Washington DC—As the U.S. pauses on Memorial Day to honor its fallen service members, its citizens should also pause to reflect on its recent war history. Citizens should ask why their country has been in so many wars—more than any other country—over the last 75 years. The U.S. has been at war for almost the entire last 75 years. It is currently involved in fighting 8 simultaneous wars, an unprecedented military task.
And during this 75 year’s period, the U.S. should have learned a few lessons about picking fights with developing nations. Since the Korean War ended, the U.S. has bullied and warred with dozens of nations based on fallacies or outright lies. These wars destroyed the lives of uncountable millions, killed millions more, cost trillions of dollars, while creating generations of victims both in the U.S. and abroad.
U.S. citizens should also pause this Memorial Day to ask of their Congress, why allocation for its military budget takes priority over social programs, education, healthcare, and foreign aid programs. They should ask, what justification there is for expensive aircraft like the F-35 ($100 million per plane, with a project cost estimated at $2.1 trillion), Patriot missile battery systems ($1.09 billion) primarily for Israel and the Middle East, and costly ships like the USS Gerald Ford ($13.3 billion). With plans for Boeing to build the F-47, the top secret “Next Generation Air Dominance Platform,” a budget busting multi-trillion dollar project, U.S. citizens should at least be asking, to what end is this expansive military spending serving. Why they should ask, is more than half of its population living from paycheck to paycheck, barely making ends meet while money for war machines are increased year over year? They should reflect on why millions do not have healthcare or dental care, can’t afford rent, food, and childcare, with many having to work two or three jobs in the “gig” economy to make ends meet?
Idealizing war in the U.S. while exporting war elsewhere covers up the damage war does in terms of lost collective global opportunity. For the U.S. there has been no glory from war and in fact war has given the U.S. the opposite of glory, it has yielded shame it fails to acknowledge. There has been no good result of its wars. War does not increase global safety or security nor does it earn global respect. It causes pollution and accelerates the global heating crisis.
Excessive Military Spending Is The Prime Driver of U.S. Wars
The U.S. has a need to be at war. It is the prime driver of its foreign policy when it should be a last resort, or never at all. Urgency of a last resort should drive war not the other way around. A nation driven to war by need has an unhealthy culture. The U.S. thrives on war like a vulture flourishing on roadkill. But war is worse than a vulture’s natural drive for carrion because the U.S. could otherwise thrive without war. War is imbued into many aspects of U.S. culture. War is sourced from its cultural roots. It is driven by U.S. stock markets in the aerospace, software, artificial intelligence, computer chip, carbon based energy, and even the entertainment industries, which source their massive profits from war.
War occupies the theme of many U.S. monuments in Washington DC. Every major war the U.S. has fought has a memorial built for it. One looking at into the U.S. from another country might conclude the U.S. honors its wars more than it honors its own humanity.
U.S. Wars have captured the theme in many movies year after year. In fact 22 of all the films selected for Best Picture, since 1924, the first year Academy Awards were given, have been about war or the plot has been woven around war as a background theme. Many more movies center war and celebrate U.S. victory or defeat over some enemy. This theme in entertainment has resonated in some of the most popular TV programs as well. MASH ran for 11 seasons from 1972 to 1983 although the Korean War around which it was centered, only lasted 4 years.
War sells movies and entertainment as well as the aeronautics hardware that drive it. It drives the petro-economy, consuming vast quantities of fossil fuels. The Pentagon and its subordinate military branches are the world’s largest fossil energy consumers and its greatest carbon emitter, according to a published research report by Neta Crawford, a professor and researcher at Brown University, who has researched and written ‘The Costs of War.’. The Pentagon annual carbon emissions are more than double the total emissions by passenger cars in the U.S., according to Crawford’s research.
War drives the stock market, consisting of nearly $1.5 trillion in stock capitalization. The top 52 aerospace, military hardware, and communications corporations have a total of $1.52 trillion in market capitalization. Only 16 countries have a Gross Domestic Product higher than that. The aerospace industry also known as the military industry, has a U.S. stock market capitalization higher than the GDP of 200 countries.
