not \*\*\*necessarily have to entail “preventing the enemy from materially able to wage future war again.” > The comment I was replying to was this: And that comment was in direct reply to the idea that we could win a war simply by bombing our enemy. You are not quite getting that there is a difference between a defensive war, and an offensive war. It is easier to give up on a offensive war, as it is not your territory that you are fighting in. Like vietnam, we can just gather our toys and go home. If you are being invaded, then you do not stop the war until you either can no longer physically fight the war, due to degradation of your capabilities, or you accept the consequences of being invaded by a foreign power, and all that comes along with that. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204/75 "2017-07-05T22:14:52Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > One thing that Bush was not entirely wrong on was his “We are fighting them over there so we don’t fight them over here.” If we just bomb everyone over there, and do not put boots on the ground, they will probably not be too appreciative, and may retaliate by targeting civilian structures in our country for terrorist attacks. Fair enough, but: you read my _next_ post, right? The one just after the one you’re replying to, here? I asked – and it didn’t strike me as a terribly far-fetched hypothetical – hey, what if some Country A (a) is at odds with Country B and (b) hasn’t yet moved from the stuff of border skirmishes to invading their hated rival because Country B has, y’know, a conventional military that could put up a fight? And then I said: if we’re in a situation where we tell Country B to knock it off when it comes to this or that, we can smash their conventional military, and we can then put a grand total of _no_ boots on the ground, and we can then crack some cold beers and clap our hands excitedly as Country A puts boots on the ground. In which case, _someone_ is fighting 'em there so we don’t fight 'em here, yeah? > [@](#): > > Anit-hijacking policies are protecting against the last terrorist attack. There are plenty of places in theis country with large gatherings of people. We need to secure every single one of them. Every school, every game, every church, every mall, every restaurant, every grocery store, every strip club… basically, any venue that regulary has more than a couple dozen people at a time is a target. Are you going to reinforce the doors of all these places, scan everyone who enters any of these places for weapons? > > Banning them from the country won’t do much good either. People tend to become radicalized when their families and friends are killed. People living here, maybe even citizens, could easily decide to retaliate against the country they live in, if that country is killing their loved ones. Okay, but, see, I gotta ask: do you think that’s going to make us _stop?_ If you really think an attack on a building is all it takes to make people throw up their hands and call it quits, then I’d figure we can win a war by just bombing a building; but if you believe, as I do – and as I think _you_ do – that, _no, that won’t work,_ then just go back to what I was saying about smashing conventional forces and then rubbing our hands in anticipation as someone else handles the boots-on-the-ground part. And that’s, like, a win-win, right? ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204/76 "2017-07-06T13:03:18Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Through various terrorist activities. They can blow up schools, churches, shoot up nightclubs or concerts. Pretty much anywhere where you have people gathering together, you can do harm to our country with relative ease. The things you are describing are very scary and would be an unspeakable tragedy for the victims and their families, but they do not represent an existential threat to the United States as a functioning nation-state. Blowing up an elementary school would be truly awful but that’s actually happened before, in Michigan, and the USA marched along as a nation, completely unscathed outside of Bath Township. The Pulse nightclub shooting was truly awful but the USA went along. Even after 9/11 the country was a functioning democracy. People went to the movies that night and watched TV shows and went to work the next day. The stores were open, the apparatus of state chugged along, the guy at the bank would talk to you about your mortgage. What we’ve been talking about in the context on this thread is actually damaging or destroying a COUNTRY. Germany, at the end of World War II, was not a functioning country and needed aid from its conquerors just to prevent the population from starving to death. No terrorist group has yet demonstrated the capability to actually damage the United States on a scale that would inhibit its ability to function as a nation-state. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204/77 "2017-07-06T13:54:06Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > I am totally confident the United States could win any conventional war it felt was important enough to win. Operative Word is “conventional”. Pretty much any of the planets major military powers are also nuclear powers. And in an Iraq 2003 scenario, any realistic nuclear threshold will have long since been crossed. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204/78 "2017-07-06T14:12:25Z")
