History of wars: Mexican/American; WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Etc.?

Question

I'm young and seek the truth about the history of war. Would someone please give me a sentence or two summarizing the REAL reason behind any of the following wars:

Mexican/American
WWI
WWII
Vietnam
Afghanistan
Iraq I
Iraq II
Perl Harbor/Hiroshima
Etc

Thanks

I am seeking the answers; this is not a homework assignment. Why do some people jump to such conclusions. Arrogance online probably also shows arrogance in real life. To everyone else that has used this website to actually give answers, and not sarcasm, thanks.

Answer 1

Mexican/American -- Mexico tried to retake control over Texas (which won its own independance earlier). The government of Texas asked the US to come to its aid.


WWI -- Huge bunch of old-style europe politics. Officially started with the assignation of the Arch-Duke of Austria-Hungry but really started much earlier as all of Europe started picking sides and playing each other off against each other.


WWII -- Hitler wanted to control / dominate all of Europe. Add in some rather ugly racial politics. Bonus on the other side of the world Japan wanted to dominate all of East Asia. Both decided to achieve that power thru military invasion (Germany started in Poland, 1939 followed by France & low countries in 1940; Japan invaded China in 1932 (?) followed by Phillipines / pacific islands / East Indies / Pearl Harbor in 1941)

Vietnam -- Long time French colony taken by Japan in WWII... France took it back in 1945 but inherited a comunist / nationalist insurgency supported by USSR and China... France withdrew and country divided into 2 parts - communist north and democratic south... North invaded South, south asked for assistance...

Afghanistan -- USSR invaded in 1970s... forced out in early 1990's. Country in anarchy with large part controlled by theocrats of the taliban... they hosted training camps for Al-Quaida who then attacked the US on 9/11... US responded by getting rid of the terrorist-friendly taliban government.

Iraq I -- More correctly Kuwait 1990. Saddam invaded Kuwait in a bid to take over an oil field and intimidate gulf states into forgiving billions in debt he had to them. Kuwait asked for UN assistance, US responded and tossed Iraq out of Kuwait.

Iraq II -- After 1990 war Saddam actively supported terrorism against US, Israel and western interests, celebrated attacks of 9/11 and threatened to use his army / claimed chemical weapons against us. Over a decade of sanctions had no effect and it was decided an unstable, heavily armed regime with a stated purpose of hurting US and US interests needed to go (Note: Regime change in Iraq was a stated goal of Bill Clinton's administration as well as GWB).

Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima - see WWII. Pearl Harbor was the sneak attack that brought the US into a war that was already several years old. Hiroshima (and Nagasaki) was the final attack that forced Japan to surrender (saving both the US and Japan from an invasion of the Japan home islands -- projected losses of about 1,000,000 US Soldiers and about 4 times that for Japan military / civilians.)

You forgot the Korean Conflict. After WWII Japan was forced to grant independance to Korea. USSR supported a communist north, US supported a democratic south. North invaded south and the south requested UN assistance. 30+ nations sent troops to support South Korea, the majority being American. Ended in a cease fire because North Korea refused to actually make peace.... so technally the war is still going on.

Answer 2

WW2 was a moral war, as the allies were trying to stop genocide which would have spread across Europe. WW1 was a property dispute which I think caused wounds in Europe which still haven't healed. Vietnam was wrong because of the premise that the Vietamese would be a danger to the US as they would be effectively run by the Chinese. This ignored the history of the Vietnamese people who always resisted and crushed Chinese invasions in the past. The Iraq war is not a war, but an action against a Dictator who no longer supported the US. When Saddam did support the US and sell them his oil, he was sold weapons od mass destruction by the US. He was also supported when Iraq was at war with another US enemy, Iran.When he invaded Kuwait and the Kuwait ruilers were American supporters all best were off.

Answer 3

The Mexican American War was for the purpose of the United States gaining territory that the Mexican Government refused to sell to the US. Also in that war the 2 future commanding Generals of the North and South in the American Civil war Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee fought on the same side.

