Tomorrow, June 25, will be the 59th anniversary of North Korea's invasion of South Korea, a war that ended in stalemate. It cost 36,914 U.S. lives, $295 billion and ended where it began, with North and South Korea back at the 38th parallel staring at each other (with the help of 25,000 U.S. military also standing guard).
We just observed World War II D-Day on June 6. In March we observed the sixth anniversary of the attack on Iraq. In December, it was Pearl Harbor's 67th birthday. Then there are Memorial Day, Veterans Day, July 4 and some annual war-related anniversaries most of us forget.
For a nation that supposedly values peace so devoutly, the United States spends an inordinate number of years at war, large and small.
Since 1775, history records 29 wars involving American forces, including a couple Indian wars (the 1855-1858 Third Seminole War took 26 non-Indian lives) and one oddball naval skirmish with the French known as the Quasi-war (1798-1800) that took 20 U.S. lives.
The bloodiest was the Civil War—623,026 dead.
In wars involving Americans, some 1.3 million have died. The wounded and maimed for life, physically and emotionally, are in the millions.
The most astonishing fact is that wars involving Americans come along on average every 7.8 years and continue for an average of five years (the shortest a few months, the longest, the Indian Wars, for 33 years). Korea came along four years and 10 months after the end of World War II.
We're at war again, in Iraq and Afghanistan, with more dead and wounded and crippled. The national treasury is doling out hundreds of billions of dollars siphoned from desperately needed homeland programs that would build lives—health care, education, cleaning up pollution and repairing dilapidated roads, bridges, dams and schools.
Some wars are necessary. We couldn't ignore Pearl Harbor. But others seem triggered more by a visceral imprudence—like a barroom brawl because someone said something offensive and manliness dictated a tough-guy response.
Korea (my time to serve) was a combination of both. North Korea's invasion had to be stopped. But then Gen. Douglas MacArthur just had to get in the last punches. Drunk with initial victory, MacArthur walked into the Chinese trap at the Yalu River and thereafter commanded one of the most humiliating retreats in U.S. history.
Here it is six years and three months since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. If averages hold true, Americans will be involved in a new war by the fall of 2010.
When will we tire of this madness?
