The world has gotten used to thinking of America as the tough-guy empire; trigger-happy cowboys addicted to the rush of military power. But that’s not the way America sees itself. Simon reveals how Americans really feel about being at war.

Two of the founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, disagreed about whether America should even have a professional army – a division still evident when Simon visits America’s premier military academy at West Point. From the Civil War right through to Mark Twain’s denunciation of President Teddy Roosevelt’s imperial adventure in the Philippines, American wars have inspired profound debate.

Nowhere is that more evident than in San Antonio, Texas, a town nicknamed Military City because of its high population of veterans and soldiers currently serving. It is there that Simon finds feelings about the war are deeply divided, and as with the Great War elections of the past, it’s a debate which forces America to dig deep and rediscover what it stands for.