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In the Mexican-American War, we captured Mexico City and forced them to sue for peace, as well as ceding most of the territory we wanted, but they still had armies in the field that outnumbered General Taylor's and General Scott's combined armies. If the Mexican Army had a competent commander, and less infighting, the outcome might well have been different.
The Mexican-American War got us most of what we desired out of the war, but we had to go back to the Mexican government in 1853 and purchase southern New Mexico and Arizona in the Gadasen Purchase to acquire a southern transcontinental railroad route. There is a good argument by historians that the Mexican-American War made the Civil War a certainty, as free and slave states contended for influence in the newly acquired territories. A transcontinental railroad route for the slave states was one of the motivating factors behind the Gadasen Purchase.
We cannot really count the Civil War, as it was not a declared war against a foreign enemy, but a struggle for the future of America. The Union annihilated the Confederacy, but even then Lincoln's instructions to Grant and Sherman were not subjugation, but to, "Let them up easy." Booth's murder of Lincoln, I believe, was directly responsible for the next century of animosity, suspicion, and segregation.
In the Spanish-American War, the United States plucked the last fruit of a destitute four hundred year old empire. We beat Spain's Navy because their admirals were incompetent. We beat their Army because the Tenth Cavalry (Buffalo Soldiers) saved Teddy Roosevelt's ass on San Juan Hill, permitting him to outflank the Spanish. We never invaded Spain, nor even conquered the majority of Cuba. The peace was negotiated: by a Spanish government that decided her colonies cost more than they were worth, and an American government that was watching its Army fall apart, not from Spanish bullets, but Cuban mosquitoes.
The Spanish-American War allowed us to acquire the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico as dependencies and forced Spain to grant Cuba independence (which American commercial interests immediately dominated economically). These acquisitions, together with our annexation of Hawaii the same year, established us as a naval power in the Pacific. These actions also put us on a collision course with an emerging Japan, guaranteeing eventual war between our two nations.
In the First World War, there was not a single armed Allied soldier on German soil when the Armistice was signed. The Germans lost because too many of their farmers were at the front, ducking bullets. Those left behind could not maintain the food production required to feed both an Army and a nation. The German people were not utterly defeated or destroyed, just starving and tired of war.
The First World War was for the United States, not even a negotiated peace. A newly elected Republican Congress rejected Democratic President Woodrow Wilson's imperfect Treaty of Versailles, and its League of Nations, cutting vital support out from under that treaty before the ink had dried, and guaranteeing the Second World War. In the end, Congress had to declare peace against Germany and the Central Powers, an event unique in American History.
The Second World War was for the proponents of total war and unconditional victory, America's finest moment. Our enemies lay in ruins, and we dominated the world scene in a way not equaled since Wellington beat the French at Waterloo. Our dominance, as is always the case throughout history, did not last long.
Korea ended in stalemate, as much from General MacArthur's hubris as anything. He wanted to go and chase Mao and the Communists out of China - an impossible task. The General's hubris led to an invasion of more than 300,000 Chinese "volunteers," and his eventual dismissal. In July 1953, a negotiated settlement was reached, with the border essentially where it had been before the war started in June, 1950. An armed truce has reigned ever since.
Vietnam was a war we could have won in 1945-46. Ho Chi Minh had no desire to be a puppet of Stalin and the Soviet Union, and offered the United States an opportunity to help set up a Tito-like regime in Indochina, not aligned with either bloc. We refused his offer, and tried to force a return of French colonialism to the region. When that failed in 1954, the Geneva Accords split French Indochina into its component parts--Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam--and then divided Vietnam into a Communist controlled North, and a very corrupt, despotic, capitalist South.
Over the next ten years, we became increasingly mired in the war in Indochina, starting with covert CIA operations that had actually begun long before the French withdrew. This involvement slowly escalated until the false flag operation involving destroyers USS Turner Joy and USS Maddox took place in August, 1964. This incident resulted in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the beginning of direct, open American military involvement in Vietnam.
Nine years later, the United States withdrew from the war in Vietnam in a negotiated settlement. This war should have taught us the lesson that the Assyrians had learned in Babylon and the Romans had learned in Judea: you cannot force another people to submit to your complete political domination unless you are willing to commit quasi-genocide and scatter the survivors throughout your empire as an object lesson. All of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong leaders and soldiers who were interviewed after the war were unanimous in stating that they were willing to fight the Americans for thirty years, if that was how long it took to drive us from their country. There was no way to defeat that level of commitment other than genocide.
Our last resolved war had an alliance that was almost unique in world history. The forces in Gulf War I (or Operation Desert Storm if you prefer), that drove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991 was a joining of both long-time friends and foes against a common enemy. The only similar occurrence in history I can think of--off of the top of my head--was the alliance of Romans, Visigoths, and Franks under Flavius Aetius, who defeated Attila the Hun at Chalons in 451 C.E. But even our success in Gulf War I did not lead to the immediate military destruction of Iraq or the deposing of Saddam Hussein. And it ended with a stringent, but negotiated peace, not an imposed surrender.
So, what is my point, you ask?
First, almost none of the wars that the United States has fought over the last 233 years have ended in a complete, unmitigated victory for this country, in spite of what ignorant fools on the right seem to think. Usually, we are negotiating a peace at the end of one of our wars, not dictating a surrender. In fact, looked at in that light, only the Indian Wars and the Second World War ended with a peace that was dictated by the American government to a prostrate foe, without negotiation.
Second, the utter failure of our Congress to actually declare war in almost seventy years, makes me ask a question: Why?
