As Americans honour those who died in their wars this Memorial Day, many will raise the inevitable question: has it been worth it?
In stark terms, how many mothers and fathers have asked themselves in the dark of night, their heads on tear-stained pillows, was it necessary for our son or daughter to die fighting for America?
For those who remember the 405,399 Americans killed fighting the Axis powers in the second world war, the answer is most likely an easy 'yes' because the Germans, Italians and Japanese of the 1930s and 1940s threatened to drive Western civilisation back into the Dark Ages. The Americans and their allies saved the Western world.
Only five years later, however, 54,246 Americans died in the Korean war of 1950-1953, which was followed by the cold war. In Vietnam, where 58,220 Americans were killed and 103,284 wounded from 1954 to 1973, the answer to the central question is more contentious. The US was divided as it had not been since its civil war, and was eventually defeated.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the US involvement in Vietnam is that the outcome didn't make much difference; America is no more or less secure today than it might have been had the war never been fought. Communist Vietnam does not threaten the US or its friends, and US interests in Southeast Asia proceed without hindrance.
Following the war in Vietnam, the US was engaged in a series of skirmishes, each of which took a small toll. Even so, the deaths of the men and women who died in Iran (8), Grenada (12), Lebanon (265), Panama (18), the Persian Gulf (383), and Somalia (43) were no less painful for their families, and continued to raise the central question.
