Decisions about when, where, and why to commit the United States to the use of force, and how to conduct warfare and ultimately end it, are hotly debated not only contemporaneously but also for decades afterward. We are engaged in such a debate today, quite often without a solid grounding in the country's experience of war, both political and military. This book, by a political scientist and a career military officer and historian, is premised on the view that we cannot afford that kind of innocence.