Homeland war?

A correspondent writes (we’ve edited for privacy):

From a logical point of view, and knowing the declared attitude of some other nations, it would stand to reason that sending students here [to the States for university] would be one of the normal and expected activities. It seems that the citizens of America have become complacent through the enjoyment of long-lived peace and tranquility, bathing in a sea of affluence and conveniences, to the point of the current apathy that we see all around, and even in the [churches]. Sooner or later we will face the permanent consequences of this, and history will change. I fear that all temporary reprieves that come along, such as a Trump election, only serve to reinforce the false feeling of security in this country, thereby deepening the apathy.

Definitely a matter of great concern. You have put your finger on a major problem. 

Except for a couple of very brief and very minor periods of actual combat in the actual States (not territories), the United States (and Canada) have no experience of war at first-hand in the homeland. (FYI, the most recent I am thinking of were in 1903 (the Battle of Lightning Creek, Wyoming), the Colorado Coalfield War in 1914, the 1916 (the Raid on Columbus, New Mexico by Pancho Villa and subsequent invasion of Mexico by US forces), and 1923 (the Posey War in SE Utah). Nothing else really can be classified as actual combat since then: Bloody Tuesday (9-11) and even the riots in the 1960s and in recent decades don’t really qualify as combat or war. And we don’t count Pearl Harbor as Hawai’i was only a territory at the time – no different than the Philippines, Guam, Alaska, or Midway during WW2. Fire balloons on the West Coast or supposed submarines firing shells off LA don’t really count.

(The correspondent is an American citizen but originally from Greece.)

Meanwhile in those 102 years, your own original home suffered significantly in wars: combat in Greece itself. The Greco-Turkish War theoretically ended in 1922 or 1923, but there was still fighting going on for the rest of that decade, and then the Cyprus war(s?). And of course, WW2 and the Communist invasions from Yugoslavia and the civil war from 1946-1949. (Some of us at TPOL knew of some British troops that were involved in that.) We don’t know if there was any fighting when the King was exiled (1967) or the monarchy abolished in 1973. But we know that Greece had a front-row seat for the Balkan wars in the 1990s. 

We’ve had nothing like that, and as a result very few (if any) American truly can grasp what a war at home would mean. Bad as the 1965 Watts Riots, the 1968 DC riots (“the barbecue” as one family living in DC at the time called it) (and other places), or the Rodney King riots in 1992 were to Americans? They are nothing compared to the Troubles in Northern Ireland or even some of the Muslim troubles in Paris in recent decades. Let alone what actual force-on-force combat would involve.

So both the powers that be (the two wings of the uniparty, as some put it) and many passionate Americans who have decided “this can’t go on” fail to understand the very likely consequences of pushing either some foreign power to strike hard at the Fifty States. Or of pushing for violent pushback against either the evil Trumpistas or the evil never-Trumper Regressives.

 Many observers note that “unlike the War between the States” an internal conflict either for control of the FedGov or for secession would not be a red-state-versus-blue-state series of battles. They point out that it might not even be a neighborhood against neighborhood sort of war. Because every State has at least a large minority of the other “color” (Conservative or Liberal, in the common nominclature) that would fight.

We don’t believe it is that much different in 2025 than it was in 1860 or 1861. Anyone who has studied “The War of the Rebellion” (1861-1865) knows that not only were families divided (as they would be today) but that States and communities were often badly fractured. The best known is Missouri (though “bleeding Kansas” is also known). But many forget that West Virginia was the result of “secession from the secession” and was far from peaceful. Very few understand the strong Unionist sentiment in Eastern Tennessee and nearby areas of North Carolina. Nor remember the Unionist stand of German-descendent people in the Hill Country of Texas. Nor the divisions between the AmerInd tribes in what was then Indian Territory (today’s Oklahoma): some “went North” and others “went South.” Even less known is the strong “Copperhead” factions in today’s Upper Midwest: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio. And even fewer know how close the election of 1860 was in California: the State very nearly went for Steven Douglas and not Honest Abe. Though far from the major fields of battle, a neutral or South-supporting California could have been both an internal bloody theatre of war and a source of strength for the Confederacy: think gold.

War in the homeland is perhaps still an unlikely situation in the next few years, but there seem to be more and more people both willing to start one (or more) and even a lot who really, really want it. Do you?

Or will we simply, as a nation, continue to sink into apathy, as our correspondent suggests?

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