Monday 28 October 2019

Be Thankful For The 8% Peacetime

I fell across an alarming fact today which i dismissed at first as so obviously wrong it must have come from Fox News or the mouth of Boris Johnson but a search on Google showed it was amazingly true that since it was founded in 1776, America has been at war 222 of it's 243 years with just 21 years when they were only preparing to do it rather than actually doing it. 
The longest time America has gone without a war was five years between 1935 and 1940 which helps bring the percentage down to only being at war just under 92% of the time.
With a description of a major war being one that has killed at least 1,000 people, the 18th Century saw 2 years of no American wars, 8 years in the 19th Century and 10 years in the 20th Century so they are getting better although of the present 19 years of the 21st Century, they have been at war for 18 of them, taking a break from warring in the year 2000 but more than making up for it ever since.
I am sure that Israel could challenge the USA as the globes most war-mongering nation and England has an awful record over our 1092 history including a war with the French for 116 years which we called the hundred years war because that doesn't sound quite so bad.
If the yanks are the most war-whoring then the award for least war mongering goes to Andorra who has not ever been at war with anyone since its founding in 988.
With Donald Trump in charge, we can expect America to declare war on Andorra any day.

3 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...

Arguably Trump has used the war machine less than any other President (except maybe Carter) in my lifetime.

so, what is that snide little shitty remark about at the end of your post about? another unfounded assertion?

. . . . . . . . .

1. using 1,000 deaths is a pretty damn low hurdle to label something a war in an era when the world has 7 billion people. maybe makes sense for analysis before say 1100 AD, but is completely manipulative today.

2. since 1920, most of our war years have been helping the UK or picking up what the UK and France dropped (most of the middle east and far east)...

so, yeah, you are welcome you ungrateful ass.

3. often when the US doesn't get involved in a war (1,000 people killed) all the people on the left raise hell - oooohhh you need to intervene to save the Serbs or Croats, or Syrians, or whoever...

4. in the 1800's we had to rekick British asses back across the Atlantic... remember that from your history books?

5. are you saying we shouldn't try to help the people of south vietnam (leftists JFK and LBJ got us in this one) and south korea (leftist Truman got us in this one) keep their freedom?

6. almost all the "wars" in the 1800's were against native american nations when we were trying to expand into essentially empty unused lands...

good thing for the UK we prosecuted these wars because otherwise the Japanese or Chinese would have been where califorincation is now located and that would have caused serious problems in WW2...





Falling on a bruise said...

You must be very proud. Wave your little American flag on a stick, puff out your chest and sing...Oh say can you see...

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...

no, im grateful.

grateful for the Americans in my generation and earlier that helped stop hitler, mao, stalin, lenin, castro, various terrorist leaders from spreading their control over the world