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Comment by salient | Hacker News Reader

> In contrast, America's modern "wars" (I do not think these one-sided affairs deserve that name)

That's a great point. America doesn't do wars anymore. They do conquests. And the American public at large seems perfectly fine with it (or they wouldn't allow it).

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I wouldn't say that the American public at large seems perfectly fine with it (or they wouldn't allow it.) That's a very broad brush you're painting with. A large proportion, probably a majority, don't like what's being done with our military. We tried to get Bush Jr out of office after his first term, and that was a very close election with just as much evidence of vote tampering as the his first election. Obama was overwhelmingly elected because everything thought he would do things differently and restore our standing in the world, but that's turned out not to be the case. His reelection was much closer, and he probably only won because his opponents were so weak.

After all these years, I think the American public has largely given up on their votes making any difference whatsoever; President, Senate, House of Representatives, they mostly all do whatever their financiers want once they're elected, public opinion be damned.

Anyone want to come in and liberate us from our corrupt government? (I was going to say tyrannical, but I don't want to devalue that word; we're not there yet.)

There's been a joke for a few years: the USA needs to invade America, bringing freedom, providing democracy, constructing infrastructure, and creating jobs.

I like your analysis, DougWebb, I deeply like it.

Please note it's important you American citizen communicate on your opinion as much as you can, beyond your borders. Even if you see no immediate effect, it will benefit you.

Too many typos in that; too late to edit it. Oh well. I need to proofread better before I submit a reply.

What the U.S. does is to use military force to preserve the international status quo. E.g. if we go into an oil rich state like Iraq, we don't just take the oil, we just ensure that it continues to be sold in the market as usual. This isn't "war" but it's not "conquest" either.

The thing is that the status quo is in the favor of the US, and they ensured that the oil continued to be sold to the US.

Sure, the status quo is in favor of the U.S., and we ensured that oil continued to be sold to the U.S., but it's also in favor of France and Germany and the U.K. and Australia, etc, and we ensured that oil continued to be sold to those countries too. It doesn't really make sense to call that "conquest."

Since when does conquest have to benefit just one party to be called conquest? If Russia and China split the US amongst themselves, would you call it conquest?

Did we split Iraq amongst the U.S., France, Germany, the U.K., Canada, Australia, etc? When many beneficiaries are involved, a military action seems less like conquest and more like an attempt to maintain a certain balance of powers.

"maintain a certain balance of powers" and "conquest" are not mutually exclusive.

"many" really just means "more than one", but okay: if 50 nations invaded and split up the US, would that be conquest?

Sounds like conquest by NATO vs solely the United States.

The other thing is, it's not just the US that benefits from the status quo. Lots of allies get to ride on their coattails.

Isn't that generally what goes along with allying yourself with someone - the parties agree to do mutually beneficial acts and let each other benefit from each other's actions? I don't see how benefiting your allies makes an action less self serving.

Don't forget that we can also just ignore it or have it hidden from us. In that case it happens without us being for or against it.

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