Are Republicans REALLY the War Mongers? The Numbers Say No

[BluePhantom]

Since Republicans are accused so often of our “war mongering” I decided to have a look and run some numbers to see just how “war mongering” we are compared to our bleeding heart liberal friends. I have to say I was quite astonished at the results on my research. I looked up every significant military action the United States has been involved in since Andrew Jackson (who founded the Democratic Party) and I have to say I think it’s quite the opposite. I was so surprised in fact that I ran the numbers twice. Then I figured it must be simply a modern thing so I ran the numbers limited to events happening in “the modern era” (which I defined as being after World War II). It actually got worse for the Democrats.

Below are my main findings. I will post my methodology in a follow up post. Read 'em and weep, liberals.

Since Andrew Jackson (March 4, 1829)

Number of Days in Control of Executive Branch
Democrats: 30,572
Republicans: 33,563

Total number of significant military actions that can be assigned to a given party
Democrats: 16
Republicans: 10

Number of days in a significant military action that can be assigned to a given party
Democrats: 18,557
Republicans: 12,250

Percentage of time USA is involved in a military action that can be assigned to a given party
Democrats: 61%
Republicans: 36%

Average length of military action that can be assigned to a given party
Democrats: 1,160 days
Republicans: 1,225 days

Estimated US military casualties of military actions that can be assigned to a given party
Democrats: 524, 473
Republicans: 38,103

Estimated civilian casualties of military actions that can be assigned to a given party
Democrats: 4,013,684
Republicans: 926,894

Estimated total casualties of military actions that can be assigned to a given party
Democrats: 7,142,067
Republicans: 1,082,884

Estimated US military casualties per day of power that can be assigned to a given party
Democrats: 17
Republicans: 1

Estimated civilian casualties per day of power that can be assigned to a given party
Democrats: 131
Republicans: 28

Estimated total casualties per day of power that can be assigned to a given party
Democrats: 234
Republicans: 32


In the Modern Era (since the end of World War II)

Number of days in control of Executive branch
Democrats: 10,135
Republicans: 14,541

Total number of significant military actions that can be assigned to a given party
Democrats: 7
Republicans: 6

Number of days in a significant military action that can be assigned to a given party
Democrats: 6,173
Republicans: 3,773

Percentage of time USA is involved in a military action that can be assigned to a given party
Democrats: 61%
Republicans: 26%

Average length of Military Action that can be assigned to a given party
Democrats: 882 days
Republicans: 629 days

Estimated US military casualties of military actions that can be assigned to a given party
Democrats: 501,143
Republicans: 37,097

Estimated civilian casualties of military actions that can be assigned to a given party
Democrats: 4,003,019
Republicans: 926,894

Estimated total casualties of military actions that can be assigned to a given party
Democrats: 7,064,802
Republicans: 1,080,681

Estimated US military casualties per day of power that can be assigned to a given party
Democrats: 49
Republicans: 3

Estimated civilian casualties per day of power that can be assigned to a given party
Democrats: 395
Republicans: 64

Estimated total casualties per day of power that can be assigned to a given party
Democrats: 697
Republicans: 74

 

[BluePhantom]

Methodology
For those who are interested in how I reached all these numbers

This was not an easy thing to do. First I created a list of “significant military actions” the United States has been involved in since the Jackson administration. Anything before that is irrelevant since neither the Democrats nor the Republicans existed. Once I had assembled my list I researched the causes for each operation. It struck me that simply because a given president was in power at the time it didn’t mean the conflict was necessarily his fault. No one, for example, can blame World War II on Franklin D. Roosevelt simply because he happened to be the president at the time. We were attacked at Pearl Harbor and Congress voted 470 – 1 in favor of war. How can either party be blamed for the Philippine-American War when we were attacked in territory that was ceded to us by Spain following the Spanish-American War? How can either party be blamed for the Gulf War or the Afghanistan War when they both had overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress?

