It used to be Decoration Day and was a day reserved for decorating the graves of the Civil War dead. Now it’s Memorial Day in which we are to remember all American soldiers who’ve died in war. Poppies were originally for Armistice Day which is now called Veterans Day, inspired by the poem about the dead of the Great War, In Flanders Field, but they’ve now expanded to Memorial Day as well.
What should we remember on Memorial Day? We should remember that more Americans died killing each other and of disease in the American Civil War than in all our other wars put together. Let us not forget. We should remember that whatever our disagreements with each other we should settle them peacefully and never make war against our fellow countrymen ever again. Let us not forget.
We should remember that war must be reserved for preserving the Republic, not for advancing strategic objectives. Let us not forget.
Or, as I have long put it, the best way to honor the men and women who have died in America’s wars is to make as sure as possible that war is as infrequent as possible.
Strongly agree with you and Doug on that point. It galls me to no end that what now counts as supporting our troops is lionizing them, pushing for more military spending and then sending them off to fight more.
Steve
So where do things like all of Europe would be speaking German, and Kuwait would be slaughtered and owned by Sadaam fit into the picture?
I’m trying to figure out why MLB didn’t just uglify their uniforms with military style coloration, but put five stars on the baseball caps.
Since the Gulf War, World War II, and World War I are all very different cases, let’s consider them separately. IMO the Gulf War was a gang war. Whether Saddam Hussein or the Emir of Kuwait ran Kuwait didn’t really matter to us. We supplied three quarters of the troops and did an even more disproportionate amount of the fighting. Something is wrong with this picture. The Gulf States took an aggregate of 40 casualties in fighting with the enemy in the conflict. That doesn’t sound like an existential struggle to me. It sounds like gang warfare. I’m open to explanations but I think the simplest one is that we and the UN were conned into entering that gang war.
In World II the Japanese didn’t really give us much choice and once they’d attacked us we were at war with Germany, their allies, too.
What would have happened had we not entered into World War I? IMO the Allies and the Central Powers would have reached an armistice under conditions more favorable to Germany. The stage would not have been set for World War II.
If preventing German domination of the European continent obliges one to go to war, we should attack Germany now. It’s well on its way to that goal already. If there’s a moral obligation to attack countries that attack and occupy other countries (and leaving our own culpability aside), we should be attacking China now.
I have too many people to remember. Three more added to the list this year – two died in Iraq and a third was a PTSD suicide. That’s not including my father (WWII combat vet, but lived to 92) or my former Commander and mentor who was killed by car while riding his bicycle.
I just hope that next year the list isn’t bigger.