Policy Dictates War as a Default
Key policy makers have reasoned over the last 75 years that a much more powerful, technologically advanced country could easily fight and win wars against other less powerful countries. Until WWII the U.S. never “lost” a war, unless one considers the Civil War was a loss because it destroyed an entire generation of youth and pushed the South into a decade of depression.
How could the U.S. lose any war against another nation less inclined to defend itself? Supposedly such thinking influenced policy decisions in the last five major wars, or perhaps it was the sense of a prejudiced imperial mindset of policy makers, and it stands to reason that the world’s strongest power assessed its victims with this mindset. But its so called victory began to change in 1959 with the Vietnam War.
Its policymakers have assumed the people and cultures are not as advanced as the U.S. is and would be easy to defeat. They assumed other countries comparatively tiny militaries, limited gross domestic products, technological disadvantages, or gathering standards of living, placed them at a disadvantage and made victory much more likely. These assumptions have turned out to be strategic blunders and disasters for the U.S. for many reasons.
A list of the wars the U.S. has fought since Korean War, as published in the Federal Register, reflects it would be easier to list the periods the U.S. was not at war.
Including Vietnam, the US has waged five major wars in the last 60 years, if one considers the Global War on Terror, and yes this is another undeclared “forever war” which began on September 11, 2001, and has an end date “yet to be determined.”
The U.S. operates at least 750 bases in 80 countries, and most likely operates more because many locations are classified, according to a study published by Dave Manuel. The costs of and all its operations in dozens of countries, mainly in Japan, Europe, and Africa is “more military bases on foreign soil than any nation in history. Britain, France, Russia, and China combined have fewer than 50 overseas military installations.”
These aggressions have resulted in great costs to its own uniformed service members, the citizens of countries it has attacked, the ecology of the regions of these wars, the economies those attacked, the economies of adjacent countries impacted, and the world’s limited resources. These costs are now coming more into focus as the U.S. deficit passes $40 trillion, global heating drives northerly migration, destroys arable regions, governments are destabilized, and the world’s vital resources are depleted. The U.S. has also waged dozens of campaigns in South America fighting drug trafficking, none of which have ever stopped the flow of drugs or diminished U.S. appetite for narcotics consumption.
Vietnam: The Last Temptation and The Greatest Treason
Vietnam, the longest war the nation fought up to its time, meandered through three presidencies and lasted 19 years and 5 months (1959-1975), enduring through 17 official campaigns. It helped bring down Nixon, damaging his legacy until Watergate deep eighty-sixed it for good. The U.S. was soundly embarrassed as its last Hueys scampered off the roof its embassy in Saigon and limped back to floating ships off South Vietnam’s coast. The U.S. surrendered the corpses of over 58,200 US service members. Many more would go on to die on U.S. soil from drug and alcohol addiction, or from cancer by exposure to Agent Orange, a defoliant containing the carcinogen dioxin. Agent Orange was sprayed from prop-planes and helicopters onto vegetation to clear jungles for combat operations.
Gulf of Tonkin Incident and Primer for War
The Gulf of Tonkin incident was the pretext for escalating the initial support of the South Vietnam government. Before this the U.S. was largely an “advisory” ally of South Vietnam. There were already some direct instances of U.S. involvement in military operations but moving from solely an advisory ally to direct hostilities against North Vietnam.
Congress approved new funding for U.S. entry in war with North Vietnam as a result of the mythical story called the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Congress approved additional funding for the Vietnam War under the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, a vote which was 502-X. It would result in more troops and more funding without a definitive objective. The U.S. would lie about its carpet bombing of Hanoi, lie about its troops in neighboring Cambodia and Laos. It would attempt to cover up the Mai Lai incident when U.S. troops massacred a village.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a fabrication that North Vietnam fired on the U.S. battleships The report was a detailed summary of the operations of U.S. ships patrolling the Gulf of Tonkin during North and South Vietnam skirmishes..
McNamara admitted in 1996 the reports that North Vietnam had attacked any U.S. Ships were not accurate but fabrications of hostilities from North Vietnam.