So I separated the actions into three categories: 1) Democratic initiated, 2) Republican initiated, 3) No one’s fault. Anything in the third category I ignored. The following is my broken down list:

Democratic Initiated Military Actions
First Sumatran Expedition
Black Hawk War
Second Seminole War
Mexican-American War
Third Seminole War
Red Cloud’s War
Spanish American War
Occupation of Haiti
Siberian Expedition
Korean War
Occupation of Dominican Republic
Vietnam War
Operation Uphold Democracy
United States Operations in Bosnian War
Operation Noble Anvil
2011 Libya Bombing Campaign

Republican Initiated Military Actions
Modoc War
Great Sioux War
Nez Perce War
Occupation of Nicaragua
1958 Lebanon Crisis
Persian Gulf Escorts of 1987-1988
Grenada Invasion
1986 Bombing of Libya
Invasion of Panama
Iraq War

Military Actions that cannot be blamed on either party or both had equal blame
Dakota War
United States Civil War (though I was VERY close to putting it in the Democrats column)
Philippine-American War
Boxer Rebellion
World War I
North Russia Intervention
World War II
Gulf War
Somalia
Afghanistan War

From there it struck me that some of these engagements were pretty short bombing campaigns and there’s a big difference between an engagement that lasted a couple months and one that lasted multiple years, so I decided to break down the number of days each action lasted. This took a lot of research and sometimes the dates are not very clear. The Bosnian War for example had been going on for quite a while before we got into it and we had military advisors in Vietnam as far back as the Truman administration even though we didn’t get rolling until the Kennedy administration and didn’t engage in our first recognized battle until the Johnson administration. Sometimes setting the dates was a real bitch so I used the date that a) war was officially declared, b) hostilities began involving US military personnel, or c) the earliest recorded battle involving US military personnel whichever was earliest. To determine the end it was very similar: a) the last recorded battle involving US military personnel, b)the last recorded action of US hostilities, or c) the date of surrender whichever came last.

I still had another problem though. How, for example, can I assign “days of war” to Nixon for Vietnam, or to Obama for the Iraq War when it wasn’t their party that started it? So I decided to assign “days of war” to whichever party initiated the action. This created some weird situations such as the Occupation of Nicaragua which saw US involvement for an assigned 7,665 days (roughly 21 years) even though the Republican Taft (who initiated it) was only involved for about a year and Wilson (D) dealt with it for his entire administration. At the end of the day I decided whoever started it owned it regardless of how long it lasted. From there it was just doing the math and adding everything up.

The next thing that occurred to me was that a long war doesn’t necessarily mean it was a bloody war. That Occupation of Nicaragua for example may have lasted about 21 years but it only resulted in 116 documented US military casualties. The Korean War by comparison lasted about three years but was a particularly bloody affair. The problem is figuring out how many people were killed or wounded in a given conflict is a major pain in the ass because it’s usually just an estimate and for some wars (such as the Seminole Wars) there’s absolutely no way of even giving much of an estimate because the Seminoles carried off their dead. So what I did was to look at each conflict and gather as much information as I could find regarding US military casualties, enemy casualties, and civilian casualties and average them all out. Sometimes the estimates were given as a range (i.e. 30,000 – 60,000) and in that case I split the difference (in the example of 30,000 – 60,000 I would assign 45,000). I included dead, wounded, and missing as the number for "casualties". From there again it was just doing the math and adding it all up.

Finally, I wanted to reflect everything against the amount of time each party was in power. It was easy enough to just look up the dates each president was in office and calculate the total number of days each party held the office. The rest was just a lot of basic arithmetic.

 

[Ropey]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrjMkeXGfGM]My god! Are you STILL talking?! - YouTube[/ame]

 

[syrenn]

Just a rules note BP...... so you know how things work here and not get your self into hot water with the mods.

you may not quote an entire piece of someone else work....you may quote only parts of them.

And.... you must link to the original.

 

[rdean]

As long as they follow leaders who are war mongers, then yes.

 

[zzzz]

A little more simpler explanation is that Republicans are seen as hawks while the Democrats are percieved as weak. This simplistic perception leads foreign leaders to shy away from antagonizing Republican led administrations and to disregard Democratic administrations and the result is the Democrats have to go war.

 

[dblack]

Wow!

Stepping back from the partisan tit-for-tat, and looking at that list - man, we sure do loves us some wars.

Go team!

 

[BluePhantom]

Just a rules note BP...... so you know how things work here and not get your self into hot water with the mods.

you may not quote an entire piece of someone else work....you may quote only parts of them.

And.... you must link to the original.

I don't understand what you mean. I ran all those numbers myself and the analysis was my own. Took me several days.

 

[BluePhantom]

Wow!

Stepping back from the partisan tit-for-tat, and looking at that list - man, we sure do loves us some wars.

Go team!

Aint that the truth...and if you look all the way back to Washington the period between Washington and Jackson is just as bad. I think the longest we have gone without being down someone's throat is about 20 years between the Hayes and McKinley administrations just on a quick glance.

We're a nation of scrappers, that's for sure.

