How Long War?

How many years of peace have you lived through?

Probably not many, especially if you are a baby boomer or younger. Depends on how one looks at years with and without war.

A person born in 1926 (guess who) may have had one of the longer stretches of peace -- that is, time without U.S. military having been engaged in some operation or occupation. For that person the peacetime measures something like just eight years --- 1935-’39, 1971, 1977, and 1979.

Those years are unlisted in a Wikipedia article, “Timeline of United States and major domestic deployments.” The list covers a period from 1775 to the present and would print out at more than 30 pages.

For that 88-year-old, there was another peace-like period dated 1928-’31, but it fell in a period from 1912 to 1933 when U.S. troops occupied Nicaragua.

In addition to the 1775-present timeline, which covers most of the document, another few pages list other military involvement.  Headings are “Battles With the Native Americans,” “Relocation,” “Armed insurrections and slave revolts,” “Range wars,” “Bloody local feuds,” “Bloodless boundary disputes,” “Terrorists, paramilitary groups, guerilla warfare,” “Labor-management disputes,” “State and national session attempts,” “Riots and public disorder,” and “Miscellaneous.” (The American Revolution and the Civil War are in both the main category and that dealing with insurrection.)

Also on Wikipedia is a chart labeled “Timeline of United States at War” covering two pages. Counting up the gaps in rounded off years -- no months calculated -- 83 years were missing in the 240 years since 1775. That’s about 34 percent of American history in something close to peace.

Neither listing specifically notes American troops still in Europe, Japan and Korea. That started with occupations in 1945.

A third chart outlines the time spent by Americans in 14 major wars since the Revolution. The rounded  total is 67 years, 11 months. That’s roughly 28 percent of our history in warfare affecting the country as a whole. The longest was the Vietnam War at 17 years, 2 months; the shortest was the Kosovo War at 118 days. The War in Afghanistan is 14 years long and counting.

Other lengths: War of 1812 2 years, 6 months; World War I 1 year, 7 months; Korean War 3 years, 1 month; World War II 3 years, 7 months, and Civil War 4 years.

Peaceful years not listed before the War Between the States or the War of Northern Aggression, as the Civil War is known in the South, are 1819, 1826, 1828, 1834, 1845 and 1850.

The war timeline chart, the second mentioned earlier, marks our longest war, dated from 1851 to 1900. That’s listed as “Apache Wars.”  Another Wikipedia article says these armed conflicts with the tribe were fought with the U.S. Army between 1949 and 1886 with with the Confederate Army in Texas in the 1860s. It goes on to say that minor hostilities lasted until 1924.

Perhaps the longest period of seeming peace was between 1919 and 1941, which covers the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression. With the end of “the war to end all wars” American forces were pretty much inactive except for some Marines being involved in incidents or skirmishes, mostly in China and Central America. U.S. involvement in World War II started in 1940 and 1941 with troops protecting Newfoundland, some British islands in the Caribbean and elsewhere, plus Greenland and Iceland.

Some of the listings attracting attention beg to be researched --- Italian-American internment of 1942-’43, Anti-Rent War 1839-’44, Sheep War involving Texas and New Mexico 1879-1900, Alaska boundary 1907, Republic of West Florida 1810, 1838 Mormon War.

Under the terrorist listing are included the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and another picked just for its name, the “Hamburg massacre.” A little research showed the latter occurred in July 1876 leading up to the last election of the Reconstruction period in South Carolina. In this civil disturbance, the Wikipedia account states, “Democrats planned in the majority-black/Republican Edgefield District, to disrupt Republican meetings and suppress black voting through actual and threatened violence.”  Red Shirts paramilitary groups attacked blacks in the National Guard at their armory leading to about a dozen deaths.

For American veterans and their families, war and being in the military have meanings those who have not served perhaps cannot know. For others, even wartime may and can seem peaceful.

For living Americans as a whole, there really has not been a lot of time without war of some description. Our current troop deployments . . . where will they lead?  

Peace, considered as the absence or war or a threat of war, has comforted Americans for more than 70 percent of our history. But for pessimists it may only be a third of that history.

Are answers ever easy?