CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

War, What Is It Good For?

Image by Jeff Kingma.

Historically speaking, consider it strange beyond compare. There may, in fact, be nothing like it in the imperial history of this planet. The United States, the greatest power on Earth from the moment it defeated Nazi Germany and imperial Japan in World War II, has never again actually won a war of any significance (or even come close). And that’s true despite the fact that it’s distinctly been the numero uno power on this planet for the last century-plus, with by far the most powerful and wildly over-funded military that has fought any number of wars during these decades, always against seemingly far less powerful adversaries.

Of course, in the atomic age, wars between imperial great powers, as in World War I and World War II, are no longer truly conceivable. Still, over more than a century of great-powerdom, my country has certainly fought a remarkable number of wars, some for endless years, without a single victory (not one!), which is no small… well, I can’t use the word “accomplishment” (but feel free to add whatever word you think might be appropriate).

From the Korean War in the early 1950s (at best a draw) to Vietnam (Cambodia and Laos) in the 1960s and 1970s, a distinct loss (despite the slaughter of literally millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians, and 58,000 Americans); from the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York City and Washington D.C., to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, both of which ended in dismal defeat (Afghanistan after 20 years of combat!), as did the full-scale Global War on Terror launched by President George W. Bush; and, in the era of........

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