Talk:List of attacks on the United States

Merge proposal

I propose merging List of foreign military attacks on United States territory and Attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities into List of attacks on the United States: A double TNT / blank-and-redirect to combine the two poorly-sourced articles together into a single "Attacks on the United States"-style article. To note, this was originally done to both articles, however, the bold blank-and-redirect for both articles was challenged by another editor [1][2].

1. Starting with List of foreign military attacks on United States territory...we have a 1-source article which has absolutely no information besides Wikilinks. It is basically a disambiguation page. I have no idea why the bold merge was challenged for this article.
2. Now onto Attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities. If you link in the edit history of List of attacks on the United States, you will notice several edit summary attributions (ex: [3]) to the attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities articles, as the entire article was added into this article. Attribution was key so the edit history was not lost in the blank-and-redirect merge.

This article is basically to combine two poorly sourced articles into an article with a larger scope: "attacks on the U.S.", rather than splitting it into "foreign attacks on U.S. soil" & "attacks on U.S. diplomats". So, in my opinion, I have seen no valid or policy reasonings as to why these two articles should not be merged into the larger-scoped "attacks on the U.S." article. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 03:34, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Happy to join in the discussion here as the aforementioned editor who opposed the bold BLAR: I'm not against an eventual merge but I do think there were granularities that existed in the prior two articles that ought to be kept.

I agree that sourcing was sparse in the prior two and that, if merged, it may be easier to maintain better article quality in one. With that said, sourcing in this article does leave a lot to be desired and I don't think presently that sourcing alone is a good reason for a merge.

Secondly, I think the list, if combined here, should be separated into different headers or tables. I think there will be columns that may benefit "military attacks on United States territory" that would not be needed in a table for "Attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities" and vice-versa. Bobby Cohn (talk) 16:06, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

I disagree that the lists should be split up by category. I believe that would make it too confusing to see the timeline of attacks against the US and complete chronological order allows that. However, as a compromise, I would not be opposed to having a “Target” column added, which could have items like “Territory”, “Diplomatic facility”, “Military base”, ect… Would you be opposed to that Bobby Cohn? The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 21:38, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Except it isn't really been created as a timeline, and including, say multiple terrorist attacks on embassies (some without {{main}} linked articles or references) in the same list with major military actions isn't helpful to our readers when given without context. And then how is listing multiple entries of the American Civil War beneficial? Why have the entry "April 12–13, 1861 Fort Sumter, Charleston, South Carolina, Artillery bombardment" through "August 29–December 2, 1864 Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Indian Territory, Texas, Military offensive", all of which part of the same main battle? And then what are the inclusion criteria for the article? You have naval fatalities, is every US sinking going to be included? This has turned into a bit of a mess. Bobby Cohn (talk) 14:40, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history. Bobby Cohn (talk) 14:44, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

For reference, the American Civil War is not an attack against the United States by itself, same as World War II is not an attack against the U.S. The wars involved various attacks and/or campaigns against the U.S, but the entire war is not against the U.S. For example, during the entire Mexican–American War, Mexico launched a single military offensive into the United States, the Texas Campaign, which is subsequently listed on the article. Mexico had the intention of occupying and holding territory belonging to the United States, which is an attack on the U.S. Likewise, one would not say the Conquest of California was an attack against the U.S., when the U.S. was physically invading Mexican territory. Wars involve attacks on each other, which is why the Civil War has 11 different events / campaigns listed as the United States (Union) was physically attacked/invaded by the Confederates 11 times during the war.