Or as your countryman [Gweynne Dyer](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gJU5DDh0DEc) once said > [@](#): > > We’ve turned Central Europe into a kind of game park where we are trying to preserve an endangered species, conventional war, because we are desperately trying to stave off the alternative, a return to total war. Nuclear total war. These soldiers aren’t fools, they know perfectly well the efficient, modern, cost effective way to stop tanks isn’t to set up an elaborate killing zone; you simply drop a nuclear bomb on them. Better yet, you drop nuclear weapons on the cities where the people who built the tanks live. That’s total war in the 20th century tradition. It’s as true today as it was in 1983. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204/79 "2017-07-06T15:27:02Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Fair enough, but: you read my _next_ post, right? The one just after the one you’re replying to, here? > > I asked – and it didn’t strike me as a terribly far-fetched hypothetical – hey, what if some Country A (a) is at odds with Country B and (b) hasn’t yet moved from the stuff of border skirmishes to invading their hated rival because Country B has, y’know, a conventional military that could put up a fight? > > And then I said: if we’re in a situation where we tell Country B to knock it off when it comes to this or that, we can smash their conventional military, and we can then put a grand total of _no_ boots on the ground, and we can then crack some cold beers and clap our hands excitedly as Country A puts boots on the ground. > > In which case, _someone_ is fighting 'em there so we don’t fight 'em here, yeah? In that case, we would be assisting an ally, while they go and do the stuff that might win the war, or they may get bogged down in urban fighting and insurrections themselves. Either way, we are not “winning the war”. We are just providing assistance to another nation. > [@](#): > > Okay, but, see, I gotta ask: do you think that’s going to make us _stop?_ If you really think an attack on a building is all it takes to make people throw up their hands and call it quits, then I’d figure we can win a war by just bombing a building; but if you believe, as I do – and as I think _you_ do – that, _no, that won’t work,_ then just go back to what I was saying about smashing conventional forces and then rubbing our hands in anticipation as someone else handles the boots-on-the-ground part. > > And that’s, like, a win-win, right? > [@RickJay](#): > > The things you are describing are very scary and would be an unspeakable tragedy for the victims and their families, but they do not represent an existential threat to the United States as a functioning nation-state. Blowing up an elementary school would be truly awful but that’s actually happened before, in Michigan, and the USA marched along as a nation, completely unscathed outside of Bath Township. The Pulse nightclub shooting was truly awful but the USA went along. Even after 9/11 the country was a functioning democracy. People went to the movies that night and watched TV shows and went to work the next day. The stores were open, the apparatus of state chugged along, the guy at the bank would talk to you about your mortgage. > > What we’ve been talking about in the context on this thread is actually damaging or destroying a COUNTRY. Germany, at the end of World War II, was not a functioning country and needed aid from its conquerors just to prevent the population from starving to death. > > No terrorist group has yet demonstrated the capability to actually damage the United States on a scale that would inhibit its ability to function as a nation-state. We were not talking about not losing the war, we are talking about winning the war. And if you are being attacked by terrorist in your schools and churches and such, then you can’t really have been said to have won the war, even if it isn’t enough for you to stop killing people in a vain and counterproductive attempt to make them stop hating you. So, while, sure, no terrorist group can inhibit our ability to function, maintaining functional ability in the wake of terrorist attacks is not the same thing as winning a war. Vietnam for instance, did not affect our ability to make war, it only affected our resolve to stay at war. Unless you wish to contend that we actually won vietnam because of the fact that they did not damage our ability to function as a nation state, then the same argument can be made for all the other conflicts that we get ourselves embroiled in with no clearly defined victory conditions. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204/80 "2017-07-06T15:51:36Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > In that case, we would be assisting an ally, while they go and do the stuff that might win the war, or they may get bogged down in urban fighting and insurrections themselves. Either way, we are not “winning the war”. We are just providing assistance to another nation. You could put it that way, I guess. But my point was, we first tell that country to _stop doing something_ – and then, if they keep on keeping on, we smash their conventional defenses and put no boots on the ground and sit back to watch as they _don’t do that something_: possibly because they’re now being invaded by another country’s boots on the ground. So (a) is that a win? I mean, we got what we wanted; does it really matter all that much if some other country gets what _it_ wanted, too? And (b) if we can so easily grant that some boots-on-the-ground enemy-of-my-enemy would cheerfully rush in after we so smash – well, then, look, do we really even need to _do_ that? Like, say we relay a “knock it off, or we’ll smash your conventional defenses, and then somebody will put Boots On The Ground” – and say we then smash a few, just to show how easy it’d be for us to smash the rest. At that point, we don’t actually _need_ a by-default ally; because, well, them _hypothetically_ licking their figurative chops is doing all the work, right? We do 100% of the bang-bang stuff, and then we get what we want by gesturing at someone who isn’t even involved? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-america-win-wars-anymore/790204.md?page=5)