It has been reported that between 2 to 3 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians perished. It cost the U.S. $168 billion, which is equivalent to $1 trillion in 2023 dollars. Hundreds of thousands of US Veterans continue to depend on medical benefits for both medical and mental injuries they suffered during the Vietnam War and for exposure to Agent Orange.
Much has been written about the Vietnam war. The justification for it was to stop the spread of communism, also known at the time as “the domino effect,” a mythical, unproven argument. There was no evidence proving this to be so other than the policy authors drumming up fears that communism was a bad thing. And when one considers that had the vast capital expenditures towards the Vietnam War been spent on infrastructure in the U.S. or in aid to developing nations, it would have gone much farther to provide development assistance for countries in Asia, stabilize and reduce poverty in those developing nations.
As an alternative, the $168 billion spent on Vietnam may have been spent building universities, paying down remaining U.S. debt with a 50 year bond, investing in community small businesses, or investing in research and development of new medicines and space technology. The main policy drivers of Vietnam, Henry Kissinger, and Robert McNamara convinced the public how necessary the Vietnam War was. Kissinger pushed the war from the Kennedy Presidency, through Johnson and onto the Nixon administration. After the U.S. completed negotiations with North Vietnam, and largely left Vietnam in 1973, the effect was a weak South Vietnam government that fell apart because it was dependent on the U.S. The so called objective to prevent a spread of communism was met by an even more sinister result—leading to the rise of Pol Pot in Cambodia and a killing field scenario that lasted a decade and took the lives of millions in Cambodia as well as in Laos.
Iraq—The ‘Bully of Baghdad’
Then there was Iraq, a place the U.S. went to war three times: first for the Persian Gulf War which consisted of three Operations and all their costs: Desert Shield, Desert Storm, followed by Operation Noble Eagle. It cost the US $50 billion and though it did not last very long, it created long term economic problems in the Middle East. Similar to Vietnam, Veterans still suffer from its effects 35 years later and will continue to depend on disability benefits for decades to come. The U.S. spent years enforcing a “no fly zone” over Iraq and that cost much as well.
Then came the Afghanistan War which lasted an entire generation—20 years—from October 2001 through August 2021, the longest war the US ever fought. It saw over 2 million service members deploy to fight in that “endless war.” Many Soldiers and Marines deployed multiple times, some as many as five deployments to those wars, both Iraq and Afghanistan. It cost a whopping $2.3 trillion and 2400 Service members were lost in its battles which could never be credited with accomplishing any lasting objective. Thousands more U.S. Veterans were maimed and will not be able to reenter the workforce.
The justification for Afghanistan was the coordinated terror attacks of four hijacked aircraft flown into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the attempted attack on the Capitol. The famed Flight 93 resistance resulted in the crash of Flight 93 near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, sparing the U.S. Capitol building. That day was the beginning of the a U.S. hyper war machine coming into being. The Department of Homeland Security, The Global War on Terror, and the Wars in Afghanistan and Iran were born of it, but those seeds were already planted ling before.
The unending campaigns and battles fought in Afghanistan could not be delineated in a traditional sense or laid out in terms of coherent strategic objectives. Thus the objectives changed and eluded the country’s generals as billions were wasted in equipment and logistics, while they chased the Taliban through mountains and deserts. So its campaigns went on and on and became an accepted habit of unending foreign policy. Operation Enduring Freedom, the surge, the second surge, reconstruction…the war was pushed from presidency to presidency, from Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump, and to Biden…and in the end it resulted in not one single objective being met. The Taliban was not toppled; it still governs Afghanistan today, while oppressing Afghan women, denying basic human rights, and limiting the education of young boys to religious studies. Girls are not allowed to attend school at all. This will reverse any meaningful educational development of the population while the Taliban remains in power. The country may be left behind for a generation relative to world education growth.
The lasting effects of the Afghanistan War on Service members mimic Vietnam. It was the one of the most expensive wars fought. In essence, the U.S. spending $2.3 trillion searching for one man, Osama Bin Laden, An alternative would have been to pay Pakistan $10 billion to capture and send him to the U.S. for trial.
