90% of the posts on patriots.win are hyping up Israel’s incoming war on Iran. I knew the site was mostly pozzed on Israel, but good lord.
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (69)
sorted by:
The only person I might say was worse is Woodrow Wilson since his presence as president ENABLED the current Biden Administration, communists and South America instability to happen. 1812 was the one between America and British (since technically Canada didn't exist then) was more a tale of fuck around and found out and it was only because Nepoleonic wars happened at the same time that everything didn't burn.
My argument that it's not Woodrow Wilson is that the US was so powerful it basically set the world order. It was misused, but the US absolutely had that power.
In the War of 1812, the US was already in a weak position geo-politically as the Federalists and Hamilton basically solidified their power, and without a significant army or navy, tried to conquer Canada. While the complaint about impressment was valid, the British counter of: "You don't even know what a US Citizen is", happens to also be valid. None of that justifies invading Canada, which is why multiple states refused to contribute to the war, and several nearly seceded. One of the first things the US Army did, was suppress a vote by one of the New England states' legislatures against the war. The city of Baltimore was in open rebellion (the city that's just a few miles from DC). The oppression didn't stop those states from using soft-power to oppose the war by refusing to send troops or taxes.
This was followed up by: the only loss of continental US territory to a foreign army in The Siege of Fort Detroit, the invasion of Louisiana, the collapse of Indian relations in the west, the burning of the US Capitol, and three failed invasions of Canada. Even then, as a result of the war, the US Navy and US Army became significantly more competent and professional.
The idea of a standing army was very anathema to alot of the Founding Fathers, and up until the war of 1812 there was a prevalent mythology that the Revolutionary War was won by local militia standing up against the British. (Realistically, it's an idea still prevalent to this day.)
The idea of a standing, professional military eliete would have caused several of the Founding Fathers to absolute loose thier goddamn shit. But, sadly, reality prevailed, and both the war of 1812 and later on the Mexican-American war proved the need for a cadre of trained, professional soldiers and leaders.
Interesting to consider that if the US hadn't tried to invade Canada, the Civil War would have ended up very different.
There's some value to the idea of rejecting a standing army and having a militia, but realistically you'll need some kind of standing military for modern war.
The War of 1812 didn't really prove the need for regular units. Hell, the regulars (the American Legion) were being commanded by Life-long military commanders who had been in a uniform since the Revolutionary War... and they lead the US Army into catastrophe, multiple times. The Continental Army was vastly superior to the US Army in fighting experience and leadership capability (and that's really saying something). The "Legion Of The United States" was different but was intentionally designed to be elite infantry from the very beginning. They were almost exclusively the only competent infantry units on the American side in the war.
The militia are supposed to be defensive in nature, and are to be trained by the states. Principally, there's no reason to send a militia to fight in a foreign land, which is why we had not only a land militia, but a naval one too. Mexico and Canada didn't show the value of a standing army, they showed the value of a standing army for imperial expansion, which is why we wanted only a militia.
The naval militia did even better than the US Navy, even though they had the USS Constitution and USS Congress.
I don't see how, the British were never going to give up Canada without a fight, and when Lincoln started threatening the British, they sent 30,000 troops to Canada.
Leadership.
It's been a while since I've done my classes on military history, but IIRC, post 1812 is when you saw the development of dedicated military academies that would actively train for military leadership.
All the who's-who of the Civil War on both sides were cut from that cloth. No 1812, and you'd probably get a much different environment in terms of military leadership.
Could be wrong, though. This is mostly my musings off the cuff.