America’s Needless Wars: Cautionary Tales of U.S. Involvement in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Iraq

Contosta (Rebel Giants), professor of history at Pennsylvania’s Chestnut Hill College, simply and clearly argues that the U.S. has unnecessarily fought three wars over the past 105 years. Drawing from a just-war theory that stretches back to St. Augustine, Contosta labels these wars unjust as well as unnecessary because at no time did the Philippines, Vietnam, or Iraq threaten America’s national security. In economic and crystalline prose, Contosta introduces the Philippine conflict by contextualizing the declared war between the U.S. and Spain over the latter’s colonial possessions of Cuba and the Philippines. Fighting between Americans and Filipinos commenced when the U.S. decided to annex the Philippines instead of supporting its independence. Contosta precedes the Vietnam War chapter with one on the Cold War that sidesteps the question of why he doesn’t label the Korean War “unnecessary.” Iraq, perhaps because the conflict there is so recent, gets covered in only one chapter. Since there were no clear-cut cases of aggression against the U.S. at the start of any of these conflicts, what provoked the country to go to war was “ignorance, arrogance, and fear,” Contosta writes. This compact, if slightly reductive, analysis serves as a warning lest that “intertwined and self-reinforcing triad” rear its ugly head again. [em]Agent: Scott Mendel, Mendel Media. (Apr.) [/em]