Since 1776, America has been at war 222 out of 239 years
When I saw this statistical meme going around on Facebook, which was posted by Mint Press News, I did not believe that the US has only seen 17 years of no combat, so I had to check it out for myself. Although the meme says "war," I’m sure they are including military actions as well. After all, the Vietnam War was technically a "conflict."
To my shock, and dismay, by my count, the US has not been at “war” only 14 years………
The discrepancy may be simply due to the math. For example, let’s say War A ended in 1900 and War B began in 1902. The logical thing to do would be to subtract one from the other thus ending with two years of no wartime. But if you look at it another way, the amount of peacetime is less. If War A ended at the each of 1900 and War B began in early 1902, then, actually, you’re only looking at just over a year of peacetime. And that’s the way I came to my 14 hours. Therefore, the 17 years is completely feasible.
Now I really feel like the schoolyard bully of the world.
Mint Press News’ comment was, "It’s called building an empire, not fighting for freedom." I have to agree with that.
Here are a few other comments made by FB peeps about this post:
"It’s called not sitting around letting others shit on us. If you don’t like it then leave."
"The Roman empire fell, so will America…"
"The human world has been at war every single day since before any recorded history began, fabricated by alleged winners. The only “winners” of all these wars were and are ancient royal and aristocratic families who lend credit (debt-money) and sell weaponry to all sides; their bankers; attorneys, and accountants. Let that sink in ………"
"All you people talk all this crap about how America is a bully. well hell how about our military sit our ass down and wait to see how long it will be before you all start begging us to stand up for you ungrateful fucks!"
"YA building an empire in which you’re all free to post you complaining about working 5 days a weeks and it’s freezing cold outside your home.. Meanwhile look around the world where hundreds of millions of women can’t show more than their eyes in public.. Billions can only have one child.. Billions starve daily and don’t have access to clean water.. Looks like to me an empire of complainers who are spoiled rotten full of freedoms.."
"I am an American Airman, if you think you have it so bad in the States, come live in this place I am in right now called Khamis Mushayt, Saudi Arabia!! You are gona loooove it here!! P.s. You’re welcome for the freedom of uploading memes and saying whatever ignorant rant, threat, or insult you want on the Internet. Here in Saudi, if someone accuses you of speaking in such manner you can get your head chopped off in a public plaza. Google it, not making that up!"
The next comment was news to me. Here is some more information about this "Civil Peace Flag."
To follow up, here is another site that claims this is an urban legend — which I’m inclined to believe.
Whatever the number actually is, face it, it is not near enough years of peacetime.
Reference:
I used Wikipedia’s "Timeline of United States military operations" as my reference.
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Wow interesting read for sure…
Reblogged this on The Militant Negro™.
Stunning numbers. And sobering.
Ayup. Still not as much bloodshed as Christianity, though.
Well, give us time. We’ve only had 239 years …
What are you trying to say more exactly?
do you think Christianity is the bloodiest religion in the world?
I don’t think it is, it’s the historical data that says it is.
Yes, I do.
Christian Crusades part one and two. Can anyone tell me how many women and children we slaughtered in the name of Jesus Christ during those campaigns? Oh wait, I’m not supposed to mention that. In fact, let’s block that out of our memory altogether and pretend it didn’t exist .
Hell yes. Christian Crusades part one and two, We killed each other over different people’s interpretation of what the Bible meant by “all men are created equal in the eyes of the Lord “. In some cases we killed our own brother.
You mean Islam? Muhammad launched close to 80 campaigns in just his life time, not to mention the hundreds after that. The crusades had 8 main campaigns and one smaller one. Learn your history before bashing the cultivator of the modern western world.
Nope. I mean Christianity. Perhaps you should learn to research. Naturally the numbers vary, some sites list more wars than others, but they all have something in common — more deaths at the hands of Christians than any other religion. Here are some sites and quotes (if you find something to the contrary, feel free to post the link here – and it must be a comparison, not just a site listing all the Muslim wars and death b/c there are plenty of those sites out there):
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This one is long, but well researched and well written. From Quora https://www.quora.com/Which-religion-is-responsible-for-the-greatest-number-of-deaths-of-infidels-over-its-entire-history#
German Peasants’ War – A series of peasant revolts during the height of the Protestant Reformation, spurred on by a mix of economic and religious causes. 100k deaths for Christianity.
