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Originally posted by sycamore
However, for whatever reason, the United States is not considered "at war" until it is declared by Congress.
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I dare you to back that up. Who makes that judgement? Who is the final authority in what is and what is not considered "at war"?
There have only been <b>five</b> declared wars in the history of the United States. We have been at war many more times.
The Revolutionary War. The Civil War. The Korean War. The Vietnam War.
None of those were declared wars, yet we were at war. You find a Vietnam veteran and tell him that he wasn't involved in war.
The fact of the matter is that only the War of 1812, The Mexican War, The Spanish American War, World War I and World War II were declared. Do you really think that those are the only wars we've fought?
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In that case, we have not been at war since September 1945.
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Actually, it was August of 1945. Not so much an arguing point as a clarification of the facts.
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Are they right? Yes and no. By definition, yes...factually, no.
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What "facts" are you looking at? There's no "no" about it, I'm sorry to say. We have involved our military in over 200 conflicts since 1798 and only have declared five. That doesn't mean that we weren't at war. They weren't all big wars, but some of them were. They were still wars. The declaration of war is an obsolete practice and will probably never happen again, though we will most certainly be engaged in wars in the future.
It's nice to argue that since we haven't declared war, we're not technically at war. Unfortunately, it's also blatantly untrue.