Is everyone forgetting we have already fought one war on our northern border? Shit happens. What if Canada went nuts and elected some narcissistic tv host that wears a diaper as a leader and they formed a cult by accident and it’s members started shooting people across the border. You would want a contingency plan in place to handle that, ya know?
When your neighbors to the north call it "The Geneva Suggestions" tell me you're not going to have constant contingency plans for the day they stop saying "sorry". 😁
British troops did that, specifically British troops who had never set foot in British North America, let alone Canada, which didn't exist. And yes, any war that ends in status que ante bellum is pointless.
Sorta... Wars can be about more than territory, which is all that term refers to.
America achieved all its stated goals for the war, which didn't include "Actually this is mostly just a war of conquest we hope you're too busy to defend against." It just conveniently doesn't mention a couple had already happened, and it would have been gauche to admit we really just wanted the territory.
They burned down the white house because they were forced to leave the city. People always act like it was some huge victory for them but they always leave out the fact that they couldn't actually hold territory in the US, and the war ended with a major US victory at New Orleans.
At the same time the US invasion of Canada failed and they couldn't hold territory there either. Obviously. That's called a stalemate.
Just a dumb point to bring up since we can all see that DC doesn't belong to the UK today. And Toronto doesn't belong to the US. So yes it was a stalemate, without the sarcastic quotation marks.