Is war of rights worth it
That, on some level is why it’s proper to recognize and honor the veterans who fought, and those who died, in the wars that our nation has fought. That leaves plenty of wars - the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, World War One, Vietnam, and Iraq to name a few - that I would arguably classify as unnecessary, or having been fought because of diplomatic failures, mistaken information, or in two cases (World War One and Vietnam) something close to utter deception by the political leadership at the time. In our own history, the Revolutionary War, World War II, the Korean War at least until MacArthur crossed the 38th Parallel, for international strategic reasons the Persian Gulf War, Afghanistan up to a point somewhere around 2006 or so, and yes the Civil War, all arguably fall into that category. Wars, for whatever reason they’ve been fought throughout human history, can rarely be characterized as being “worth it.” At best, one could possibly say that some wars, though by no means all or even most of them, were necessary for one reason or another.
The correct question should be “Was the American Civil War Preventable?” Well, without delving into some long alternate history speculation about what might have been the one conclusion that one reaches after reading the history of the United States from the Founding to the eve of war itself is that the answer to that question is “probably not.”Īs a preliminary matter, I would suggest that asking whether a war, any war was “worth it” has never been the right question. I’m not sure that the question “Was the American Civil War Worth It?” is really the right question for historians to ask. However, as I noted in a comment to James’s post, I’m not sure it’s the right question to ask: On Thursday, James Joyner wrote about a Tony Horowitz piece at The Atlantic questioning whether the American Civil War was “worth it.” Given that we’re talking about a war that resulted in the deaths of some 700,000 men and the infliction of gruesome, life-altering, injuries on many, many others, it is, I suppose, a legitimate question to ask.