So my professor told me Democracies never go to war in class a few days ago

[mrstickball]

Samus Aran said:

Kasz216 said:

The US got it's ass handed to it in North Vietnam?

They killed like... 850,000 North Vietnese soldiers... and lost about 60,000 troops.

 

They could of won the war.  The only problem was, they would of had to have invaded North Vietnam, and they refused to do that.  By not invading North Vietnam it let the Chinese basically fight a land war vs the US.

 

Iraq was also winnable, just poorly managed.

 

Afghanistan though... not likely to be winnable.

Numbers don't mean a thing in this case. That's like saying Germany won the war in Russia because they lost a hell of a lot less men then the Russians did. And I mean A LOT LESS.

USA lost the war in the sense that they didn't achief what they wanted to achieve and they had to retreat because their own people were disgusted by the war there.

There are a few ways to look at it.

Vietnam by and large was an easily winnable war prior to the Tet Offensive. The problem was that you had the worst president in office (Johnson) micromanaging the war ala Adolf Hitler. Had Johnson let his military advisors conduct the war, it would not have dragged on for many more years, killing many additional soldiers and civilians.

As for what the OP's professor stated: He was wrong in his statement. Germany was a Democracy when it voted Hitler in. Although the elements of Democracy were hindered thanks to Hitler, it was still considered a Democracy when it started attacking everyone. And the actual argument is that liberal democracies rarely go to war with each other. Democracies still conduct war against dictatorships and others (look at Serbia, and Iraq in the 90's), but their aptitude for major continental wars is less likely.