The review of reviews. Provocative and assumed as such, the question bars the cover of the journal America: "Does America love war? ". "Whether she admits it or not, American identity is deeply linked to war," ensures, in its editorial, François Busnel, the director of the quarterly magazine who wants to tell "At breast height" American society and culture, showing what is fascinating, but also their faults. The facts are there, indisputable. "Born of war, the country has known less than twenty years of peace in its entire history. Even for a relatively new nation, that doesn't seem like much, " historian Bruno Cabanes points out in his dense opening article on the military history of the United States.
The war deeply nourished the American imagination in literature as in cinema. The history of the United States is indeed that of a long series of conflicts. Against the Indians, against the English, against the Mexicans. The Civil War shattered the national dream and remains the most traumatic event in American history today.
In 1917, with its intervention in the European war, the United States asserted itself as the new world power. "The Great American War, in reality, it was the Second World War that marked the transition from a small expeditionary force to a gigantic army backed by a powerful war industry", notes Bruno Cabanes. It is also a war felt deeply just, which will no longer be the case for Vietnam and the Afghan war, and even less for the absurd intervention in Iraq in 2003.
The forehead experience
The very rich dossier of the journal is nourished by interviews, including that of the great author of black novels James Ellroy, or of texts by writers deeply marked by their experience at the front and who made it the subject of their books. So Tim O’Brien on Vietnam. "We dropped more bombs on this country as big as California than on the whole planet during the Second World War. (…) And we lost the war ", note, disillusioned, the author of The things they took (Gallmeister 2018), one of the strongest stories about this dirty war.
"The army remains today one of the last pillars of national pride, one of the rare institutions in which the population has confidence, but there is a growing weariness in the face of these endless wars", notes for his part Kevin Powers, veteran of the Iraq war masterfully described in his novel Yellow birds (Stock 2013). Writer and journalist, Jennifer Haigh tells the story of women soldiers and their fight to be treated like combatants like the others. According to a 2019 Defense Department report, one in four is sexually assaulted by a fellow soldier.