Answer 4

* Mexican/American -- 1846-1848 The United States and Mexico didn't agree over which country Texas was in. Mexico said it was theirs, we annexed it as ours. We won, sort of.
* WWI - A German U-boat (submarine) sank the SS Lusitania with 128 Americans on board. Then they sank seven American merchant vessels. We went to war.
* WWII - We entered as a direct result of the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan. Once we declared war on Japan, Germany declared war on us.
* Vietnam - Communists in the North wanted total control of Vietnam while the more democratic leaders of the South wanted total control. We Americans didn't like communists so we went to help the South Vietnamese keep the country. It escalated into a very nasty event. The communist North ended up in control.
* Afghanistan - The US believes that Osama bin Laden is hold-up in Afghanistan with his terrorist organization the al Qaida and Taliban responsible for 9/11. We've yet to find him.
* Iraq I - Iraq took possession of Kuwait. The UN told Iraq to leave and Iraq refused. The US and a coalition of forces tossed Iraq out of Kuwait.
* Iraq II - The US (and a few others) believed that 1) Iraq had weapons of mass destruction with which they would harm us and 2) Saddam Husein was a "bad man" -- so we invaded Iraq to take him out of power and destroy the weapons of mass destruction. We never found those weapons but we did take Saddam out of power. Now there's a big mess there and someone has to fix it.
* Perl Harbor/Hiroshima - Pearl Harbor, Japan wasn't so happy that the US had bases in the pacific and that we were supplying the Chinese resistance to Japan. So, they thought we might invade them soon and they decided to invade us first. Hiroshima/Nagasaki - two cities that the US dropped nuclear weapons on at the end of WWII. The devastation was so great that Japan surrendered shortly after.

* Spanish-American - We claimed that Cuba sank our battleship Maine in their harbor. We later learned we were mistaken, it was a fire in the ammunition hold.
* Korea - not unlike what happened later in Vietnam except the communist North never took complete control. We still have a military presence there.
* Grenada - Cuba decided that they'd like to own the Island of Grenada in the Caribbean. We disagreed and made them leave.
* American Revolution - We Americans weren't happy with the way the King of England was ruling his colony here so we decided we'd be our own country. He (King) disagreed but lost anyway.
* 1812 - The British captured some American ships at sea and decided that those 1000s of Americans were now British sailors. We didn't care for that so much so we declared war.
* Indian Wars - The US decided it wanted to own land that certain Native tribes believed was theirs. They tried to defend their land but the US Army was able to snatch most of it and imprison the "savages".
* American Civil War - lots of debate here but the bottom line is that South Carolina militia shot at some US Soldiers and the US Army proceeded to kick her butt for that.

wonder which I forgot. OTHER POSTERS - feel free to disagree with my opinions here. No need to be hostile though, let's just offer some opinions.

Answer 5

Realize that history is written by the winners.
That does not mean it is not correct.
However, today the Japanese are writing their history of WW ll, so that they were not responsible for doing anything wrong including bombing Pearl Harbor without declaring war.

Answer 6

Heres a novel concept. Go to a building in your town called a library. In this building they have things called books. In these books is a bunch of printed words about all sorts of topics.

Read, educate yourself and think before you ask silly questions.

Answer 7

Look on the internet for your Homework Answers.

Answer 8

Mexican/American -American expansionism

WWI - old European monarchies fighting each other...and we got dragged into it.

WWII - Nazies craziness.

Vietnam -attempt by world Communism of take over one more country (which they did!) in this world.

Afghanistan -per sue of Alqaeda and Osama.

Iraq I -Saddam wanting to take over oil fields in Kuwait and world and we said "NO" ( I was there)

Iraq II -Saddam aware of us been busy fighting Alqaeda was trying to wiggle out of sanctions on him since Iraq 1 war and we decided we had enough of his bull crap and decided to take him out...

Perl Harbor......Japanese expansionism, need for oil resources /

Hiroshima... our calculation of cost of our invasion of Japan of 1 MILLION G.Is dead, given casualties in Iwo Jima fighting were in a few days we lost over 4 THOUSAND guys dead, plus over 20 thousand wounded made us decide to screw the Japanese...better THEM dead than our guys!


there is a lot more on them, but this is a sum up.

Vet here of 18 years in military, US Navy nuclear submarines.

Answer 9

No, and "Perl Harbor/Hiroshima" was not a war.

Answer 10

Here ya go:
http://d.webring.com/hub?ring=historyofwar
Have fun.