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Military and Wars in Contemporary America       

The United States entered the 1970s embroiled in the Vietnam War, fighting to keep Communist North Vietnam from overrunning South Vietnam. The war ultimately cost more than 58,100 American lives and made Americans doubt their country's foreign policy and domestic leadership. Scandal and perceived weaknesses under Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter did little to reassure the country. Not until the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush in the 1980s did Americans feel a sense of renewed patriotism, especially with the fall of Soviet Communism in 1991. The following decade of relative peace ended September 11, 2001, when Islamic terrorists attacked American home soil. American military response to the attacks, at first well-defined and almost universally supported, had by later in the decade le! U.S. forces in an unresolved conflict in Afghanistan that once again caused Americans to question their military and domestic leadership.

Nixon Doctrine When President Richard Nixon stated a policy that hinted at a means of withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam, his concept came to be called the Nixon Doctrine. The Nixon Doctrine, announced July 25, 1969, consisted of several parts. The United States, Nixon promised, would continue to meet all its formal treaty obligations. Second, if a country were threatened by a nuclear power (implicitly the Soviet Union or China), the United States would commit its power to deter such an attack. More explicitly, in reference to situations like that of the Vietnam War, Nixon stated that if a nation were threatened by non-nuclear armed aggression, the United States would come to its assistance, on the assumption that the threatened nation would bear the primary burden of its own defense. Thus, the policy that came to be known as "Vietnamization," or the building up of local South Vietnamese forces to oppose the Viet Cong insurgency and its support by armed forces from North Vietnam, could be

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seen as a direct example of the application of the Nixon Doctrine. The forces resisting the Communist- led insurgency would be "Vietnamized."

Vietnamization, however, proved problematic. The same South Vietnamese military ine"ectiveness that had prompted Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson to dispatch American military "advisors" to conduct the fighting in 1963 and 1964 was still present in 1969 and 1970. An American troop pullout was slow, and Nixon used strategic bombing to keep America negotiating from a position of power.

Nixon's announcement of Vietnamization signaled a slide in the morale of American troops in Vietnam. U.S. soldiers had fought well since their commitment to combat in 1964, winning every major engagement, including turning back North Vietnam's Tet O"ensive in early 1968. But the Pentagon failed to provide soldiers with a strategy that matched the soldiers' fighting ability.

Instead of fighting the war in a way that played to the United States' strong points-technology, firepower, and communication-the military high command allowed the North Vietnamese Army (NVA)

The 211th Helicopter Squadron of the U.S. Air Force flying low over the Mekong Delta in Vietnam on a combat assault mission on July 18, 1970.

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to dictate the fight. A!er learning in the November 1965 Battle of the Ia Drang Valley that they could not fight a toe-to-toe battle against the Americans, the NVA chose a guerrilla style of fighting. NVA soldiers made the war not about territory taken and kept, or armies destroyed, but about protracting the war, bleeding Americans little-by-little, and wearing away American resolve. The United States acquiesced to that style of fighting, choosing to send troops on "search-and-destroy" missions in lieu of a strategic policy that could have denied the NVA the ability to make war.

Soldiers "in country" knew that they were not losing the war, but they were not winning it, either. Word of Nixon's Vietnamization clearly meant that America was done with the war, and no American soldier wanted to be the last to die in a war their countrymen no longer cared about.

While American armies have always been plagued with alcoholism and drug abuse, those problems became magnified in Vietnam. The army's "war of post" strategy meant that its soldiers spent as much time at a base as they did in the field, and they had easy access to alcohol. They also had easy access to a black market that dealt heavily in drugs. And because the 1960s United States had become more tolerant of a wide variety of drug use, many men brought a drug habit into the army with them. Estimates suggest as many as 65,000 service personnel were using drugs during the Vietnam era.

Insubordination also became magnified. Rather than obey orders to search out and destroy NVA and Viet Cong troops, Americans might rather take to the field for a couple of weeks, intentionally avoid conflict, and return to base. If they found themselves under the command of a green lieutenant just in from ROTC, they might kill or injure him with a fragmentation grenade (an expediency known as "fragging"), rather than follow him into a firefight that could cost their lives. They could always blame his death on a fictional engagement with Communists they never saw. Between 1968 and 1973, there were 830 actual or suspected incidents of fragging; 333 of those were in 1971 alone.

Escalation and Atrocities On April 30, 1970, Nixon ordered American troops into Cambodia to destroy North Vietnamese bases located there. He also ordered simultaneous bombing of Cambodia. The campaign killed some 2,000 North Vietnamese troops and destroyed more than 8,000 bunkers, but its real impact came at home.

The invasion caused renewed antiwar protests at home. At Kent State University in Ohio, in May 1970, student protests damaged a campus building and scared the governor into calling out Ohio National Guardsmen to protect the campus. On May 4, when a group of students failed to halt for guardsmen, the soldiers opened fire, injuring nine students and killing four others.