Back to Iraq—2003-2011+
While the U.S. was fighting in Afghanistan, and if that war wasn’t enough, George W. Bush approved the invasion of Iraq. Starting a second concurrent war and adding another quagmire to the Pentagon’s do list. The Iraq War was based on reasons later proven false and could have been easily debunked, had investigative journalists applied themselves and researched what reports they had been given. It turned out contrary to that Bush’s and Cheney’s claims, and justifications for the Iraq War, that Saddam Hussein was not allied with the 9-11 hijackers or Al Queda, he did not import uranium from Uganda, he was not hiding weapons of mass destruction, and he was not planning with groups such as Al Queda, to wage terror attacks in the U.S..
These were the justifications for invading Iraq in 2003 and none were true. The Iraq war cost nearly $3 trillion and no objective was met. Iraq was not democratized, it was not stabilized, it did not become our ally. Contrary to allying with the U.S. the Iraqi government was destroyed, Iraqi cities and infrastructure were left in ruin, ISIS rose out of its ashes, and terrorized Syria, Iraq, and destroyed heritage sites across Syria dating back centuries. With the rise of ISIS, the U.S. and other allies send more military service personnel to the Middle East to destroy their networks, another major military operation in the Global War on Terror. Yes it is a continuation of a policy enacted during George W. Bush Administration; it is another war the U.S. continues to be involved in, although its operations are somewhat murky and seldomly reported.
U.S. Veterans did learn the costs of war as they always do, for they bear the brunt of the calamities of those wars. They returned with both physical and psychological wounds. Many Veterans continue to fight the troublesome administrative hurdles at the Department of Veterans Affairs for treatment and Veterans benefits as the result of the disabilities they suffer from the wars they fought.
Then there are the citizens of those countries who are no longer living. Millions were lost in Vietnam, and millions were lost in the Middle East. They paid a heavy price too. They are the voices no-one hears and will never be able to speak of the horrors inflicted upon them and their families. But others have lived and can still bear witness to the loss of loved ones, homes, fields, and businesses. What would they say about the US if they could speak about their losses in our press?
U.S. Iran War: A Bitter Pill For U.S. Hegemony
Now comes the US-Iran War. It is a conflict Trump has been inclined to wage since his first term. When Trump unilaterally cancelled the January 2016 agreement known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement steadfastly negotiated in Vienna from 2013 through 2015 with key G-8 members, JCPOA had already been agreed by all parties, signed, and implemented.
The U.S. through Trump 1.0 went back on its commitment made during the Obama Administration. Gone was a verifiable restriction for Iran to surrender its most potently enriched uranium 235 (U 235) and a verifiable promise from Iran not to build nuclear weapons. As agreed in JCPOA, the U.N. would send weapons inspectors to verify Iran’s compliance. It would not be possible for Iran to remain a partner in global trade if it violated the constraints of JCPOA. It was a very good deal for the world because in exchange for relaxing sanctions and returning frozen Iranian assets held since 1979., security for the region was virtually a sure thing. The JCPOA agreement imposed strict international inspections on Iran with verifiable conditions. It was the best deal the international community could have hoped for.
Trump’s May 2018 withdrawal from JCPOA, almost certainly paved the way for resultant armed conflict between Iran, the U.S., and Israel as Iran began to enrich U 235 later that year. Under the circumstances, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saw enrichment as a threat to Israel, and sought to destroy Iran’s capabilities to develop an atomic bomb. Israel had previously delayed Iran’s nuclear ambitions through special operations to targeting Iranian scientists, spreading a computer virus known as Stuxnet which sought out the computers controlling centrifuges separating U 235 from U 235. This was a clandestine operation setting Iran’s centrifuge program back by years and buying Israel more time. More directly, Israel with help from the U.S., bombed nuclear development sites. Israel was able to delay Iran’s nuclear bomb project up to a point. But it was forced to resort to destroying or removing Iran’s uranium by force once its delay options ran out.
Now, the U.S. has met humiliation on a grand level in its match up with Iran.
