What Does It Mean To "Win" A War?

[No DUplicitous DUpe]

What Does It Mean To "Win" A War?
(posted with permission from: http://sane-ramblings.blogspot.com/2011/10/what-does-it-mean-to-win-war.html)

This is a vital question because the U.S. is fighting wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and "covert" wars in Somalia and Yemen and likely elsewhere and its War on Drugs is immersing Mexico, Columbia and Brazil in bloodshed.

World War 1, "the war to end all wars" killed much of an entire generation of European men. And its devastating aftermath led to World War 2 just 20 years later, a Holocaust not only for Jews but for many millions of men, women and children. Within 2 years of that war ending in 1945, came widespread calls to attack the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies, leading to a Cold War that on several occasions took mankind to the brink of nuclear disaster that could have destroyed the planet.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and its allies fought the Korean War (1950 - 53) largely against China, and then the Vietnam War (1964 - 75), both wars killing millions of men, women and children. Then the U.S. fought smaller wars followed by the Gulf War in Iraq (1991) and a Serbian War later in the decade. All of these wars were but preludes to the current ones that in Iraq and Afghanistan are endless brutal military occupations.

So what does "winning a war" mean? And what price in lives and in devastated survivors, and in orphanages, cities left in ruin, people fleeing their homes and nations, and in religious sacrilege and money must be paid for whatever constitutes a victory? How many more people must be without jobs and medical care and in some cases left homeless to justify a "win?" And how does war make anyone safer?

It's also as my friend Mary Ellen says, "The only thing we know for sure that has happened are the number of funerals of loved ones, wrecked marriages from mentally ill soldiers returning from their experiences, children growing up without parents who died going overseas, young brides caring for maimed soldiers who were returned to their waiting arms- young brides who have their entire life dreams of a full life with their beloved dashed to smithereens."

And incidentally, how does war "defend" a democracy? Despite all the wars and more military spending than all the other nations of the world combined, in the U.S., lobbyists have seized the democracy on behalf of their clients and most Americans have no voice in their government. Those lobbyists did it without firing a shot.