The War of 1812 was not a shining example of American military power...

300bps · on July 18, 2013

The War of 1812 was not a shining example of American military power...

The more patriotic among us refer to it as, "The Whitehouse Renovation Project of 1812".

dllthomas · on July 19, 2013

Nice.

dragonwriter · on July 18, 2013

It was an shining example of American military interventionism, though.

jivatmanx · on July 18, 2013

Not when you lose to Canada.

hughdbrown · on July 18, 2013

Hey, Canada has been invaded by the US on at least three occasions -- Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and the Fenian Raids. I don't know of another country with a 3-0 record against the US.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Canada_(1775)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenian_raids

(Does the lack of American effort to impede the Fenian Raids make them an American invasion? It's judgment call.)

dragonwriter · on July 18, 2013

Canada wasn't an independent country for any of those (particularly the first two and the beginning of the third), and wasn't a component of the country that won the first of those.

dllthomas · on July 19, 2013

It was not a shining example of successful intervention. It may or may not have been a "shining example" - in the sense of an example that is good as an example - of a tendency toward attempted intervention.