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Public disgruntlement over the war continued, as evidenced by the much-publicized court martial of Army Lieutenant William Calley, Jr., in March 1971. Calley stood accused of leading a company of men in a March 1968 attack on the hamlet of My Lai in the Son My district of South Vietnam. The hamlet was reportedly under the control of Viet Cong fighters. When the attack was over, more than 200 civilians, including women and children, were dead, apparently victims of premeditated American murder. Vietnamese civilians also reported incidents of rape during the attack.

Throughout his trial, Calley insisted that he had simply been following orders at My Lai. Calley supporters said the army should instead shi! blame for the incident onto the American high command in Vietnam, including General William Westmoreland, overall commander of the American e"ort there. Others, including some U.S. congressmen, considered legislation protecting American soldiers from

Terrified women and children in My Lai, Vietnam, on March 16, 1968, just before the massacre. The case was drawing intense public scrutiny in the United States as the 1970s began.

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accusations of murder during chaotic combat situations.

The military court found Calley guilty of the murder of more than 22 Vietnamese civilians, and sentenced him to life in prison with hard labor. A public uproar followed, and Nixon himself reviewed the case. A!er several reductions of his sentence, Calley received a parole in 1974. The case reflected the disa"ection and confusion that the Vietnam War was causing, both in the American military and at home.

In addition to war protests, Vietnam also brought about another public outcry. Since the writing of the Constitution, the legal voting age had been 21. However, most combat soldiers in Vietnam were between 19 and 21 years old, and war protestors had asked for years why young men who could die for their country could not vote in its elections. The protests led to passage of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment in 1971. It lowered the legal voting age for all American citizens to 18 years old.

Escalation of 1972 Throughout 1971, Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger had tried to negotiate an end to the Vietnam War with Hanoi. Nixon also hoped to isolate North Vietnam by regularizing American relations with both the Soviet Union and China, both of whom were North Vietnamese supporters. In late 1971 Nixon announced that he would visit Peking (Beijing), China, in February 1972, and Moscow, Russia, in May 1972. The summits would include talks about limiting nuclear weapons. Throughout the year, Nixon also drew down American troops in South Vietnam to less than 100,000, with only 6,000 of those combat troops.

In March 1972, hoping to deflect attention from Nixon's popularly received China visit and capitalize on antiwar sentiment that the new American presidential campaign season would bring, North Vietnam launched a massive conventional attack across South Vietnam. The attack targeted ARVN forces, hoping to point out the futility of Vietnamization. Nixon responded with another escalation of the war, ordering a blockade of North Vietnam, the mining of Haiphong Harbor, and massive air raids, code named LINEBACKER.

Nixon's hard line enabled him and Kissinger to bring North Vietnam back to the peace table, and talks renewed even as Nixon made his bid for reelection at home. During the campaign season, Democrats nominated peace advocate George McGovern, but even as public disapproval of the war remained at 70 percent or more, voters agreed with Nixon's negotiating from a position of power. When Kissinger announced just days before the election that peace was imminent, voters reelected Nixon in a

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landslide.

Negotiations between the United States and North Vietnam faltered again. In December 1972, Nixon ordered another round of bombings, code named LINEBACKER II. The North Vietnamese su"ered heavy ground losses, but also shot down 26 American planes, including 15 B-52s. LINEBACKER II was like a final frantic brawl between combatants. In January 1973 the two sides returned to the table and finalized a peace agreement.

Despite the United States's massive final bombing campaigns against North Vietnam in 1972, North Vietnamese leaders refused to budge on their demands. At this point, Nixon realized the futility of continuing the war with Vietnam, and on January 27, 1973, the United States and North Vietnam signed the Paris Peace Accords. By March 29, 1973, the last of the U.S. troops had been evacuated from Vietnam, but North and South Vietnamese troops quickly resumed fighting. North Vietnam began its last o"ensive in 1974, moving along the Ho Chi Minh trail into the South, which fell quickly. In 1976 the North and South were o"icially reunited as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

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Cease-Fire and the Fall of Vietnam Americans rejoiced at television coverage of former prisoners of war touching down on airstrips in Hawaii, but the end of the American phase of the Vietnam War le! the population exhausted and questioning America's role in the world. Congress moved to prevent any president from grabbing the same discretionary war powers that Lyndon Johnson had with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964. It passed the War Powers Act in 1973, insisting that the president consult with Congress before committing troops to any conflict, and make periodic updates to Congress. If at any point Congress disapproves with the action, the president must start to bring troops home. Nixon vetoed the bill, but Congress mustered the votes for an override.

