Hardly a surprise

[46zilzal]

With many a good friend completely screwed up by war, is it a surprise that many other normal guys wind up, today so screwed up from the experience that they cannot return to society? I saw several of my friends and relatives dive right into the bottle after Vietnam and look at the large numbers today who are just as screwed up by it. Such a waste of lives, even worse when the cause is to prop up a goon's "vision."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/08/homeless.veterans/index.html

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I'm not defending our involvement in Southwest Asia, nor promoting the use of military force as a first resort, but I was curious as to your personal view on what national objective or what set of circumstances (if any) would justify (in your view) the inevitable loss of American life, as well as the effects you cite on the lives of surviving participants, that the use of that force entails.

[46zilzal]

I'm not defending our involvement in Southwest Asia, nor promoting the use of military force as a first resort, but I was curious as to your personal view on what national objective or what set of circumstances (if any) would justify (in your view) the inevitable loss of American life, as well as the effects you cite on the lives of surviving participants, that the use of that force entails.

WWII

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But would World War II have attained the scale it did if other nations had acted earlier to curb Germany and Japan? (It wouldn't even have to have been the United States. I think historians such as Shirer have contended that a united show of force by Europe against Hitler's early efforts at territorial enlargement would have been enough to stop him without engulfing all of Europe in war.)

[46zilzal]

You cannot, though many try, to retrofit history.

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Are you saying that each set of circumstances is so unique that it's impossible to learn any lessons or general principles from what has occurred in the past, and to apply them to current situations?