WAR AND SACRIFICE
“The United States was actively involved in military conflicts at home or abroad for most years of the 19th and 20th century.” We can include the 21st century for good measure. We can add to the major declared wars the following: wars against Native Americans, which lasted from the 1770s until 1890; the many armed conflicts in Latin America and the Philippines from the 1890s to the 1930s; the Cold War (which included many hot conflicts) from 1945-1991; and since 2001 the Middle East wars.
How is it that the US has been so constantly at war?
War has usually been remote from most US people, on the frontier or in foreign countries, which have borne the devastation.
Compared to the colossal strength of the US economy, US wars have cost relatively little.
US casualties (except for the Civil War, when both sides were Americans) have been relatively low: people forget (or never knew), for example that US war-related deaths in WW II were 417,000 out of a total of 60,000,000.
Currently, the US can inflict thousands of casualties on Iran, while suffering practically none itself, due to the new technologies of war. This war is being “…fought under thickening layers of classification by a professional military drawn from a sliver of the population, and with a rapidly expanding suite of autonomous technologies…”
Sources: The New York Times, 4/4/26; National WWII Museum, New Orleans