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American War Summed Up in One-Sentence
American Revolution: The Colonials hated King
George and his taxes on tea, so they fought to be ruled by President George
instead.
Whiskey Rebellion: Americans hated President
George and his taxes on whiskey, but Washington won a bloodless victory and
kept his tax.
Quasi-War: America didn’t want to pay debts owed
to France, so France started stealing ships; America recreated its Navy,
and everybody fought until they realized the war was costing everyone more money
than anyone was making in profit.
Barbary Wars: Americans
fought two wars to navigate the waters north of Africa freely, losing the
first and winning the second.
War of 1812: Mad about
the British restricting American trade and capturing US sailors, America
declared war, lost much of her merchant fleet, watched the White House burn
down, and then got what they wanted in the peace treaty anyway.
Mexican-American War:
President Polk wanted to double the size of the country,
so he picked a fight with Mexico and captured land from Texas to the Pacific.
Indian Wars: The
Native owned land the settlers wanted, so brief skirmishes led to full wars
where Federal troops used biological warfare, and everything ended badly for the
Native Americans.
Civil
War: The South wanted to keep its slaves and leave the
union; the North objected and eventually won the
war.
Spanish-American War:
A battleship blew up in Havana, and a pissed-off
America invaded Spanish territory in Cuba and won
itself a small overseas empire.
Philippine-American War:
The Philippines were violently opposed to becoming an American territory,
and America eventually eliminated their resistance.
Border War: A Mexican
revolution kept spilling over into America, so Gen. Pershing chased Pancho
Villa, and the US garrisoned troops along the border.
World War I: After
European nations fought each other for three years, America showed up, killed
the survivors, and declared itself the champion of the world.
World War II: The Allies
used American manufacturing, British technology, and Russian numbers to
defeat the fascists, and America began the nuclear age by
obliterating two cities with atomic bombs.
Korean War: A communist
government backed by the Soviet Union and China fought a democratic
government backed by the US and others in clashes up and down the peninsula
for over three years before settling on a border in roughly the same spot as
when the war began.
Dominican Civil War: America
intervened in a civil war in a country that it had been involved in for
nearly 50 years.
Vietnam War: Vietnamese
armed resistance to French rule turned into a proxy war of America versus
China and Russia that some Americans still don’t admit they lost despite
Vietnam now being a single communist state.
Grenada: America
jumped into another country’s civil war and declared itself the winner,
maybe or maybe not saving the lives of some American medical students studying
there.
Panama:
Panama’s civil war threatened American forces and the
Panama canal, so, after a
Marine lieutenant was killed, America invaded,
dismantled the ruling government and capturing the
dictator in under three weeks.
Gulf
War: An anti-American, oil-rich dictator
invaded the land of a pro-American, oil-rich monarch,
so America led a massive assault air assault followed
by a ground invasion that destroyed the world’s
fourth-largest army in 100 hours.
Somali Civil War: America joined a peacekeeping
force to try to curb clan warfare but left amid
mounting casualties.
Bosnian Civil War: America joined a peacekeeping
force that successfully curbed ethnic fighting in
the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Kosovo War: America joins an ultimately
successful peacekeeping effort aimed at reducing
ethnic fighting in Kosovo and demilitarizing a
terrorist group in the country.
War on Terror
After suffering the worst terror attack in its
history, America declared war on terrorism and has
been fighting ever since, most prominently in Iraq and
Afghanistan but also in smaller conflicts throughout
Africa, the Middle East, and southern Asia
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