So what is the right length of time for a war?

[undeterred]

Poll question: So what is the right length of time for a war?

[PDJane]

1. Zero anything.

Diplomacy, my friend.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

2. Depends on what the situation is

I'm still amazed that the worst wars and those most needing our intervention (i.e. WW2) took significantly less time to successfully conclude than subsequent "wars" in Vietnam, Iraq, etc. Of course, in both of those instances, the rationale for our justification was unclear, misguided, or flat-out WRONG, etc. In WW2, we had clearly defined enemies, a clear rationale for going to war, and a way to conclude that we had achieved our objectives, things woefully missing from the aforementioned other conflicts. Ideally, a "war" shouldn't take any longer than that which is necessary to achieve whatever objectives that have gotten us involved and a modest transitional stabilization period depending on the conditions on the ground and nothing more IMHO.

[undeterred]

3. Its amazing, isn't it?

But now we go into countries without clear goals and without an exit strategy. And people who protest are considered unpatriotic. What the hell are we sending troops into Africa for?

[RZM]

6. Plus, it should be noted that in WWII the US was fully mobilized and had poweful allies

The USSR, after all, did the bulk of the fighting and dying in Europe. You're right that the objectives in WWII (unconditional surrender) were clearer, but a fully mobilized US could also have won the Vietnam and Iraq Wars in similar time frames as well. They would have been bloodier (for all sides involved) and would have demanded many more sacrifices from the general public, but they could have been won. Don't forget that many decades on we still have troops in former Axis countries too (not to mention Korea).

[Proud Liberal Dem]

9. How may I ask

could we have won the Vietnam War (without the Watchmen, anyway)? As far as Iraq goes, we technically "won" that war (it was literally no contest against Saddam's Republican Guard and phantom WMDs). It was the aftermath that the Bush (mis-)administration didn't (want to) plan for and the post-war insurgency was largely the result of this lack of planning and foresight. Heck, they didn't even really "change" anything about how it was going to be handled until 2006-2007.

[RZM]

10. I'm no Vietnam expert

But from what I remember, US forces topped out at about 500K. Contrast that with the 2 million who were in France by late August 1944. 2-3 million US soldiers in Vietnam, a full-scale invasion of the North etc. and you're talking a different outcome. If the goal would have been to conquer and occupy the entire country, the US certainly could have done it (and that's not even bringing nuclear weapons into the discussion). That doesn't mean the civilian will was there, but setting that aside (and I know that's a tricky thing to do), the US was more than capable of conquering Vietnam.

Same thing with Iraq. We 'only' had 100-200K troops there for years. 2 million and it's a way different story.

My arguments put aside public opinion of course. I don't think people would have supported full mobilization for Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. But assuming you could pull it off, there's no reason the world's most powerful country couldn't deal with a weak country like North Vietnam or any kind of insurgency.

You could say the same thing about the Soviets in Afghanistan too. Here you had a country that did the lion's share of the fighting against the Nazis and was probably the most fully mobilized country in that war. Yet they lost in Afghanistan. Some of the reasons are similar to US failures too. The Soviets only had 100-200K troops in Afghanistan at any given time and their goals were unclear/unrealized/unattainable. Even given their 'imperial overstretch' and myriad other problems in the 1980s, an 'all in' USSR could have won there.

[Poll_Blind]

4. Other: "Until the people we supposedly liberated hate us enough to start a new war to kick us out!"

PB

[Ken Burch]

5. Keep 'em short-Bob Hope is dead.

:eyes:

[Jack Rabbit]

7. OTHER: I think you made your point

. . . and made it very well.

Wars are always fought for the best of reasons, if you are naive enough to believe the sociopathic liars who get us into them.

Barack Obama said during his campaign, "I'm not against all wars, just stupid ones." In my view that covers most of them. Actually, in one way or another, it covers all of them. True, there are those rare circumstances where one has no choice but to go to war to repel a foreign invasion, but why did some stupid idiot insist on invading in the first place?

Facilitating corporate profits is no better reason to go to war than just grabbing a piece of territory for shits and grins. Going to war against Iraq in order to force her to sell their oil to western oil companies is just as monstrous as going to war against China to force the Chinese to buy opium from the British East India Company. Of course, just ask any neoconservative why the US invaded Iraq and he'll say, "to liberate the country from a brutal dictator." Any one who still believes that is as dumb as a typical teabagger. Now there is a mantra to "charge" countries like Iraq for "liberating" them. It sounds to me like just giving imperialism a makeover. It's a classic scheme to put lipstick on a pig.

[saras]

8. Five days, nerf guns, zombies vs. humans. No other war is justified.

The civilized world is large enough that, were there not a superpower like the US that pours such a gigantic amount of money into arms, there would be enough power behind a simple police action to put down any potential war on the planet.

Defensive war made more sense when countries were more isolated. These days, support from the whole world can be there in hours.

Of course, this all implies that some proportion of the people learn to behave a hell of a lot better than we currently tolerate in leaders, and that a larger proportion of the population chooses those people as leaders.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us and the world will live as one

[donheld]

11. 10 minutes