Moro Insurgency – Islamic rebels in the Philippines have a long, bloody history of resistance against colonial and Philippine governments alike. 120k deaths for Islam.
Northern Crusades – Crusades to root out the Baltic pagans. Couldn’t find any good casualty estimates, but 150k deaths for Christianity seems reasonable.
Algerian Civil War – More Islamist rebels. 200k deaths for Islam.
Lord’s Resistance Army – Christian militants in Central Africa. Remember Kony 2012? 200k deaths for Christianity.
Albigensian Crusade – France leads a crusade to root Cathar heretics out of the Languedoc. Estimates vary wildly from 7k to 1mil, but let’s just say 200k deaths for Christianity.
Great Turkish War – A “Holy League” of Christian states rolls back the Ottoman Empire’s conquests in Eastern Europe. 300k deaths for Christianity.
Afghan Civil Wars – A variety of Islamists, including Al Qaeda, vie for control over Afghanistan. 400k deaths for Islam.
Rashidun Conquests – The Islamic Caliphate conquered its way from being a desert backwater to the world’s most powerful state in an incredibly short period of time. I can’t find anything resembling an estimate for the casualties involved, so I’m going to completely BS this one: 500k deaths for Islam. Trust me, it won’t affect the winner.
Ottoman Conquests – Mehmed II leads the Ottomans on a merry path of conquest over Eastern Europe. 800k deaths for Islam.
The Crusades – All of Christendom spends a few centuries banging it’s head against a Holy Land-shaped wall. 1mil deaths for Christianity.
So far, Christianity’s crusading habit is definitely a big source of casualties, but those pesky Muslim militants have pushed Islam into the lead. The score is neck and neck at 1,950,000 deaths for Christianity and 2,120,000 deaths for Islam.
But three wars that most people have never heard of completely blow this competition out of the water.
French Wars of Religion – The French Protestants and Catholics spend 36 years massacring each other silly. 3mil deaths for Christianity.
Thirty Years’ War – Protestant and Catholic princes duke it out for control of the Holy Roman Empire (modern Germany). War is waged between mercenary companies that loot the countryside to support themselves. One third of Germany dies. 10mil deaths for Christianity.
So that’s 15 million deaths for Christianity and a mere 2 million for Islam.
But in the year of our lord 1850, a new challenger blows them both out of the water.
Taiping Rebellion – Hong Xiuquan was born into a poor family in southern China. In 1837, he fails the imperial civil service examinations– his only hope of getting ahead in life– and has a nervous breakdown. Long story short, he reads some pamphlets from Portuguese missionaries, gets some freaky visions, decide’s he’s Jesus’s younger brother, rounds up some followers (known as the God Worshippers), and launches a rebellion against the Qing Dynasty that results in the deaths of over 20 million people.
[LLWMichelle: I am putting this into the Christianity category as it was a religion based upon Jesus Christ as the savior and the bible. No different than Mormons being Christian (yes, they are – Christianity is a religion that also believes Jesus Christ is the savior – that is the primary foundation of Christianity. If you’re poo-pooing this then read this article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mette-ivie-harrison/are-mormons-christians_b_7999120.html)%5D
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From Wikipedia: Religious War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_war
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And Abagond (a blog): Are Christians more violent than Muslims? https://abagond.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/are-christians-more-violent-than-muslims/
War: Wars with at least a million dead:
Christian wars:
years: name: conservative body count in millions
535-554: Gothic Wars: 5.0m
790-1300: Reconquista: 7.0m
1096-1272: Crusades: 2.0m
1337-1453: Hundred Years’ War: 3.0m
1562-1598: French Wars of Religion: 3.0m
1568-1648: Dutch Revolt: 1.0m
1618-1648: Thirty Years’ War: 3.0m
1655-1660: Second Northern War: 3.0m
1763-1864: Russian-Circassian War: 2.0m
1792-1802: French Revolutionary Wars: 2.0m
1803-1815: Napoleonic Wars: 3.5m
1830-1903: War in Venezuela: 1.0m
1882-1898: Conquests of Menelik II of Ethiopia: 5.0m
1910-1920: Mexican Revolution: 1.0m
1914-1918: First World War: 20.0m
1917-1922: Russian Civil War: 5.0m
1939-1945: Second World War: 41.5m (European deaths only)
1946-1954: First Indochina War: 1.0m
1950-1953: Korean War: 1.2m
1955-1975: Vietnam War: 1.1m
1998-2003: Second Congo War: 2.5m
Muslim wars:
1370-1405: Conquests of Tamerlane: 7.0m
1681-1707: Conquests of Aurangzeb: 5.0m
1967-1970: Nigerian Civil War: 1.0m
1980-1988: Iran-Iraq War: 1.0m
1983-2005: Second Sudanese Civil War: 1.0m
1989-2001: Afghan Civil War: 1.4m
Seven times more people have died in Christian wars: 113.8 million compared to the 16.4 million who died in Muslim wars.
