Why war? It’s a question Americans should be asking.
Despite aims of containing communism abroad (all while confronting the hyped communist threat at home) or bringing stability to a new world order, the Americans who deployed to Korea, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Libya, Panama, El Salvador, Lebanon, Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo and Somalia never seemed to achieve any sense of lasting peace. Even when the reviled communists had been “defeated,” new threats emerged that required ever more deployments of U.S. soldiers.
Gregory A. Daddis is a professor in the history department at West Point. His latest book is “Westmoreland’s War: Reassessing American Strategy in Vietnam.” The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense or the U.S. government.