There has not been a legitimate war since WW2

[Nithavela]

Yep, Saddam would have just kept invading more countries if he was not stopped.

Yeah, he should have kept invading Iran instead. Of course with the continued support of the USA.

 

[Ana the Ist]

The Korean War halted with an armistice. No winner, no loser. The armistice was designed to “ensure a complete cessation of hostilities and of all acts of armed force in Korea until a final peaceful settlement is achieved.”

No final peace settlement has ever been negotiated.

I think we can call that a win...even if it wasn't formally declared so.

One only needs to consider what the fate of S Korea would have been if N Korea would have defeated them...and it's clear that's a win.

 

[RDKirk]

I disagree. I think the Gulf War in 1990-1991 was a "legitimate" war. The US and many other nations responded directly to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. It wasn't an attempt at regime change or to grab resources. The purpose was to free Kuwait and contain Iraq from further aggression.

That was really the pay-out of the petro-dollar arrangement made by President Nixon to protect Saudi Arabia as long as they accepted only US dollars for oil. The fear of the US government was that Saddam Hussein intended to continue rolling through Kuwait into Saudi Arabia.

The US was fine with Iraq being aggressive with Iran...the US even helped Iraq with that. Heck, I prepared some intelligence packages on Iran for delivery to Iraq myself in the late 80s.

 

[RDKirk]

Bush's ambassador to Iraq essentially told Hussein that the US didn't care if Iraq invaded Kuwait. US. Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam, "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait." The U.S. State Department had earlier told Saddam that Washington had ‘no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.’

I think it's even on video somewhere. So they did invade. Suddenly Bush's tune changed, and Iraq had to be stopped.

It wasn't so much "didn't care" as "didn't believe that's what he intended."

There was a huge debate going on between the CIA and the DIA at that very moment. CIA didn't think Iraq was going to invade, the DIA did. But only the CIA gets to speak directly to the president.

 

[RDKirk]

In order to win a war, one must defeat the enemy military and civilians. You do that by killing them until they publicly give up and stop fighting. But that is a big war crime today.

The last time America won a war was when it nuked Japanese cities. It couldn't do that today.

Now you know why America will never win another war again. America can win battles against enemy militaries, but it can't defeat the civilians who keep coming back, over and over. Notice how Israel is in this boat too.

It hadn't been necessary to nuke Germany. But you're right that winning a war requires killing the enemy until they publicly surrender and stop fighting. As we said, "We've won the war when we can stand a 19-year-old with a rifle on their capital grounds with no resistance."

 

[RDKirk]

I think that invading a sovereign nation without a declaration of war is or should be illegal. If the President and/or the Joint Chiefs of Staff cannot convince Congress that it would be just to take our military into another country, I see it as an illegal invasion. Often this is done under the guise of dec;laring war on a concept or idea. Take Communism for example......Our country invaded Vietnam in order to stop the spread of Communism. Why we fail is not just because it was an infantry against guerilla conflict but the people there wanted Communism so we could either kill the majority of people who live in that country or pull out and let them decide their own future.

Same thing in Afghanistan....If the people there had risen up in a civil war against the Taliban, there may have been cause enough to support the rebellion. Even in that case war should be declared against the occupying regime in order to legitimately overthrow their government. What we did is start a draft for kids to fight a "war" that was never actually a war.

It's a game the politicians played. In both cases, Congress--with eyes wide open-- fully gave the president authority to take military action. The difference between that and declaring war is that without a declaration of war, Congress continues to have tighter budgetary control of the process and the president has better ad hoc control of what "mission accomplished" looks like.

 

[Arcangl86]

It wasn't so much "didn't care" as "didn't believe that's what he intended."

There was a huge debate going on between the CIA and the DIA at that very moment. CIA didn't think Iraq was going to invade, the DIA did. But only the CIA gets to speak directly to the president.

This is extremely off topic, but since I know you are former intelligence, the difference between the DIA and the CIA has never been clear to me. They seem to have similar interests and skill sets.

 

[rturner76]

It's a game the politicians played. In both cases, Congress--with eyes wide open-- fully gave the president authority to take military action. The difference between that and declaring war is that without a declaration of war, Congress continues to have tighter budgetary control of the process and the president has better ad hoc control of what "mission accomplished" looks like.

That reminds me of the "Mission Accomplished" banner George W flew over the aircraft carrier. Was the "mission" really accomplished? Terrorism has not been defeated because it is impossible to win a war against a concept with military force. The only thing that can be defeated in a "war" is the sitting government's army. Concepts like terror, Communism, and such can only be defeated by changing the hearts and minds of one is at "war" within my estimation. A concept like a "war on drugs" or "a war on counterfeit products" cannot be won by an army, only by making it not to one's advantage to counterfeit or not get treatment for their addiction, not support Communism, not support terrorism, etc..

 

[RDKirk]

This is extremely off topic, but since I know you are former intelligence, the difference between the DIA and the CIA has never been clear to me. They seem to have similar interests and skill sets.

The audiences are ostensibly different. The DIA produces intelligence for military use, so that's going to almost totally very closely monitoring the military forces of other nations, not paying much attention to their other national activities. CIA is monitoring everything else and also maintaining an overview of military activities. There are other foreign intelligence activities going on as well. The State Department has its foreign intelligence activity, for instance.

Sometimes they overlap, such as with the question of "Is Iraq going to invade somebody?" The DIA was looking purely at how they were arraying their forces, calling up reserves, et cetera. Saddam Hussain was using the Soviet playbook, and everything he was doing was step-by-step right out of their chapter on "How to Invade Your Neighbor." The CIA, OTOH, didn't think it made good political sense for Saddam to invade Kuwait or Saudi Arabia and risk the ire of the US.

Official disagreements between the DIA and CIA happened many times during my career. Another time regarded "stockpiles of WMD" in Iraq. DIA said, "They don't have them" (and a number of people in the Pentagon lost their jobs over that). CIA--under considerable arm-twisting from Vice-President Cheney--said, "Well, they want them and they'd have them if they could...okay, maybe they have some...but the possibility of the converse cannot be denied." However, only CIA can speak directly to the president, so DIA just has to convince CIA or just sit on their opinion.

It also happened a couple of times that I know of when DIA discovered something CIA knew and wasn't telling anyone...and wanted us to keep mum as well. By "keep mum" I mean not even tell our own chain of command...which we considered balderdash every time. It was hard enough getting our operators to trust "intel" without actually keeping secrets from them. That kind of nonsense happened at the senior levels.

Usually, though, down at the desk analyst level, we all knew our colleagues at the other agencies and shared thoughts and information. Sometimes we even published joint analytical reports and had kind of an etiquette in how we gave each other billing on the report, like "....with Significant Contribution by John Doe, CIA."