The year 1973 also saw the end of the dra!. Conscription had been in place, essentially uninterrupted, since 1940. But the unpopularity of the Vietnam War made dra! dodging an active form of protest. Between 1964 and 1973, from 30,000 to 50,000 service-age men fled to Canada or Sweden to avoid the dra!. Some 210,000 others faced dra! violation charges. The demise of the dra! put the U.S. military services on an all-volunteer footing, where they have remained.

In August 1974, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency in the wake of the Watergate scandal. His successor, Gerald R. Ford, had to contend with both the a!ermath of that scandal and the final collapse of South Vietnam. In April 1975, North Vietnamese forces swept across South Vietnam, creating a unified, Communist Vietnam. The Communist takeover further destabilized Southeast Asia, and the Communist Khmer Rouge seized power in neighboring Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge brutally massacred its opposition, and soon came into conflict with the United States.

In May, Khmer Rouge gunboats o" the coast of Cambodia stopped and boarded an American merchant ship, the Mayaguez, claiming it had been spying. Cambodians captured the ship and reportedly took the crew to nearby Koh Tang island.

Ford knew that the United States appeared weak and indecisive in the wake of its apparent loss in Vietnam, and he wanted to send a message that the United States was still resolute.

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Ford committed U.S. Marines to retake the ship, attack Koh Tang, and rescue the hostages. On May 14, 179 marines helicoptered onto the island, while others retook the ship. The Khmer Rouge released the hostages, who were on the mainland, but fighting still broke out on the island. In a fight that illustrated chaotic conditions in the post-Vietnam U.S. military, 15 marines were killed, three went missing, 50 were wounded in combat, and another 23 died in a helicopter crash.

Carter Doctrine Ford lost the presidency to Jimmy Carter in 1976. On January 23, 1980, in his State of the Union address, President Jimmy Carter made a foreign policy statement that came to be known as the Carter Doctrine. Carter extended the principle of containment of the Soviet Union to the Persian Gulf region, in response to Soviet armed forces in Afghanistan. Under the Carter Doctrine, the United States extended formal aid to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, and Pakistan.

Carter stressed negotiation in the first half of his administration, and sought to broker a peace accord between Israel and Egypt. The Carter years, however, saw a resurgence in Soviet belligerence. The threat of a Communist takeover in Angola in 1979 and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 prompted Carter to reinstate a registration for a possible military dra!, but not a dra! itself. Under this plan, all American males over the age of 18 had to register with the federal government in case it

A Marine Corps Vietnam Veteran wears his collection of pins to a motorcycle rally in 2006. Unlike during the Vietnam War, protesters of the war in Iraq made an e"ort to stress that they were protesting the war, not the soldiers.

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rapidly needed to create a list of names upon which to base a dra!. The dra! registration remains in e"ect; American men cannot even get federal education loans without proof of registration.

The American military, however, still appeared weak, especially in the wake of the Iranian hostage crisis, which began in November 1979. Radical Islamic fundamentalists under the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (who had taken control a!er the ouster of the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran) captured 52 Americans at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran. Carter seemed powerless to secure their release. In April 1980 Carter authorized a military expedition to enter Tehran and rescue the hostages.

On April 24 eight helicopters from the aircra! carrier Nimitz were to rendezvous with C-130s at a point in the desert named Desert One. The operations, code named Eagle Claw, failed when two of the aircra! collided, killing eight soldiers. The survivors abandoned the rescue and Carter had to announce the failure. The hostages were finally freed at the start of the Reagan administration.

Reagan Doctrine Ronald Reagan won the presidency from Jimmy Carter in 1980, in part because he promised to restore American pride and military e"ectiveness. Part of his plan was to restore American morale and prestige around the globe; part of it was to bring about the fall of the Communist Soviet Union. In his February 6, 1985, State of the Union address, Reagan o"ered a refinement to the policies committing American forces abroad. Reagan made explicit an implicit aspect of the Carter Doctrine, in his own "Reagan Doctrine." Reagan committed the United States to come to the aid of anti-Communist rebels in countries dominated by Communist or pro-Communist regimes. In particular, this doctrine led to the commitment of U.S. aid to rebel groups in Nicaragua. Covert aid to Afghan rebels fighting the Soviet-supported regime in Afghanistan represented another phase of the Reagan Doctrine. In this regard, Ronald Reagan echoed assertions by Eisenhower's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, that the United States should be prepared to "roll back" Communist control where it had extended.

Although associated with Ronald Reagan, the principle of explicit or covert aid to anti-Communist insurgent groups had been supported by Democratic President John Kennedy in the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, and by Democratic President Jimmy Carter in his support for the Mujaheddin anti-Communist rebels in Afghanistan as early as July 1979.

