As a boy I read Wilfred Owen’s famous poem about World War I, describing the suffering of young men sent by industrial powers to die in clouds of poison gas.
I'm a retired Soldier and a veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. I keep journals where I write to my sons, 6 and 2, to share memories and thoughts that they might not understand until they're older. I'm going to print out two copies of this post and place them in their journals. Thanks, Matt.
Awww... but then no one will ever thank them for their service.
And all them ragheads and gooks will get off lightly!
I imagine people like this genuflecting before those murderous assholes in the helicopter video and thanking them for every journalist and innocent child killed by American imperial troopers' "service".
Did you tie your shoes too tight today? I remember a Peanuts strip in which Lucy tied Linus’s shoes way too tight, and the reaction he let out was approximately as sensible as your comment.
You join the gang. You wear the colors. You kill the kids.
I kind of get it though.
The personality type that deliberately joins an organization that involves an idiotic hierarchy and 24/7 bootlicking has got to be hiding a load of mindless fury somewhere in that robotoid meat jacket.
Now, among the many euphemisms and synonyms for killing, we have "droned". Death, not touched by human hand, nor guided by a human heart.
I've been actively and vociferously against war all my life. But l've never been disrespectful to kids who, rightly or wrongly, join the military to fight for their beliefs. I wish that pretty young girl were dancing tonight at a party, and holding on to someone special. Instead we're mourning another death. As always, we must ask: Why? If you too want to find the truth, perhaps start looking here:
Siegfried Sassoon was another warrior poet who was fortunate enough to survive World War I. His chilling poem "Suicide in the Trenches" concludes this way:
"Goodbye to All That" by Robert Graves, a friend of both, I believe, is also utterly brutal in eviscerating the "noble" fight of WW1. Clearly some people have not read deeply of that generation, or some of these comments would not be made. Owen, Sassoon, Graves would either laugh or be horrified at the utter lack of getting the point.
We probably started going down a slippery slope once we stopped teaching Latin.
But on the other hand, better literacy might lead to more potent sophistry in the political class, inspiring people to support even deadlier conflicts. Could be a double edged sword.
Probably good the Hillary Clinton, Victoria Nuland and Michael McFaul weren't exactly Churchillian in their language.
"The Western canon is, more than anything, a conversation among great thinkers over generations that grows richer the more we add our own voices and the excellence of voices from Africa, Asia, Latin America and everywhere else in the world."
Crazy that this obvious fact isn't carrying the day.
True. Read Albert J Nock (Memoirs of a Superfluous Man) who also pointed out that the quality of literature follows the quslity of readers; hence, the more readers, the lower the target...
This is not in any way true. The number of books read per person has NEVER been higher. Or, more people reading more books now than at any time in human history.
Add censorship, AI and outright banning to the purging and rewriting of great literature to conform to political correctness. Collecting great literate is now a revolutionary act. How long before possession of great literature is considered criminal. RACKET'S vital and important report on Trudeau's C-63? Generally crickets. On an Australian train, two young men were cuffed and arrested because of an innocuous conversation that upset a nearby politically correct snitch. Great Britain is full bore on for speech and thought crime arrest, prosecution and incarceration. In America sterile totalitarianism is testing the waters for an all out open assault on access to all things human and free.
"People will do anything, no matter how absurd in order to avoid facing their own souls." C.G. Jung
BUT I can tell you one thing anyone who comes for my books will be kneed in the groin and hit over the head with an axe. I am pretty certain they will all be men!
Savanarola burnt books in front of the Medici Palace. The Palestinians Libraries have been burned to the ground.
I have a bit more faith in Europe BUT who knows?
We have a lot of old houses and hiding places in France.........when 'push comes to shove' we will all pretend we are illiterate and vote for Trump!
Why do you keep insulting Trump supporters? I voted for Trump twice & will do so again. I have always been a voracious reader. Don't believe all the propaganda about Trump voters.
Let's see...while recovering from a stroke my beautiful Korean wife read a 15 volume series on the Roman Empire. She has books everywhere...next to her bed, in the bathroom, on the floors. Not novels, not romances, not entertainment...serious books about history, science, medicine, philosophy, comparative religion, atheism, psychology, etc. She reads for knowledge and is one of the most learned and intelligent persons that I know.
Jenny, how is it that you justify reading romance novels as a "release," yet when those boorish Americans choose to read something fictional and not of History, Philosophy, i.e., you disparage it as "escapist" and no different from stupid TV.
Your snide, gratuitous swipes at Americans are ubiquitous in everything you write, diminish your credibility, and verges on the pathological. For your own well being, lighten up girl.
