The convergence of American military might and a powerful arms industry has characterized wars from Vietnam to Iraq, and the web of power that he described seems present in American society today.
The Cologne War, similar to the Dutch Revolt in that respect, was also a war of sieges, not of assembled armies facing one another on the field of battle, nor of maneuver, feint, and parry that characterized wars two centuries earlier and later.
Regarding the Vietnam War, Romney called for the withdrawal of all American troops by the end of 1971, and characterized the war as "disastrous".
Still the bitterness and distrust that has characterized this war -- which began as a border dispute in May 1998 -- was on full display today.
He characterized the war as closer to the beginning than the end, stating that the "beginning of the end" will come when Isis loses its Syrian capital, Raqqa.
In the years after Katrina, Americans began to see that the same unstable combination of hoopla and neglect that had characterized the war on terror also characterized the decade's supposed economic boom.
But the Daud coup, the Afghan Communist rule, and the Soviet invasion set in motion a downward spiral characterized by war, destruction, and ethnic conflict which has lasted for four decades, with no end in sight.
In the past, sectarian rivalries have colored the broader Anglo-Irish relationship, and both sides have long historical memories of a past characterized by war and turbulent relations dating from the 12th-century invasion by King Henry II of England.
But there are signs of the kinds of excess and overreach that characterized the war on drugs.
In an era when mass-casualty human conflict was primarily characterized by war between nation-states, this was relatively easy to do.
