Commentary on War II

    I have had a reply from one of my Political Associates on my previous essay entitled, "Commentary on War". It is included at the bottom of this writing, and brings up items, on which I believe I need to make further comment.
    For the present purposes, I believe we need a better definition of war. I suggest we limit to a military conflict, in which a country can be involved directly or ancillary, as a supplier of war materials or financing thereof.
    For a war to be "legitimate", it must have an objective of gain. That is, the gain of achievement must exceed the cost of the war in terms of life and property. Herein lies the possibility of controversy, but I prefer to interpret gain as the direct, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness for the American public. Objectives such as "saving the world for democracy" and "eliminating world communism" are not legitimate, because they are unrealistic for accomplishment.

    Our Political Associate has brought up two wars, which I had not covered in my previous writing.
    There were two types of Indian wars. Early wars of the colonists against Eastern Indians had an objective of taking over Indian land. Similarly, later wars of the US had an objective of taking over Western land from the Indians. Both were legitimate operations, from the colonists and US points of view. The objectives were realized in both cases with obvious gains.
    "Desert Storm" had an objective of repelling a Kuwait invasion by Iraq. There was no objective of gain for the US. The war did not make Kuwaiti oil more or less available to the American public, and I consider this an illegitimate war.

Here are the earlier Political Associate comments:

Very interesting assessment.  It is interesting in retrospect to look at wars and which are perceived to have been justified.  I think that our judgment is somewhat clouded by the perception of the US’s success in that war. 

Conflicts not mentioned include all the American Indian wars that lead to the conquest of much of the Continental territory, and Desert Storm conflict (Iraq 1).  I also have wondered if we had maintained our conquest in certain conflicts if we would think of them differently.  I personally think that the oil fields of Iraq should belong to the USA at least until the debt incurred in the Iraq war is paid off.  If after conquering the Comanche Indians for instance, America had decided not to occupy the land conquered, I think a much different opinion of those conflicts would exist.

 My other opinion of war is that it should be all out and with everything we got.  Vietnam and Korea were both ‘Police’ actions and the American public was not called into the conflict.  Our soldiers were restricted in the actions that they could take and the goal was never to win.  The public will never get behind a conflict like that.