See my nearby post challenging your assertion and I would say that the number of books, ignoring the quality and depth of the books is not a useful metric. A person who has read Moby Dick and Gulag Archipelago as well as the Bible and nothing more is much more literate than someone who’s read Heather has Two Mommies, Gender Queer and 20 graphic novels a month for the past year.
Interesting. I only have anecdotes. I ask young well educated men what books they read and they tell me they don’t have time to read books. Can read a blog or article on the web. That’s anecdotal
Where did you find the statistic that readership is higher
How many have read Kants Critique of Pure Reason?
Many people brag about the spy fiction they read though
If I remember correctly Owen and Sassoon met briefly at a convalescent center in England during that war. Keith Douglas (WWII) is another British warrior/poet worth reading. Also died during conflict.
Owen and Sassoon did meet in a hospital where they were recuperating emotionally and spiritually from the war. Owen was gay and fell in love with Sassoon, who wasn't gay. Their story is told brilliantly in Pat Barker's "Regeneration Trilogy," one of the best things ever written about World War I. The three books are "Regeneration," "The Eye in the Door," and "The Ghost Road." It would be a wonderful way to spend one's time this summer reading them.
I just read an interview with Pat Barker where she said that one of the reasons she wrote the trilogy was because she was tired of being asked if she could write about men.
Thanks, Matt. I will go today to visit my parents' graves. And expect that somebody will have placed an American flag on my father's grave, since he was a WWII vet, although nothing on his stone shows that. He was always reticent about his "service" and shunned the "greatest generation" talk. There may have been wars which were necessary, but they were never good.
I have never thought the title was about war, but how that Generation took care of one another & sacrificed for one another. How the country worked together to be successful. Maybe I misunderstood.
What a relief to read this brief sensitive note. I just drifted over to the “Free Press” pages where a clueless hoard of vicious commenters are outdoing themselves comparing the students protesting war to Hitler Youth; celebrating the incineration of children, glorifying the poor kids dying for oil companies, as giving their lives for ‘freedom’.
Our world is reaching a point where death, never welcome, will seem less like leaving a wonderful party, and more like walking out of an awful movie before the end.
Good people give me hope, make me want to stick around. And that’s why I read this column.
Brilliant statement about the inevitable. The economist Ludwig von Mises, in the same vein, was once asked what the best hedge against inflation was. He replied, "Old age."
At least the young are no longer drafted into slavery, uh, service. I feel bad for the ones who see it as their only opportunity. I hope industry comes back to the United States so they have better options.
Still have tax slavery and it’s much worse in USA Today for the middle class if you take into account all taxes sales property ferderal state city excise tolls for driving, gasoline tax, water etc
You have a point. Russia is much more capable of producing the arms it needs, and primarily those arms, not technological wunderwaffen that costs billions to build and hundreds of billions to maintain.
I unsubscribed months ago because of what I knew would be the very one-sided pro Israel position that b a r i always takes. She is of course entitled to her own opinion, but free, the Press is not. I don't miss it at all. I still have Matt and Glenn
Nellie has lost a lot of her sassiness over the last 9 months . What was a “ must read” has become a routine. Bari has Always been such as a NYT alumnae, she has not changed much from the herd
I'm outta there when the month is up too. I'm not going to participate in moderated discussion and yea, the content morphed into something I didn't originally buy.
They are very one-sides on Israel. I still appreciate keeping a pulse, though, because overall it’s always helpful to find ways to avoid succumbing to echo chambers. Nellie’s TGIF sometimes has me laughing out loud - and not because I agree with her about things but because she keeps it light, which I think it important.
Understandable. Before 10/7, I enjoyed much of the content from contributing writers. Not so much with TGIF, though, as I felt Nellie was not only still too biased, but also cited too much legacy media, which I had subscribed to TFP as an *alternative* to legacy media.
Yeah, I don’t read TGIF as news so much as for laughs and the level of news that just lets you know some of the conversations that are happening - and helping myself not to take my own views too seriously. I don’t even read it every week and rarely read all of it (usually long!) But I also want to make sure I’m never getting too narrow about reading only one side of things. Also, they just publish a lot which gives the opportunity to pick and choose that way.
I get that too! And feel that too. It can be annoying and frustrating. We all have to tend to our own minds and sometimes that definitely means avoiding some voices - the freedom to speak, not speak, listen and not listen!
I started subscribing to The Free Press after Bari Weiss was one of the Twitter
Files writers.
Damn, did that place change Oct 7.
There were more conservative voices here after Matt’s work on Twitter, but they added richness, not hateful drivel. New subs to the Free Press seem to be relatives of either Ben Shapiro or Ariel Sharon.
