Does America need an adversary

There are two sides two every coin I guess.
The sides we see and the ones we won't.

While your nation has had a rather violent history, it has also brought an idealism to the world that it desperately needed. Democracy, civil rights and freedom have been your calling card.
I'm not an American. But I'm so impressed by what you do. What your fellow country men and women do and have done for the world.
It saddens me that your fellow soldiers are so despondent.
It seems to me that the hardships suffered should be remembered and we should do everything to ensure that we don't repeat our actions, that we find a better way to settle our differences.
Hopefully, that day will come.

It comes with the territory. The top dog is always challenged even in the jungle. The despondency comes in because a bad leader was chosen and the political system has been badly corrupted. The fights you fought for don't seem to be so right now as the lies that were used to goad you were exposed. Also, the bad leader damaged the financial system so you hurting morally and financially as probably people near and dear to you are also hurt by the financial crisis. Right now, the fight in Afghanistan is justified as Al Qaeda if they control where the nuclear system is in Pakistan the problem will definitely be raised to a higher level of urgency several fold.

You make an interesting point, g7yarbro. But what you've hit upon, I think, is a universal trait, not just an American one. A people, a nation, a culture generally needs an enemy or, at the very least, a rival, omeone to fight against and to measure up against. And these enemies seem to present themselves right on schedule.

During World War II, it was quite clear who the enemy was -- the Germans, the Japanese, the Italian Fascisti. The Russians were our allies, therefore our "friends." But, as soon as the war was over, those same "friends" turned on us and became our major enemies of the Cold War. The Soviet Union, leader of the Communist bloc, imploded and collapsed in on itself in 1991. Along with it went the threat of world-wide Communism; China had started to practice a form of free-market trade long before its erstwhile ally, the USSR, colllapsed. Today China is "Communuist" in name only. The only true Communist governments left in the world are Castro's Cuba and Kim's North Korea, neither one of them much of a threat to the USA.

Then came 9/11/2001.

You must remember that we didn't select the Islamic lunatic fringe as our enemies. Most Americans couldn't point to where either Afghanistan or Iraq are located on a map. Nor Saudi Arabia. Nor Yemen or Somalia. Doesn't matter. We didn't choose these folks to be our enemies. We didn't go after Osama binLaden until after his boys hijacked some American planes and flew them into the World Trade Center towers. They fired the first shot. We just retalliated. You can argue that Iraq was the wrong target, that the WTC terrorists didn't come from Iraq, weren't trained in Iraq etc. etc. I agree. But that's a different argument. The point is we were attacked, we didn't shoot first. We didn't select these people to be our enemies. They selected us. Now we have to deal with it.

You say you are in the military. OK, then you know that it's your sworn duty to protect the US from all enemies, "foreign and domestic." I thank you for this, my friend, I thank you very much.

In WW2 in Europe, more GIs were killed in road accidents than by the Germans, mostly, I believe, by overturning Jeeps.

Yes the center of gravity was very high and they tend to topple over when making fast turns.

We have not been constantly at war. We were not, for example, constantly at war with the aboriginal tribes. The first major Indian war in our history was the Creek War of 1813, which was instigated by the English, who supplied arms to Indians, and fomented an insurrection in order to distract us during the War of 1812. Subsequent "wars" with the Indians before the 1870s were pretty minor affairs (if not minor from the point of view of the Indians, certainly) such as the Blackhawk War and the Seminole Wars. The most intense period of wars with the aboriginal tribes took place in the 1870s, 80s and -90s, after which all the tribes had pretty much been subdued. That period of warfare, once again while being significant for the tribes involved, had little impact on the European portion of our population.

Taken all in all, the United States has enjoyed more peace than has historically been common for large, wealthy nations with imperial attributes.

As my Daddy said about the ARmy Mcarthy hearings, too bad we always need somebody to demonize. Id like to demonize him (Mcarthy).

You'd be hostile, too, if someone took your land away from you. In this case, I refer to white folks who came to American soil after the indians/Native Americans.

Whether or not America needs an adversary, as the most powerful military around it has a lot less in way of second thoughts before entering armed conflict.

For most of the world war is a matter of life or death, survival of the nation, for America it is often just a matter of strategic advantage. And even then sometimes very slight and dubious advantage.

Every country needs a goal. That might be to defeat an enemy and that's an easy goal to rally the country around, but other goals can work as well. The problem in the US (IMO) is that after the cold war, the US had no further goal. It became everyone for himself, make all the money you can, forget everyone else. OK, that's not everyone on an individual level, but more and more it seems like that's the way it is on a national level. Bush tried the "let's go to Mars" strategy, but he couldn't sell it. It was flawed. Obama is working on the big change theme, but he hasn't sold a new "Great Society." It may be the only way you are going to get 80-90% of people to rally is to have an enemy, but that's a sad statement.

I also remember reading research that one of the best ways for people to bond is when they both oppose a common enemy. I think that is a human trait that can be exploited.