Without looking it up...

[dajaymann]

MS JELLYBEAN BEAT ME ON THE ONE FREAKIN ONE I WOULD KNOW! I AM USELESS!!!

Now back to your regularly scheduled non-caps trivia game.

[TheOogieBoogieMan]

dajaymann said:

I AM USELESS!!!

Yeah...but don't worry, we like ya anyway .

[Magill]

Did I need to confirm you were correct? You obviously were.

[Ms. Jellybean]

Muchly sorry. U.S. History question, since that's the class I'm in right now...

How many world wars has America been in?

[DocD83]

I sense a trick question... define "world war."

[Ms. Jellybean]

I'm not quite sure on what my teacher's definition was... I'll have to get back to you.

But basically anything involving us and more than one other country. I think.

[TheLuckyOne]

What if it's us against one other country, but we (or they) get aid from a third country? Like France during the Revolutionary War?

-D

[DocD83]

Alright, here's my guess:

- WWI & WWII (obviously)
- The Cold War (I've been hearing a lot of people refer to that as WWIII lately)
- The Revolutionary War (if memory serves, France only helped us because it destabilized the British Empire enough that they could launch a general assault on British holdings in Asia and Africa)

So I count four. If you're considering the geographical aspect, then add the Spanish American War (which ranged from Cuba to the Phillipines...that's a good enough spread for me to call it "world" though you might argue).

What other major wars have there been? The War of 1812 was too localized, as was the war with Mexico. There was that one war where we fought pirates from North Africa, so that might have covered more than one nation (that's the war that gave us the "shores of Tripoli" in the Marine Corps anthem). Ooh--Korea. That was two nations, right? North Korea and China? Or maybe Vietnam...we did fight in Cambodia and Thailand as well as Vietnam, didn't we? (I'm not too good with the Vietnam era.) That might be considered part of the Cold War though.

Oh, and the war on terror. Mustn't forget recent history!

...Speaking of which, we got aid for Iraq (twice!) and Afghanistan from other countries.

So my guess is five at a minimum, with up to seven more depending on how liberal your definition is.

Oh, one more edit: I'm assuming you're not one who considers WWI and WWII as parts of the same war.

[PoolMan]

DocD83 said:

I'm assuming you're not one who considers WWI and WWII as parts of the same war.

What, like Fellowship and Two Towers?

[duckie]

Well, the quote from Stripes was, "We're Americans! We're ten and one!" So, if you then add in the wars since that movie came out in 1981, namely two Gulf wars and the Afghanistan conflict (I assume that conflicts count), then we're up to fourteen.

Am I right? I should at least get partial credit, for using a movie to come to an answer...

[Ms. Jellybean]

Duckie's closer to the answer. A little lower, though... now, this is all according to my AP History teacher, who's not here today, so I can't get his criteria.

[Head Mutant]

If "conflicts" count, why not toss in Greneda?

[TheLuckyOne]

What about the Cola Wars? We can't ignore the many brave ad execs who lots their lives in that terrible conflict.

-D

[DocD83]

This question is turning more and more into "how many wars has the US been in?" Really, if the answer is much more than five I think your history teacher's definition of "World War" is so broad as to be meaningless. Call me old fashioned, but I tend to think only of conflicts in which action takes place around the world to be a World War.

[pfrsue]

Do we measure them by frequent flyer miles?