Reagan increased military funding significantly. In the largest American peacetime military buildup in history, he committed $2.4 trillion to all branches of the military, included ship production, technological advances, and research into a space-based missile defense shield nicknamed "Star

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Wars." While strengthening the military, the spending would also force the Soviet Union to spend on defense, and, ultimately, spend itself to near bankruptcy.

Reagan-era Conflicts In 1983, a!er Israel had invaded Lebanon in 1982, the United States agreed to be part of a peacekeeping force in Lebanon. American marines, garrisoned in Beirut, would be part of that force. On October 23, terrorists bombed the marine barracks, killing 241. Reagan presided over a solemn service honoring the marines, as well as a renewed perception of American weakness. The United States abandoned the security e"ort in 1984.

Two days later, on October 25, the United States invaded the tiny island country of Grenada, northwest of Venezuela. The country had undergone a Communist takeover in 1979, and a more brutal consolidation of Communist power in 1983 at the hands of pro-Castro military men. In Operation Urgent Fury, the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marines combined to land troops on the island and secure it a!er a three-day fight. The United States lost 18 men killed and 116 wounded, but it also went in with clear goals and a doctrine of overwhelming force. However, poor communication between military branches and poor intelligence usage indicated that the U.S. military still had a long way to recover from the nadir of 1975.

In 1986, investigators connected the bombing of a West German night club, in which an American serviceman was killed, with Islamic radicals under General Muammar al-Gaddafi, leader of Libya. Reagan authorized a strike on Gaddafi's Libyan stronghold. On April 14, flying from bases in England, bombers hit Gaddafi's base; the attacks killed more than 100 Libyans, but Gaddafi escaped. However, his regional power and threat to the United States greatly diminished. In announcing the air strike, Reagan uttered the now-famous phrase, "You can run, but you can't hide."

In 1986 and 1987, Islamic radicals held more Americans hostage in the Middle East, especially in Lebanon, creating a new dilemma. Reagan had vowed that he would not negotiate with terrorists, for fear of legitimizing their causes, but he had to display some kind of action. His administration found a way to link the problem with another undertaking thousands of miles away.

In 1979, le!ist Sandinista forces had overthrown the U.S.-backed government of Nicaragua. One of Reagan's goals was to topple the Communist Sandinistas, and he committed more that $19 million to train contra rebels to fight them. Fearing another Vietnam, Congress prohibited Reagan from helping the contras. The Reagan administration decided to then authorize the secret sale of weapons to contra

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rebels in Nicaragua, and the money made from the sales would go to the Middle East as incentive to release American hostages. When the deal came to light, the news media deemed it the Iran-Contra a"air and likened it to a new Watergate scandal. Televised congressional hearings implicated many of Reagan's advisors in wrongdoing connected with the scandal, but Reagan himself avoided any permanent political damage.

The George H. W. Bush Administration On Christmas Eve, 1989, Reagan's successor, President George H. W. Bush, sent troops into Panama to depose and arrest dictator Manuel Noriega. In 1977, the United States had agreed to turn administration of the Panama Canal over to Panama by the end of the century. However, Noriega was a sticking point. Drug tra"icker, leader of the country, and head of the Panamanian Defense Force, by 1989 Noriega had begun harassing American civilians and service personnel in the country. He crushed a coup that attempted to topple his regime, and he unwisely announced a Declaration of War against the United States.

The invasion, called Operation Just Cause, showed the American armed forces finally recovering from the Vietnam era. It involved a variety of elements, including armored columns and paratroops. The speed and precision with which the 24,000 American troops operated showed the American military was still an e"ective fighting force.

Desert Shield and Desert Storm In August 1990, the army of Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein invaded the oil-rich neighboring state of Kuwait. Saddam proclaimed its annexation as a province of Iraq. Saudi Arabia feared subsequent invasion of their own territory. Immediately, President Bush proclaimed that the Iraqi incursion "cannot stand," and he dispatched an American carrier task force to the Persian Gulf, as well as troops from the American Central Command (based in Florida, but with jurisdiction over the Middle East) to begin Operation Desert Shield. Desert Shield would be a defensive line spread just south of the Iraqi- Saudi border and composed of U.S., British, and Saudi troops.

Central Command head General Norman Schwarzkopf, a veteran of Vietnam and the Grenada operation, moved his headquarters to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to oversee the operation. Throughout the fall of 1990, Bush, Secretary of State James Baker, National Security Advisor Brent Scowcro!, and others worked to achieve to a negotiated end to the occupation of Kuwait. Hussein remained intransigent, and Bush began assembling a coalition force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.

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By January 1991, Bush had the support of a coalition of 34 countries opposed to Hussein's occupation of Kuwait, along with the United Nations backing he needed to wage o"ensive war again Iraq. His goals were limited and well defined-force Iraq to give up Kuwait. To go beyond that would have caused the Islamic nations in the coalition to bolt. Bush's war aims never included capturing Baghdad or toppling Saddam Hussein.

