War of 1812 - US had a pretty solid motive for war, an illegal blockade on it's trade, but used it as an opportunity to expand into Canada and break resistance from the Indians in order to expand more easily westerwards. Could've been avoidable, but seems like it was kind of legitimate.
Yes, we had good reasons for war, but the wiser course of action would have been to avoid war with Britain, the most powerful navy on earth, thus avoiding the humiliation of having our capital sacked and exposing the ineffectiveness of . Had we given diplomacy a few more weeks, the war would have been avoided entirely. As it was, the war resulted in a tie only which renewed nationalistic patriotism. It was foolish, at best, to enter this war as woefully unprepared as we were. Far better to effect a reconciliation with Mother England than to ruin our economy and risk tearing the nation apart at the seams.
Civil War - This one is tough, on the one hand, the US had absolutely no right to go to war with secessionists, while on the other the secessionists were just really bad. In other words, the war was basically illegitimate, but was historically vindicated by leading to the abolition of slavery (perhaps the most disgusting institution ever engaged in by man, even if that was not the real pretext for it which it was fought). Should it have been avoided? It's iffy, but probably not.
The U.S. government was constitutionally
compelled to quell the insurrection of the Confederate
rebels. This war was completely the fault of the slaveholding South. The most
necessary war in U.S. history outside the Revolutionary War.
More or less agree here, though from the standpoint of geopolitical strategy it was a highly successful, brilliant move which should have resulted in Cuba eventually becoming a U.S. state. The guerilla insurgency in the Philippines cost many American lives and is an all-too forgotten part of our history. The least justifiable of our wars, IMHO.
Far less upsetting than how we entered the war is how we exited it. Wilson was an intransigent fool whose hubris ploughed the soil in which grew the roots of WWII. There was nothing inevitable about the United States entering this war, however, and it might very well have been to our advantage to remain neutral while letting Europe beat itself into a bloody and senseless stalemate. That's exactly what would have happened had the Kaiser not been such a damn fool.
Our finest hour. It's unfortunate we weren't more pro-active in preventing the war in either theater of conflict, but it established the U.S. as the undisputed leader of the free world.
Whatever the merits of intolerance for insubordination, it doesn't change the fact that MacArthur was right: the UN wasn't playing to win. One of the great failures of American military intervention is leaving a divided post-1953 Korea, which now gives us a terrorist-arming, hostile nuclear regime run by a madman. We were there - rightfully so - but this remains America's most "unfinished" war.
Eisenhower's "domino theory" was absolutely correct, though Vietnam may not have been the most strategic spot to stand our ground. Another winnable war we quit on.
The sole legitimate cause for the United States to go to war is its national interest, not the UN Charter (which may be the most useless piece of paper ever stained with ink). This war just happened to meet both.
Iraq War - An illegal war of aggression started under false pretenses for virtually no reason. This one speaks for itself.
Completely bogus. Saddam gave us every possible reason to go in there. That nuclear weapons wasn't found does not delegitimize the war.
Liberals speak for themselves, not the facts.
Afghanistan War - This one's kind of silly. Deceivingly framed as "self-defense," the US decides to try to kill a band of insane fanatical thugs by bombing and occupying an entire country. Whoa there guys, relax - some clever intel and a single special-ops team might be enough... and it was. Should've been avoided.
Like the Iraq War, the initial phase was a resounding success. The nation-building not-so-much. The war-without-a-mission we have going there now I don't count as the same as the original operation to rid the country of the Taliban. So if by "Afghan War" we're talking about the current operation-without-a-clear-mission, then yes, but all means, it's very silly.
My sole vote as a totally wasted effort was the War of 1812.