Statements from the Oval Office and from the Department of War are textbook examples of how negotiations fail and how to lead with the policy of war. Incendiary and conflicting statements from varying personalities in Trump circles are clouding negotiations to end that “skirmish.” The skirmish that was promised to last a week or two is now indeed a war because over a dozen countries have been embroiled in the war.
Attacking a country in the midst of negotiations as the U.S. did on February 28, could be compared to Pear Harbor on December 7, 1941, at least from Iran’s perspective. Imagine having most of government leaders killed, heritage sites destroyed—they have no military value—and then imagine its unwillingness to negotiate towards the JCPOA again.
From the standpoint of strategy, U.S. gains over Iran have amounted to far less than Trump 2.0 promised he would deliver. None of the objectives of the war have been met. What was supposed to be a several day war, one week at most, has ended up being nearly 3 months (87 days) as of Memorial Day. Iran still has the ability to launch ballistic missiles and drones towards its neighbors harboring U.S. military bases. And despite the U.S. firing over 10 thousand missiles, cruise missiles, and bombs, Iran can still attack Israel or its neighbors within hours. There is no stopping this threat militarily short of nuclear war, as Trump implied he was considering. Such could come in the form of neutron bombs detonated between 500 and 1000 feet above Iran military targets. The enriched uranium Iran has said to be preparing to build its first nuclear bomb has not been removed or surrendered, as agreed in the 2015 JCPOA. Its ballistic missiles and drones may continue launching and destroying at any moment any US embassies, bases, and infrastructure across the Middle East. The straight of Hormuz, a critical artery through which 20% of global carbon based energy flows is virtually controlled by Iran. There’s very little or nothing the U.S. can do to change this situation.
The U.S. role as an influential player in the Middle East has been severely damaged and will take decades to repair, if it can be, and likely its reputation as a trustworthy ally will never recover. It has surrendered to the world its credibility as a reliable ally, a status that since WWII took 80 years to build. By its actions in Iran, the US has triggered certain economic shock globally as energy costs have nearly doubled. By Summer the global economy will have certainly slowed to a recession if the war is not permanently stopped or a negotiated peace is implemented and it appears the U.S. has lost support from its allies by starting the war without consulting them, or any of the members of NATO.
NATO members have turned their backs on Trump, leaving him standing alone like a bullying wolf without a pack. Even the Vatican, Pope Leo, has challenged the U.S. over its Iran War.
Iran has gained leverage even as its government leadership has been taken out, an indication that Iran is still a formidable opponent Trump’s policy makers were either unable to anticipate or just ignored advice of experts on Middle East strategy. Iran retains its ability to launch ballistic missiles and drones, and continues dominance of the Straight of Hormuz, a narrow passage for of 20% of the world’s energy, chemicals, and 30% of the world’s fertilizer supply.
Under Marcos Rubio, the State Department dismissed many of its diplomatic corps. Under Tulsi Gabbard, intelligence analyst ranks were also reduced and not replaced. The Department of War dismissed many of its top generals and legal experts in the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps, a move which undermined its ability to prosecute a legal and just war—in this case JAG would likely have recommended that the U.S. begin no war at all. With the guardians of foresight and experience now gone, Trump stumbled into a 1$ billion a day war only to find himself stuck with no one to come to his rescue.
The ‘negotiations’ in Pakistan have not yielded an agreement and are not likely to ever succeed as long as the U.S. occupies the Strait of Hormuz with its battleships, and continues to attack Iran like it did once again on Memorial Day. Again, the lack of diplomatic experience among his negotiators undercut Trump and Vance. Iran holds more of the negotiating cards now than it did in 2015. It can withstand months of continued bombing runs and all it would take is a few missiles or drones to hit U.S. bases or to penetrate Israel’s Iron Dome to keep the U.S. off balance.
The lessons of Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, taught to the U.S. important lessons that it not wage a war without defining objectives, not to squander its resources maim and reduce its service members to permanent wards of the State, and to break glass on the red button war machine only in an emergency and once all diplomatic options have failed. Diplomatic efforts should never be allowed to fail.
In this latest war with Iran, the U.S. has already established it has not learned the lessons from past wars. And the costs are going to be much greater this time around.