 

[Ropey]

Just a rules note BP...... so you know how things work here and not get your self into hot water with the mods.

you may not quote an entire piece of someone else work....you may quote only parts of them.

And.... you must link to the original.

I don't understand what you mean. I ran all those numbers myself and the analysis was my own. Took me several days.

So, this is your own opinion BP. When you post history, you don't cite information dumps in order to support your opinion and turn it factual?

OK

 

[BluePhantom]

I don't understand what you mean. I ran all those numbers myself and the analysis was my own. Took me several days.

So, this is your own opinion BP. When you post history, you don't cite information dumps in order to support your opinion and turn it factual?

OK[/QUOTE]

You want me to post a link to every single source of documentation on every single war I researched? All those links for all 36 military actions? Are you fucking serious? You are talking about 150+ links. That would take pages and I am long winded enough as it is.

If you take issue with my analysis tell me where exactly and I will be happy to discuss it in more detail.

 

[Ropey]

I don't understand what you mean. I ran all those numbers myself and the analysis was my own. Took me several days.

So, this is your own opinion BP. When you post history, you don't cite information dumps in order to support your opinion and turn it factual?

OK

You want me to post a link to every single source of documentation on every single war I researched? All those links for all 36 military actions? Are you fucking serious? You are talking about 150+ links. That would take pages and I am long winded enough as it is.

If you take issue with my analysis tell me where exactly and I will be happy to discuss it in more detail.

If you believe you can post this in a history sub-forum and make a conclusion without any support, then go for it.

150+ links

I'm not stopping you. I'm just disagreeing with your methodology.

 

[whitehall]

The 20th century says no anyway. Both World Wars, the Korean Conflict and VietNam happened during democrat administrations.

 

[syrenn]

Just a rules note BP...... so you know how things work here and not get your self into hot water with the mods.

you may not quote an entire piece of someone else work....you may quote only parts of them.

And.... you must link to the original.

I don't understand what you mean. I ran all those numbers myself and the analysis was my own. Took me several days.

Cool. My mistake. Its a common newbie mistake when posting ...

 

[BluePhantom]

If you believe you can post this in a history sub-forum and make a conclusion without any support, then go for it.

150+ links

I'm not stopping you. I'm just disagreeing with your methodology.

By all means feel free to research it yourself. If you see where I am in error, by all means point it out and we'll discuss it.

Christ almighty....want it in APA format too?

 

[Ropey]

That you think you can just post opinion as fact without cite is proof of your mindset. You are not breaking any rules.


Continue on

 

[BluePhantom]

That you think you can just post opinion as fact without cite is proof of your mindset. You are not breaking any rules.


Continue on

ok jack ass. Let's start with the link below. Now on that list of military actions you will have to click on every single link to do further research on every single one of them. Now since Wiki is notoriously unreliable you have to hit every reference link they list at the bottom of each page to check for accuracy. Some actions wiki doesn't have a lot of info on so you will have to google them yourself.

United States military casualties of war - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now you will also need some background on the Presidents...34 of them to be exact...Washington through JQA we ignore as well as W.H. Harrison, Fillmore, Tyler, and Taylor. So start reading the links for every one of these. Now again, Wiki sucks so you will have to hit every reference link provided at the bottom of every page for every President and read those.

List of Presidents of the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Ropey]

That you think you can just post opinion as fact without cite is proof of your mindset. You are not breaking any rules.

Continue on

ok jack ass. Let's start with the link below. Now on that list of military actions you will have to click on every single link to do further research on every single one of them. Now since Wiki is notoriously unreliable you have to hit every reference link they list at the bottom of each page to check for accuracy. Some actions wiki doesn't have a lot of info on so you will have to google them yourself.

United States military casualties of war - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now you will also need some background on the Presidents...34 of them to be exact...Washington through JQA we ignore as well as W.H. Harrison, Fillmore, Tyler, and Taylor. So start reading the links for every one of these. Now again, Wiki sucks so you will have to hit every reference link provided at the bottom of every page for every President and read those.

List of Presidents of the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

No, I do not have to hunt your references. You provide them.

Or continue with your opinion imo.

 

[BluePhantom]

No, I do not have to hunt your references. You provide them.

Or continue with your opinion imo.

I just provided you with a link that is a list of reference links. I am not going to pull every single one of those links onto this thread. They are all accessible right there. All you have to do is click on them.

I notice you are spending a lot of effort bitching about "my opinion" but you have yet to attempt to disprove any single conclusion.

 

[Ropey]

You intend to make the research hard. Why?