At the beginning of World War I more than a century ago, British author H.G. Wells wrote a newspaper essay titled, “The War That Will End War.”

He confidently proclaimed, “This, the greatest of all wars, is not just another war—it is the last war!”

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson slightly modified that description two and a half years later when he urged citizens to support entering the conflict, calling it “the war to end all wars.”

When a peace treaty finally was signed on Armistice Day on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, people around the planet danced in the streets and drank champagne, joyous in their belief that there would be no more wars.

Barely a generation later, World War II broke out.

More than two years would pass before the United States got involved following the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor 74 years ago today. In asking Congress for a declaration of war, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called Dec. 7, 1941 “a date which will live in infamy.”

While the planet has avoided another world war, arguably due to the creation of nuclear weapons that make it unthinkable, wars continued and the U.S. has fought many of them, all without the congressional declaration called for by the Constitution and often without clear goals of what would constitute victory.

General Douglas MacArthur observed about the Korean War: “Never before has this nation been engaged in mortal combat with a hostile power without military objective, without policy other than restrictions governing operations, or indeed without even formally recognizing a state of war.”

Three years later President Dwight D. Eisenhower coined a phrase that later helped justify U.S. military intervention in Vietnam: “You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.”

In 1969, President Richard Nixon urged war-weary Americans not to give in to protesters demanding an end to the Vietnam War.

“Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that,” he said.

A year later, when President Nixon announced the U.S. incursion into Cambodia, he told the nation, “If, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.”

In 1990, President George H.W. Bush announced that we were at war again, this time against Iraq following that country’s invasion of Kuwait. Saddam Hussein, he warned, “sought to add to the chemical weapons arsenal he now possesses, an infinitely more dangerous weapon of mass destruction – a nuclear weapon.”

President Bush said U.S. military action would not be protracted, adding that “when peace is restored, it is our hope that Iraq will live as a peaceful and cooperative member of the family of nations, thus enhancing the security and stability of the Gulf.”

Twelve years later his son, President George W. Bush, used similar language to justify the second Gulf War: “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq’s neighbors and against Iraq’s people.”

At that time we already were two years into the War in Afghanistan, launched following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. U.S. soldiers remain in conflict there today.

President Barack Obama was only nine months into his first term in 2009 when he was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in honor of the “new climate” in diplomacy he represented.

President Obama has, however, found ending and avoiding war no easy goal, backing away from his plans to remove troops from Afghanistan before his term ends. More than 2,200 U.S. soldiers have been killed over the past 14 years there. Now his administration is preparing to send special operation forces into the midst of Syria's convoluted civil war.

A year ago, the Congressional Research Office pegged the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars at $1.6 trillion. A Harvard Kennedy School econonmist said the CRO low-balled the figure. He placed the cost at $4 trillion to $6 trillion.

This saga of repeated military action engenders cynicism, not hope. If and when our troops come home from Afghanistan, no one will ever declare they had fought the war to end all wars.