Yes, 222 years out of 239 is a fact, not an opinion. And you know it is not just because we were being shit on, As you so eloquently put it. Very few of those years we actually did it to defend our country. Most of it was wars we started for our own personal gain such as sprint our type of government to the rest of the world because ours is better, or killing our own Brothers, sometimes literally in the Civil War. or fear of so-called communism being spread. . Being macho does not constitute for patriotism. If we are being attacked, yes we should absolutely go to war and must defend ourselves, and I will be the first one on the front line . But you and I both know that is not the majority of the reasons we entered into most of our wars . Admitting her faults does not mean you are not patriotic. It is the grounds for progress, to make ourselves a better country, and learn from our mistakes.
Sorry but I think you are wrong. I come out with 165 years of no wars
Dates War US versus Numbers or years
1775-1783 American Revolution English Colonists vs. Great Britain
1798-1800 Franco-American Naval War United States vs. France 15
1801-1805; 1815 Barbary Wars United States vs. Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli
1812-1815 War of 1812 United States vs. Great Britain 7
1813-1814 Creek War United States vs. Creek Indians
1836 War of Texas Independence Texas vs. Mexico 21
1846-1848 Mexican-American War United States vs. Mexico 10
1861-1865 U.S. Civil War Union vs. Confederacy 13
1898 Spanish-American War United States vs. Spain 33
1914-1918 World War I 16
Triple Alliance: Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary vs. Triple Entente: Britain, France, and Russia. The United States joined on the side of the Triple Entente in 1917.
1939-1945 World War II Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, Japan vs. Major Allied Powers: United States, Great Britain, France, and Russia 21
1950-1953 Korean War United States (as part of the United Nations) and South Korea vs. North Korea and Communist China 5
1960-1975 Vietnam War United States and South Vietnam vs. North Vietnam 7
1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion United States vs. Cuba
1983 Grenada United States Intervention 7
1989 US Invasion of Panama United States vs. Panama 6
1990-1991 Persian Gulf War United States and Coalition Forces vs. Iraq
1995-1996 Intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina United States as part of NATO acted peacekeepers in former Yugoslavia 4
2001 Invasion of Afghanistan United States and Coalition Forces vs. the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to fight terrorism.
2003 Invasion of Iraq United States and Coalition Forces vs. Iraq
TOTAL 165
Michelle, we just make war in order to “keep the peace” – right? continue…
(Michelle blowing a raspberry)
as to the Civil peace flag here is the counter argument:………….. https://national-assembly.net/handbook/the-united-states-civil-flag-of-peacetime
Thank you! I will check this out.
An International United Nations agreement, signed by every country on the planet to end all wars needs to happen immediately. Permission and authorization of the entire world, will be required, by an open UN vote of countries to start any new war, needs to be a must. Any future aggressor can be dealt with by global military forces. This necessary action is well overdue.
https://motleynews.net/2015/03/02/since-1776-america-has-been-at-war-222-out-of-239-years/?fbclid=IwAR0S9nNV47x-iZzQxd_NjWFh_eoIIX7N7e0mSHRscbenj-8hT0Me1qxxBnM