Wars would not be argreed upon if it was left to a democracy to decide upon going to war or not going to war. When it comes to make a decision to go to war it is made by the leader in charge of the country.

Old men make the decisions to fight wars. The young men have to fight and die in them. War is a waste of human life.

Democracy is a lie. You have the choice of two main political parties who sell out to big businesses and make BS laws and decisions that the citizens do not want. Democracy is a total sham. I actually believe a totalitarian dicatatorship is the way to go. At least they are up front and honest about it and do not create a false sense of freedom with this democracy myth.

Different? War is war. Regardless of what ever technicalities people come-up with. The South itself during that time proclaimed itself it's own country.

There was still the fear of Lincoln abolishing slavery, which was admittedly unfounded at the time, it was also fiercely debated and was a major reason for the events that took place in 1861-1868. Buchanan's inaction may have been one of the main reasons it happened but to try and devalue the issue of slavery that was one of the main driving forces behind that decision to break away from the Union is, with all due respect, a rather naive thing to do.

The war with Vietnam disagrees with you.

America would not go to war, at least for long-term, if the people didn't readily support it.

America got its ass handed to it by the North Vietnamese. The American soldiers died in vain. It was a sham war because the US government did not want Communism to expand through out South East Asia. Thousands of Americans and millions of Vietnamese lost their lives fighting a war that was not worth fighting for. America loves to fight wars it can not win: Iraq and Afghanistan both of those are unwinnable wars. The US troops dying in both Iraq and Afghanistan are also dying in vain. War is a waste of human life. Civilians and infantry men.  

I think you're looking at it a bit extreme. But I do agree with your examples.

But, dude, you seem to neglect the fact that people fall too easily into propaganda for war

Different. A vastly different array of factors come into play in civil war. First, a sovereign nation is generally compelled to fight in the case of civil war, the other faction always has the role of aggressor (always, because they're the ones violating the sovereign's authority, whatever the underlying motivations may be). Civil Wars are often caused by democracy, that a certain constituency or group of constituencies together arrives at the conclusion that their position is intolerable, and that they need to fix it forcibly. Democratically elected sovereign governments are far less likely to be that direct, because they are unlikely to be in a similar situation, unless the country is actively having its sovereignty violated, the voters are unlikely to see their immediate domestic situation as untenable, that they would rather fight than continue living

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.

Well, US can defeat any country now if they wanted, but they lost the war in Vietnam because they didn't control the media. They've learned a valuable lesson back then and now they're the masters in manipulating the media for their own war propaganda.

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.