Anyway, I see a little what you mean why it may not be helpful to readers. I have another format I'll be working on in my sandbox. Like you can see though, one central article will be much better for sourcing (given this article is now 3x more sourced already than the other 2 articles combined). It just needs some fleshing out to be good. A merge would obviously still be the best thing though. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 15:22, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Wait, quick question Bobby Cohn: what do you mean by "isn't really been created as a timeline"? The only sections are literally organized by years. Would you not say the Burning of Washington, September 11 attacks, and 2012 Benghazi attack are not all attacks on the U.S.? One was during a military invasion and the others were terrorist attacks. A terrorist attack is an "attack". So yeah, why would having split sections specifically for "diplomatic attacks" and "foreign invasions", for example, be any different than a sortable column with "diplomatic attacks" and "foreign invasions"? The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 15:28, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I guess that becomes a semantics issue then, whereas I would think a timeline would provide more detail than a simple chronographically organised list (cf. Timeline of the National Hockey League and National Hockey League § List of teams).

To your first point, I would say that supports my suggestion that these ought to be separated. Group all the domestic incursions from invasions and war into one section where the columns can demonstrate the invasion it was a part of, locations of the invasions, etc. It would likely be aided in the style of using multiple spanned rows of grouped incursions. This allows for the list to fully separate out each of the battles as it has been done in some parts and it can continue to be separated, for example July 4, 1776 – September 3, 1783, Eastern North America, North Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean, Rebellion / Revolution, Main article: American Revolutionary War can continue to be broken up and the ones that aren't relevant can be removed.

And then this allows a curated list of the diplomatic attacks separately. I think combining them just to have domestic vs foreign ends up leading to too much tableification and doesn't leave much room for the actual context. Bobby Cohn (talk) 17:13, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Actually, looking at your sandbox, I think this gets closer to the idea of a timeline. Maybe a mixed list ought to be better in that case. I like the sections with the individual incursions of domestic territory given full == Level two == headings and prose (see my timeline comment earlier) but attacks on diplomatic and foreign missions could more easily be summarised in a table. I think that gets closer to a more elegant solution @WeatherWriter. Bobby Cohn (talk) 17:16, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I still don't think every diplomatic attack should be in a table together, but rather listed as part of whatever larger event header it is apart of. For example, the 2013 attack on U.S. consulate in Herat is part of the larger War in Afghanistan (2001–2021), which also involved direct attacks on U.S. troops. My sandbox new idea would have a header for "War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)", with every attack on the U.S. under it, including that diplomatic attack. Very rarely are attacks hosted on diplomatic facilities that are not connected to some larger war and/or event. In cases of true non-U.S. war-related stand-alone events, like the 1964 United States Embassy in Libreville bombings, it would be listed under that heading. But a lot of diplomatic attacks are still related to some larger event, including things like the 1984 US embassy bombing in Beirut, which are connected to the U.S. involvement in the Lebanese Civil War. Once the new format/layout is completed (in my sandbox and then copied/pasted over to this article), would that suffice to complete the WP:BLAR merges Bobby Cohn? The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 17:41, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I think with the way the sandbox is trending and given the prose, I would no longer oppose the merge and BLARs and think this could occupy the base name as requested previously at RMTR. Though given the formal merge request and the fact that I've notified the wikiproject, I think it would be best to wait the week and see if there are other opinions that might want to be heard. Bobby Cohn (talk) 20:19, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Ok, I think every header for all the attacks is in at User:WeatherWriter/sandbox. A ton are currently just “Embassy at X bombing” or “Attack on the Embassy at X”, solely because of how poor Attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities is/was. The chart was basically copy/pasted into this article for that WP:BLAR. For most of the embassy attacks, especially those that had no info or were entirely unsourced on that Attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities article, I haven’t had a chance to find more sources and information about them. So, for now, they are not listed under any other conflict headers, which most will be under. The US has been involved in 114 wars just since 1776, so most of those are probably under some conflict which just hasn’t been added/linked to by another editor in the past.

Anyway, the headers themselves are “done”, for now. The research and fleshing out part is a fix it later when I have the time to problem. Once the week discussion is over, as long as no other editor is strongly opposed to the merge of those two poorly sourced/written articles, we can centralize the content under a “Attacks on the United States” article, with those new headers, and then work on fleshing the content out (WP:FIXIT / WP:WIP). The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 22:15, 2 December 2024 (UTC)