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Clearly my post was not well written, because a number of people have "informed" me that we once fought a thing called WWII and that, yes, some naval action was involved, and yes, some ships were lost.

Apparently my post opened me up to such "schooling".

I was attempting to say that I believe the US is currently psychologically fragile in matters of war. Yes, in WWII we were willign to do what was necessary. We lost ships, planes, tanks, and people. We knew why we were fighting. We took the losses and we kept on fighting.

Now, another time, another country -- Great Britain in 1916. The fought the Battle of Jutland. It was a psychological blow. Same on the other side -- it staggered the Imperial Germany navy. Their armies had taken losses on land and their armies kept struggling, but the navies on both sides became gun-shy and did little (I won't say "nothing") for the rest of the war. Ships were expensive and they didn't want to lose any more of them.

I see the US navy (potentially) as fragile as the British and German navies in 1916. If we lost an expensive ship, we might elect to "play it safe" at a time when that would be a bad strategy.

War-fighting is politics and our political leaders lack the gumption to order our forces to keep on fighting in some tough situations. The men and women in the ranks would -- but our politicians are afraid of losses. That's all I'm saying.