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...their 'end game' was a negotiated peace that provided critical resources they needed to survive...

Everybody thinks Americans are like everybody else on the planet. We are not...

The rest of the world consistently fails to understand HOW the United States is different. Even the Confederate States failed to grasp the impossible reality of forcing a negotiated peace to end the Civl War that would allow them to secede.

Others forget or never knew what it took for people to come here, create a nation out of wilderness, survive, and prosper. They do not understand what most of them were leaving from.

They cannot comprehend how much the patriots who founded this country detested and feared large, powerful, centralized governments. Therefore, they cannot understand the true basis and reason for the Second Amendment.

The United States may to slow to anger, but once we go to war, the "diplomats" and "politicians" get to Shut the Front Door and Color.

We may be magnanimous in our treatment of a defeated foe, but imposing Unconditional Surrender on our enemies is hard-wired into our DNA.

Clausewitz (and most of the rest of the world) is flat out wrong in thinking that War is the continuation of politics by other means. It is much more important than that, it is about national survival. If it comes to war, the United States wins, and our enemies lose, completely, totally, and unconditionally.

If it comes to war, the United States wins, and our enemies lose, completely, totally, and unconditionally.

Well, once upon a time, anyway . . .

I have said (here and elsewhere) that the US should have declared war on North Korea and on North Viet Nam. Without a formal, national declaration of war we didn't fight it like a war. We thought it was a 'police action' or 'nation building' and, as a result . . . we lost (or perhaps tied, in Korea, though not crushing a two-bit country like that might as well have been a defeat).

You are absolutely right about the way the US used to fight. I think the Spanish-American war was 'limited' and ended up in a negotiated peace, but it was an exception. Victor Davis Hanson has an excellent book called, "Carnage and Culture" in which he makes the case that - like the Greeks under Epimonandas (sp?) our armies are (were) comprised of citizens who wanted to get the job done and get back to their real lives. So we fought ruthlessly and efficiently - and we made sure the job truly was done so that we wouldn't have to go back to the same fight again.

I still think my comments on what the Germans and the Japanese thought are correct, but you are also correct that they had actually little reason to believe they would succeed in obtaining at desirable peace when they fought us.

At least, that's the way it was then. Now, all an enemy has to do is hold out for a few years against a less-than-half-hearted attempt on our part to make them 'see the light' and give up. After that we give up the effort.

To use the president's twitter succinctness: "Sad"