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Could the U.S. win a major war again?
I've been giving this some thought lately. Decided to toss it out on TFP and see if it provokes some thoughtful discussion.
Could the U.S. win a major war again? Keep in mind that I'm talking about wars on a multinational scale. Even though our triumph in WWII was only 60 years ago... i'm not convinced that we could. For all this patronizing talk of American resiliency and conviction... i see a lot of waffling and unwillingness to sacrifice.
I just don't think our nation has the unity it desparately needed in years past. The media has grown much more powerful and it is never sated by anything less than the most dramatic of interpretations. The "antiwar" contingent is growing and people today have more to lose and seem less willing to make even trifling sacrifices.
Let's be honest, the confidence we lost in ourselves during Vietnam has given rise to a culture of people who are unabashedly proud of the detrimental effect on our warfighting ability. whether a war is just or not, the vast majority of the citizens must be on board for a success. I believe that there is a large enough contingent of people that oppose all war (some with more sincere reasons than others) to make it impossible for a protacted and costly war to be waged no matter the cause.
i realize that there were those who doubted our decision to engage in the second world war and that history has made fools out of them. sadly, i do not think that there are sufficient numbers of people who would take the same side of history were our present population to be transported to 1940.
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If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
~ Winston Churchill
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