First, none of what follows is intended as an argument against honoring our veterans. Their choice of service and sacrifice deserves all the respect and thanks we can give. The decision they make, to risk their lives and well-being based on the collective judgment of society and our leaders, makes it incumbent upon all of us to ensure that such a judgment is never made lightly.
In a Veterans Day assembly this year the speaker evoked Hitler as an example of an evil so great it had to be confronted and stopped. He derided “the foolish notion” that we could call our military personnel home and leave others to confront such evil. He was right to say so; however, such language implies a false dichotomy: do nothing, or send young people to kill and die. The pep rally-like nature of assemblies like ours, I worry, may lead people young and old to accept without question the need for slaughter.
Veterans Day is a commemoration of the armistice ending World War I. In Great Britain and countries of their United Kingdom it is known as Remembrance Day and its symbol is the poppy.
Why the poppy?
It was inspired by John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Fields.”
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days agoWe lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
The poem continues to exhort the living to keep faith with the dead, to make their deaths meaningful, in the same classic sense that Lincoln used in the Gettysburg Address. The entry at wikipedia goes on to note that the poem “was written early in the conflict, before the romanticism of war turned to bitterness and disillusion for soldiers and civilians alike.”
The memory of the bitterness and disillusion should stand at the forefront of our Veterans Day remembrance.
World War I put a line of mass graves and cemeteries across Europe from the North Sea to Switzerland. More than 37 million people died or were wounded in World War I. That is close to 10% of the population at the time. Thinking about military personnel, they were overwhelmingly male and in their twenties. The line from “No Man’s Land” (aka “Green Fields of France”), “a whole generation were butchered and damned,” is no exaggeration.
More than a million soldiers died in the battle of the Somme, nearly as many at Verdun.
One of my college professors talked of flying bombers during World War II and seeing the rows of WWI tombstones as he rolled for take off.
Historians agree that WWI directly caused WWII and the fall of the Russian monarchy. The war permanently changed the landscape of France, causing deforestation, erosion, and the destruction of cities (see Ypres). Unexploded munitions and toxic waste still make parts of France dangerous. The cleanup “remains a costly operation.”
WWI led to the partition of the Middle East into the countries we know today. It “ignited colonial revolts in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia.” It damaged European economies. It initiated mass murder of Armenians in Turkey, and abetted an influenza epidemic that killed 25 million people worldwide.
And “ At any point during the five weeks leading up to the outbreak of fighting the conflict might have been averted.” http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/world-war-i/resources/global-effect-world-war-i
A logical line leads from WWI to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the establishment of Israel, the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, the Reagan-era support of Afghan “freedom fighters,” to our recent military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
On hundreds of occasions during the past 100 years some negotiator, head of state, or other policy maker decided not to act preemptively, or to stop talking, or stop trying sanctions or some other actions. Lawmakers, reporters, and citizens accepted the words and actions of leaders. Millions of people died.
Von Clausewitz wrote, and many have repeated, “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” Before we, as citizens, acquiesce when politicians decide to abandon less extreme means, we should think twice or ten or twenty times, because we have no way to know what the consequences will be.
As of November 7, there have been 3,395 deaths of coalition forces in Afghanistan. More than 4,486 U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2012. Estimates of civilian deaths and wounds range widely.
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