Bush's mid-January deadline for voluntary Iraqi departure from Kuwait passed, and on January 16, Desert Shield became Desert Storm. Schwarzkopf and Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Sta" General Colin Powell worked closely to devise an o"ensive strategy in the desert. Powell, a veteran of Vietnam, wanted to make sure that Schwarzkopf had enough men and equipment to do the job, and he spent the fall of 1990 making sure everything was in place.

Schwarzkopf allowed news media in the area to believe that American marines, who had been seen practicing amphibious invasions with huge hovercra!, would spearhead the attack with a landing from the Persian Gulf near Kuwait City. In reality, Schwarzkopf planned an armored drive from the Saudi desert toward Baghdad. The armored line would essentially pivot on a point near the Kuwait border, and as it swung shut across the countryside, the Iraqi forces in Kuwait would have two choices-pull out of Kuwait to avoid the trap, or die. Schwarzkopf based much of the open-field desert phase of Desert Storm on the World War II work of German tank general Heinz Guderian and Erwin Rommel.

The ground phase of combat, however, would not begin until Schwarzkopf was certain the American- led campaign had air superiority over Iraq. For six weeks, air force fighters and bombers flew thousands of sorties over Iraq, including Baghdad, to hit known troop installations and command and control centers. American F-15 Eagles, F-16 Falcons, and British Tornadoes dominated the skies. B-52 bombers, in American service since the 1950s, dropped "bunker buster" bombs on Iraqi fortifications; F-4 Phantom jets, a workhorse of Vietnam, were pressed into service as electronics-scrambling "wild weasel" aircra!; and A-10 Warthogs flew regular missions to knock Iraqi Republican Guard tanks. The battleship U.S.S. Missouri, whose decks were the site of the Japanese surrender in World War II, also took part in the war.

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In an attempt to draw the Jewish state of Israel into the war and thus collapse the Anglo-American- Arab coalition, Saddam Hussein ordered Scud missiles fired at Israel. The Scuds, with minor updates,

M-1A1 Abrams tanks advance across the desert during Operation Desert Storm on February 15, 1991, in a ground campaign that took only 100 hours.

U.S. Air Force F-16A, F-15C, and F-15E aircra! flying a mission over a burning oil field in Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm.

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were essentially German V-2 rockets of the type Hitler fired at England in World War II. Bush's administration convinced Israel to stay out of the war, in part because the U.S. Air Forces Patriot Missile batteries successfully intercepted some Scuds and blew them from the sky. Bush immediately sent more Patriot batteries to Israel.

A!er six weeks of bombing, Schwarzkopf unleashed his ground o"ensive. It worked well, easily crushing any organized resistance, and pulling Iraqis out of Kuwait. Those who didn't immediately surrender were killed or captured. The ground campaign took 100 hours. The e"ectiveness of Desert Storm showed how far the American military services had come in the 16 years since the fall of Saigon. President Bush noted that "By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome … once and for all."

The Clinton Administration When Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992, he ushered in a renewed period of military uncertainty. Many American veterans opposed Clinton as they perceived him as having avoided the dra! during Vietnam. Clinton also opened dialogue designed to make the atmosphere in America's military services accepting of gay members. In 1981, the Department of Defense made the dismissal of gays and lesbians from the armed services mandatory. Clinton wanted them to be able to serve openly, with no threat of repercussions. Opponents of Clinton's plan said that since studies show that soldiers in combat tend to fight more for the buddy next to them than for political ideals, the open service of gays and lesbians would destroy unit cohesion. The best that Clinton could achieve was the stalemated, de facto policy of "don't ask, don't tell."

Like his Republican predecessors, Clinton continued to commit U.S. troops to world hot spots. The most dangerous turned out to be Somalia. Somalia, with no legally constituted government and wracked by infighting among Muslim warlords, drew world attention in late 1992 for a famine that caused starvation throughout the country. President Bush, who had already lost reelection to Clinton, agreed to commit the United States to the United Nations Task Force (UNITAF) for Somalia. The 25,000 American troops in the country were there only for relief e"orts.

In 1993, Clinton committed U.S. troops to United Nations Operations in Somalia (UNOSOM) II, designed to take power away from warlords, especially Muhammad Farah Aideed, and establish a stable government. On October 3, a force of American Delta Force troops and Army Rangers moved into Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, to capture Aideed. Somalis, however, ambushed them and brought down one of their helicopters with a shoulder-fired missile. The resulting gunfight was the largest engagement involving American troops since Vietnam, including Desert Storm. Americans even saw

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televised footage of one dead marine being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. A total of 18 Americans died in the fight. The United States le! Somalia in early 1994.

