[This post was written before I got married. I’ll have some wedding stories and pictures later]
I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what I should worry about: terrorists, global warming, rogue asteroid, eating too many French fries, whatever. I want to allocate my worrying to the things that deserve it.
According to the news, I’m supposed to be worried about Iran or North Korea nuking me. I don’t know enough about history to assign a risk to that. Maybe you history experts can answer the following question for me:
In modern times, has any country ever started a war that they knew in advance they would lose?
I say “modern times” because I don’t doubt that some idiot king once started an ill-advised war because someone insulted his honor or stole the Golden Monkey or whatnot. But lately, say the last 400 years, has any country initiated a war they KNEW they would lose?
I’m not talking about a country that got into a war and found out too late that they couldn’t win. That’s probably happened a lot. And I don’t count the countries that entered a war to stop an aggressor. I’m talking about a country that said to itself, “Let’s start a war even though we know for sure that we’ll be annihilated. Sorry Mom. Sorry kids.”
If that sort of thing has happened – even once – I’m willing to worry about evil dictators getting nukes and attacking the United States. But if it’s never happened, given all the inbred nut jobs running countries for the past few centuries, I have to think it’s unlikely. And I can go back to worrying about eating too many of the wrong kind of fish and turning into a thermometer.
[Update: terrorist organizations are not “countries.”]
[Update: I should have been more specific. There are plenty of examples of countries starting wars that didn’t threaten their homeland if they lost the away battles. But has anyone started a war that they knew would lead to destruction of their homeland?]