Where Comedy Goes To Die: A Brief History of American Wars

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR

Dates: 1775-1783
Primary Opponent: Great Britain
Primary Cause: Desire to overthrow the burden of colonialist oppression in the form of elevated tea prices
Deaths: 15,590 combat/51,080 total
Who was to blame?: The British, for not fucking off and letting us drink our goddamn tea in peace
Major repercussions: Birth of modern democracy; America free to become biggest dicks in all of creation

VARIOUS INDIAN WARS

Dates: 1785-1898
Primary Opponent: various native American tribes
Primary Cause: Indians were getting in the way of our getting some really choice land with their phony-baloney ‘treaties’
Deaths: around 4,000 Americans, plus who knows how many Indians because we didn’t really bother to count them
Who was to blame?: The Indians, because seriously, get out of our way, dudes
Major repercussions: Lots of room for mini-markets; no more Indians; curious lack of guilt

THE WAR OF 1812

Dates: 1812-1815
Primary Opponent: Great Britain
Primary Cause: British couldn’t quite believe they lost to America in the first place
Deaths: 3,860 combat/25,700 total
Who was to blame?: America, for winning the Revolutionary War and upsetting the natural balance of things
Major repercussions: Canada

MEXICAN WAR

Dates: 1846-1846
Primary Opponent: Mexico
Primary Cause: Mexico failing to learn valuable lesson from Canada about being a good neighbor
Deaths: 5,100 combat/32,000 total
Who was to blame?: Texas
Major repercussions: Burritos

CIVIL WAR

Dates: 1861-1865
Primary Opponent: each other
Primary Cause: certainly not slavery
Deaths: 203,000 combat/620,000 total
Who was to blame?: Negroes
Major repercussions: Slavery abolished; innovative new ways of oppressing black people developed

SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR

Dates: 1898-1916
Primary Opponent: Spanish oppressors & people oppressed by the Spanish
Primary Cause: Spain left the keys in its empire and just left it sitting there
Deaths: around 5,000 Americans and probably about a million Filipinos but that’s okay because ten of them only count as one real person
Who was to blame?: Mark Twain, for making us feel really bad about wanting in on the whole imperialism thing
Major repercussions: Spain decided to take a nap for the next 200 years

WORLD WAR I

Dates: 1914-1918
Primary Opponent: Central Powers, led by Germany
Primary Cause: Uh…
Deaths: 9,900,000 combat/38,000,000 total
Who was to blame?: America, for failing to respect the divine system of aristocracy
Major repercussions: Proved to politicians that they could pretty much convince people to go to war over any old bullshit

WORLD WAR II

Dates: 1939-1945
Primary Opponent: Axis Powers, led by Germany
Primary Cause: Someone took their eyes off of Germany for like five seconds
Deaths: 24,000,000 combat/72,000,000 total
Who was to blame?: Probably the Jews
Major repercussions: Fascism defeated; greatest evil in world history halted; people born in teens and ’20s became insufferably smug

KOREAN WAR

VIETNAM WAR

Dates: 1955-1975
Primary Opponent: Charlie; hippies
Primary Cause: French too snooty and ineffectual to keep their colonies under control
Deaths: 1,318,000 combat/3,000,000 total (not counting Laotians, Cambodians and Thais who pissed off Henry Kissinger)
Who was to blame?: Whoever convinced the Vietnamese that they could elect their own leaders
Major repercussions: Gave American right an exciting Dolchstoßlegende of its very own

GULF WAR

AMALGAMATED GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR, INC.

Dates: 2001-present
Primary Opponent: Definitely not Islam (but really Islam)
Primary Cause: Arabs made American eagle cry
Deaths: 2,977 brave heroes on September 11th plus blah blah Iraqi civilians whatever
Who was to blame?: Jimmy Carter
Major repercussions: Major upsurge in sales of yellow ribbons, patriotic bumper stickers, country music, plastic sheeting