Kosovo Clinton also committed American forces to peacekeeping missions in the Balkans a!er Communist Yugoslavia fell apart and erupted into nationalistic civil war. In spring 1999, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under the leadership of Slobodan Miloševic began a campaign to oust Albanians in the province of Kosovo. Fearing a new episode of ethnic cleansing, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, of which the United States is a senior member) authorized force against the Yugoslavian Serb army.

The United States began bombing missions with other NATO members on March 23, 1999. NATO flew some 35,000 sorties over 10 weeks, killing some 5,000 Yugoslav soldiers, and probably 1,200 civilians. NATO lost two aircra!, but recovered both crewmen. The NATO air campaign forced an end to the Yugoslav ground war. The United States then sent in 7,000 ground troops as part of a peacekeeping force. While peacekeeping troop levels have been gradually reduced over the years, violence flared up again in 2004, and in 2008 NATO and the United Nations confirmed that they would retain peacekeepers in the region.

U.S. Air Force personnel drop American propaganda pamphlets intended to win the support of the local population over the mountains of Afghanistan.

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9/11 President George W. Bush assumed the presidency in January 2001. The defining moment of Bush's presidency came on the morning of September 11, 2001, when radical Muslim terrorists hijacked passenger aircra! and flew them into the World Trade Center towers in New York, and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Passengers thwarted a fourth plane attack, believed headed for either the White House or the Capitol building, and instead forced it down in a Pennsylvania field.

American intelligence quickly linked the attacker to al Qaeda, a terrorist group headed by Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden opposed American support of Israel and Western influences that had entered Saudi

A sample American propaganda leaflet from 2001-02 shows Afghans unloading donated food marked "USA."

The caption on the leaflet reads, "This is what the Taliban has done?" beside images of Taliban destruction and violence.

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Arabia a!er Desert Storm. Ironically, bin Laden had come to prominence as part of the U.S.-backed mujahideen, Afghan freedom fighters who opposed the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1980. By 2001, Afghanistan's ruling government, the Taliban, was supporting al Qaeda.

War in Iraq and Afghanistan Within weeks of the 9/11 attacks, Bush had authorized an invasion of Afghanistan. American and British troops went into the country, both in conventional vehicles and by parachute and horseback. They drove the Taliban from power, installed a "democratic" government, and began a hunt for bin Laden. Troops nearly had him in the mountainous Tora Bora region of Afghanistan, but he escaped. Bin Laden was seen only in videotaped tirades a!er that.

Bush's War on Terror took a detour with the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Bush told the American public that intelligence agencies had information linking Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda, and that he had the technology to produce "weapons of mass destruction," or WMD. The type of WMD was always unclear, whether nuclear, chemical, or biological. Regardless, the claim later proved erroneous. Bush mustered some international and United Nations support for renewed hostilities against Iraq. The campaign was part of the "Bush Doctrine," a policy of preventive warfare 180-degrees removed from previous military response policies.

The American takeover of Iraq went quickly, with armored divisions under General Tommy Franks occupying the country and Baghdad within weeks. Television viewers around the globe watched the progress of troops over the countryside, as well as the toppling of a statue of Hussein. Troops captured Hussein in late 2003; a government tribunal found him guilty of war crimes and hanged him in December 2006. The initial Iraqi war campaign went well, proving again that the United States could e"ectively execute its military plans. But the occupation of the country did not go as planned. More than 4,000 American soldiers had died in Iraq by 2008 as the United States struggled to underpin the formation of a democratic government. While Hussein's "Baath" Party had kept rival Shiite and Sunni Muslim factions in check (albeit brutally), American removal of Baathists in 2003 proved problematic.

The revelation that Bush's WMD assertions were false, his lack of an exit strategy from Iraq, the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and bin Laden's continued elusion caused Bush's popularity to plummet. Minor antiwar protests erupted, although protestors, learning a lesson from Vietnam, made it clear they were protesting the war, not the soldiers.

Apparent Republican inability to resolve the Iraqi war swept away the Republican majority in

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Congress, in place since 1994, in the elections of 2006, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld resigned. In February 2009, President Barack Obama's new Democratic administration announced plans to withdraw all combat troops from the country by August 2010 and to remain committed to a previous agreement to pull out all troops in late 2011. The Iraq War was declared o"icially over in December 2011. Since the U.S. military's withdrawal, violence between the Sunni and Shia factions of society has continued to threaten the country's stability. As of June 2014, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had captured major cities in Iraq, further destabilizing the Iraqi government. The Sunni militants leading the takeovers hope to create an Islamic state spanning Iraq and Syria.

While the Taliban regime fell as a result of U.S. attacks on Afghanistan on October 10, 2001, the United States was unable to capture Osama bin Laden until May 1, 2011, when he was killed during a U.S. Navy SEALs raid on his compound in Pakistan. The Taliban forces continued to fight for control of Afghanistan, however. In May 2014, President Obama announced that U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan would end in December 2014. The president projected that by 2016, all U.S. forces would be removed from Afghanistan.

