While talking politics with an American resident of San Juan del Sur, also named John, we agreed that the US military will be in Iraq for many years to come regardless of who becomes the next president. I pointed out that Britain had tried to subdue Iraq for forty years and failed, finally withdrawing in 1954.
To my tremendous surprise, John attributed the British failure in Iraq to their historic lack of martial prowess. How could he believe a country that conquered the largest empire in human history and maintained itself as the world's pre-eminent superpower for over two centuries was a military lightweight? In answer to my question, John admitted that his history tuition had come mainly from movies and was very likely inaccurate.
Out of curiosity, I asked John if he perceived his own country as having exceptional war fighting skill. "I would think so", he replied, "except for Viet Nam, the US has won every fight in its history." I told him that his assertion was somewhat mistaken and John asked me to explain, so I quickly walked him through a reverse chronology.
The wars that the United States has fought in the past thirty years have been embarrassingly one-sided; Grenada, Panama and even Iraq. In each case it was like watching Mike Tyson beat up a five year old. Viet Nam was the last real war and resulted in a humiliating defeat to a far weaker, but very determined, opponent. In the Korean War, the US held on by its fingernails and managed to pull out a draw.
Contrary to Hollywood mythology, America's military cannot take much credit for the outcome of the Second World War. The US didn't become involved in the European conflict until it was already half over, but did render some belated assistance to the Soviet Union in its final victory over Germany. General Eisenhower said the liberation of Europe cost America 80,000 lives. The USSR suffered 24 million dead. In the Far East, the United States required almost four years to defeat Japan in an unequal contest that the Japanese knew they had lost even before it started. Both the Germans and the Japanese held a low opinion of American fighting ability.
The First World War was a similar story. The United States army showed up in the last year of that struggle when it had already been decided, in time to witness the final collapse of an exhausted German Army. In the early years of the twentieth century there were several incursions into Latin America, essentially punitive expeditions to assert American dominance over the region.
The Spanish-American War in 1898 was a opportunistic land grab taking Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines from a hapless, crumbling Spanish Empire unable to offer more than token resistance. The Americans didn't have it all their own way, though. A few thousand Filipino guerillas tied down a US army of 100,000 men for several years in a fight for independence and were never defeated on the battlefield.
The American Civil War is not relevant here, so the next previous conflict with a foreign power was the Mexican-American War of 1846, another one-sided fight which the United States took advantage of to seize vast territories from Mexico, later formed into several new states. Prior to that was the War of 1812, in which the Americans attempted to invade Canada to force concessions from Britain and were thoroughly repulsed, twice.
In summary then, the United States military has failed in every conflict in which it faced an opponent with the capability and determination to defend itself, succeeding only when the result has been a foregone conclusion against a much weaker adversary.
Although it may not seem so, I actually like Americans and admire many things about their country, but their uninformed, unquestioning belief that the USA is and has been a great benevolent force in the world often makes them difficult people with whom to have a conversation. John now says that he wants to learn more about the history I described and will have to revise his thinking about the United States' self-image as a great warrior nation. If more Americans had a realistic view of their poor fighting record, it might have been more difficult to convince them to send troops into Iraq in the first place.
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