A controversial technological development in military warfare has been the utilization of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). These vehicles, commonly known as drones, do not have a human pilot aboard, but are instead controlled remotely or autonomously by computers. Many fear that the use of such vehicles marks an ominous turn in increasingly dehumanized warfare practices.

Women and Gays in the Military Women had served in the military in noncombat roles throughout the 20th century, and had been allowed to attend service academies beginning in 1975. They had begun flying combat missions as pilots and serving on combat ships in the early 1990s. In the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq over the previous 14 years, women technically serving in noncombat roles—for example, as military police or logistics o"icers—frequently found themselves participating in deadly fighting, given the fluid and unpredictable nature of combat against insurgents. According to the military, more than 200 women had died in those wars. In a recent advance for women in the military, two female o"icers had become the first women to graduate from Army Ranger School in August, and a third graduated on October 16. President Barack Obama issued a statement saying the decision would "make our military even stronger" and give women who met the required standards "new opportunities to serve."

The military in September 2011 had implemented the repeal of its "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which had prevented gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military, a!er Obama the previous year

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signed into law a bill mandating an end to the policy. In July 2015, the Defense Department had initiated a six-month study as part of an e"ort to end the ban on allowing transgender people to openly serve in the military, with the change expected to take e"ect by early 2016.

America's Veterans In 2014, almost 22 million Americans were veterans of service in the U.S. armed forces. Three-quarters of them had served during wartime—from World War II to the 21st-century conflicts in southwest Asia. More than 3.7 million people were what the U.S. Dept. of Veterans A"airs (VA) terms post-9/11 Gulf War-era veterans, who served a!er the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. About half of those were involved in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq that began in 2001 and 2003, respectively.

Veterans are eligible for a wide range of benefits to recognize and reward their service, help them reintegrate into civilian life, and assist them with service-related problems. Those problems may be severe, including medical, social, and economic challenges. In addition, many veterans have had di"iculty utilizing some services or accessing some benefits to which they are entitled.

The U.S. Department of Veteran's A"airs operates a large health care system that includes 820 outpatient clinics and 150 hospitals throughout the U.S. Most veterans who served on active duty for two years or the full period for which they were called up are eligible for VA health care.

With veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, the number of patients using VA health care increased sharply in the post- 9/11 years. More than 8.9 million people were enrolled in the system as of fiscal year 2013, a 30% increase since 2002. The VA cared for 5.7 million patients in 2013, 35% more than in 2002. The number of unique outpatient visits in 2013 was 86.4 million—86% higher than 12 years earlier.

VA health care spending more than doubled, from $23 billion in 2002 to almost $56 billion in 2013. However, the spending increase may not have been su"icient for the services needed. In April 2014, news reports based on whistleblower accounts maintained that sta" at the Phoenix VA Health Care System routinely falsified records to conceal the fact that large numbers of patients waited far longer than the VA standard of two weeks for an appointment; 40 patients were said to have died while awaiting care. An August 2014 report from the VA O"ice of the Inspector General confirmed that intentional records falsification at the Phoenix facility le! thousands of patients at risk of never receiving an appointment, that senior sta" were aware of the practice, that some patients had apparently died as a result of appointment delays (though it could not confirm the figure of 40), and

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that record falsification was also occurring at dozens of other VA facilities around the country.

Legislation signed by President Barack Obama August 7, 2014, provided funding to allow VA facilities to hire more doctors and other sta", permitted veterans facing long treatment delays to use other providers at VA expense, and made it easier for the VA to dismiss poorly performing sta". Post-9/11 veterans have presented the health care system—and other branches of the VA—with the need for wide-ranging services. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that as of August 2013, 29% of post-9/11 veterans had service-related disabilities, compared to 15% of all veterans. VA statistics showed that between fiscal years 2000 and 2013, the number of disabled veterans increased by 62%, from 2.3 million to 3.7 million. The greatest rate of increase (more than 240%) was among veterans with the most severe disabilities.

The incidence of traumatic brain injury (TBI) among members of the armed forces has been increasing in the post-9/11 era. From 12,407 in 2002, the number of annual TBI cases peaked at 32,668 in 2011 before declining slightly in 2012 and 2013. TBI can be combat or noncombat related. Many post-9/11 cases are the result of vehicle crashes, falls, military training accidents, or sports injuries. Of the total 307,000 cases diagnosed from 2000 through the first half of 2014, most were mild with apparently only short-term e"ects. However, more than 10% were moderate, severe, or penetrating brain injuries (in which the membrane covering the brain is pierced). These more serious cases of TBI can have long- term e"ects, which may include Parkinson's disease, seizures, dementia, depression, and certain hormone-deficiency diseases. New VA regulations that went into e"ect in Jan. 2014 made it easier for veterans who su"ered moderate or worse TBI and had one of those five conditions to qualify for free medical care and disability payments.

The stress of combat or service in a combat zone can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental-health issues. In a 2011 Pew Research Center survey of post-9/11 veterans, 16% said they had been severely injured, 60% served with someone who had been badly injured, and 47% served with someone who had been killed. Among respondents exposed to casualties, 42% said they su"ered from PTSD (compared to 27% of those not exposed to casualties).

Military service in time of war may increase the risk of suicide. In the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) survey, 40% of respondents reported knowing a fellow veteran who committed suicide, and 31% said they had considered suicide. A report released by the VA in 2014 concluded that suicide rates among men using the VA health care system decreased slightly in 2001-11. However, the report found a significant increase (almost 44%) from 2009 to 2011 in the suicide rates of younger male veterans (between the ages of 18 and 29), including a more than 71% increase among men age 24 or

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younger. The suicide rate among women using VA health care rose by about 50% between 2001 and 2011. The VA operates a Veterans Crisis Line that can provide emergency intervention or counseling referrals to callers. The department also has 300 Vet Centers that o"er a variety of counseling services and suicide prevention referrals.

Conclusion By 2009, 20 years a!er the celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the optimism from the end of the Cold War sometimes seemed like a distant memory for Americans. An unprecedented terrorist attack on American soil during peacetime had introduced a new, though not entirely unanticipated, enemy. Al Qaeda was essentially a stateless foe, and fighting it in traditional ways was a challenge. Despite a far lower death toll, Americans could not help but hear echoes of the Vietnam War era in the long war in Iraq, which provoked new questioning of leadership, and has le! in its wake another generation of combat veterans, many with severe wounds that will have consequences for the rest of their lives.

Although many post-9/11 veterans risked their lives, su"ered injuries, and have had a di"icult transition to civilian life, a sizable majority apparently feel they did the right thing. In the 2014 Washington Post-Kaiser survey, 89% of respondents said that, if they had the chance to make the decision again, they would still join the military, and 71% believed Americans appreciated their service. A far higher proportion said they did something in Iraq or Afghanistan that made them feel proud (87%) than said they did something that made them feel guilty (25%). The IAVA 2014 survey showed similar results; 74% of that poll's participants said they would recommend military service to a family member or close friend.

However, 70% of the IAVA respondents also said they did not think Americans understood the sacrifices made by Afghanistan and Iraq veterans. Given the high incidence of disability and medical problems, family di"iculties, and economic hardship, the sacrifices have been significant. A wide range of VA and other programs have been put in place to help veterans return to and succeed in civilian life. Whether these programs are enough—and whether they are run well enough—continues to be debated.

Further Information

Balakgie, Mario. "Computer Security: Cyber Attack—War without Borders." Available online: https://www.iwar.org.uk/cip/resources/congress/000726mb.htm. Accessed October 2008.

Berkowitz, Edward D. Something Happened: A Political and Cultural Overview of the Seventies. New

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York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

Biank, Tanya. Undaunted: The Real Story of America's Servicewomen in Today's Military. New York: NAL, 2014.

Chambers, John Whiteclay, II, ed. The Oxford Companion to American Military History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Colarik, Andrew Michael. Cyber Terrorism: Political and Economic Implications. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing, 2006.

Cordesman, Anthony H. and Justin G. Cordesman. Cyber Threats, Information Warfare, and Critical Infrastructure Protection: Defending the United States Homeland. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002.

Estes, Steve. Ask and Tell: Gay and Lesbian Veterans Speak Out. Raleigh: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009.

Herring, George C. America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986.

Holmstedt, Kirsten. Band of Sisters: American Women at War in Iraq. New York: Stackpole Books, 2008.

Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History—The First Complete Account of Vietnam at War. New York: Viking Press, 1983.

Leckie, Robert. The Wars of America, Vol. II From 1900 to 1992. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.

Lewy, Guenter. America in Vietnam. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.

Luttwak, Edward and Stuart L. Koehl. The Dictionary of Modern War. New York: Gramercy, 1998.

U.S. Department of Veterans A"airs. Available online. URL: https://www.va.gov/. Accessed May 2, 2016.

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Record Information

From: Military and Wars in Contemporary America

Series: Handbook to Life in America: 1970 to the Present

By: R. Steven Jones

Published: 2016

Record Type: Book Chapter

Date: 1970–

Table of Contents

Ch. 1: Military and Wars in Contemporary America

Tags

American people of German descent Cancer survivors Conservatism in the United States Military

Military history by country Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. Paris Peace Accords Reagan Doctrine Richard Nixon

Soviet Union–United States relations Vietnam War World history

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