I know without asking you’ve been called an antisemite over there; have you gotten “Jew-hater” yet?
Really? I can’t get my head around the use of bots. The comments section is definitely full of a lot of insufferable commentary. I either ignore it or make a contrary comment and try not to come back to it, lol.
I just got back from a 33 year old ritual of meeting with old friends and colleagues at the grave of my former partner Captain Mark A. Connolly, MD, who was the only physician killed in Desert Storm, the first Gulf War on the last day of the war (actually after the ceasefire had been declared), leaving behind a wife and two school age children (his young son the spitting image of him to the extent that when the son walked his big sister down the aisle, for a moment I thought I was seeing Mark!)
The only consolation was and is that we know that he is with the Lord in heaven.
33 years ago the meaning of Memorial Day became for me forever personal.
Thank you for sharing this story of your friend, doctor. For those who want to know more of the story of remembering Captain Connolly, this may be of interest:
We must always remember such people of sterling character who served and died. Not just for just wars, to honor their sacrifice, but for any war, so that we all think twice about advocating for wars to be fought not by us, but by the young.
Yes, another good man, and another hero, but comment better suited for Veterans Day. William got to come home and live a life of honor and service and continue blessing his family and community. Mark did not. And it is those who did not get to return that this day is dedicated. I will look forward to you posting this on November 11, 2024 (and annually thereafter if you so desire). Back then it was harder to get into veterinarian school than in to medical school, I don't know if that is true anymore.
Veterans' Day, November 11, used to be Armistice Day. Our great leaders could not bear it that even a single day be named for peace, even a temporary, compromised peace. Instead, they turned it into yet another celebration of war, death, and destruction. As I said above, people do not choose to recognize the problem. Or maybe they enjoy it.
I was a nurse in Desert Storm, I remember our unit hearing about the death of Dr. Connolly. It was very sobering as we set up next to the highway to hell near Basra and there was still skirmishes taking place in close proximity. Thank you for the reminder I had forgotten one of the medical community had given the ultimate sacrifice.
Thank you for your service! I just read two wonderful books about nurses serving in the frontlines of Viet Nam. One fictional, “The Women,” by Kristin Hannah and “Healing Wounds” by Diane Carlson Evans about her fight to build a memorial to the women who served in Viet nam.
Both books grasp the nobility of service above self, even (and especially) when the awesome power and responsibility of placing a nation’s most assets- it’s people- in harm’s way, is placed in the hands if men (& now women) who should never have had it.
Deborah, Thank you for your service and your response.
It wasn't just Mark, there was a woman who was a medical assistant or nurse, I forget which who was sitting next to him in the Humvee who was also killed by the IED. She was from Connecticut, if I recall correctly. There were only 87 fatalities in Desert Storm, if I recall correctly.
This is very true, but there are times, when leadership is in the hands of Godly men, we must respond. Whether it be to defend your family from an imminent threat, or to defend your nation from despicable despotism, we need good men who are willing to fight.
I, too, was impressed by Owen's famous poem as a boy, as well as "the Death of a Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell. Nevertheless, I went on to serve for over twenty years in the U.S. Navy. As @Kristine Chrislieb noted, there is a place for competing views about war, so long as mankind is fallible. I refer to John Stuart Mill's expression below about the unfortunate necessity of war, and today I honor those who have fought and died for us. I hope it may not need to happen again, but I know it will.
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”
― John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy
"When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people." But it seems too many including myself that all the wars we have had since Korea have been to enrich the war industry in this country. Because of that, I think it would be most appropriate for the so-called Defense Department to change its name back to what it used to be, the War Department.
John Stuart Mills was wrong. No one enters a war of their own free will. It is always at the behest/admonition of someone or some group seeking power and profit. He was a shill.
You are a cynical leftist with no understanding of our history. What you assert was not true of the American Revolution, was not true of large segments of the armies of both the North and the South in the American Civil War, not true of the French Resistance in WWII, the Texans avenging the Alamo…
Wrong headed or not a large number of the volunteers after 9/11 entered freely…
It’s hard to argue with your criticism of the term “godly men”. Who indeed might they be? Our leaders seem more self-interested and self-important than anything.
Yet while fighting is something no healthy individual seeks, history has given us some truly evil regimes. Study carefully what Japan did when they invaded Asia, and how Germany (Hitler really) pursued its vision. Cruelty beyond belief became institutionalized. One need not even mention the tens of millions of your fellow man killed by Stalin and Mao. We only know for sure what our lives are like having ended those regimes. But what if no one had fought back. Think for a minute what life would be like in Europe had Hitler prevailed. Think what life in Asia would be like had Japan prevailed. Such regimes don’t self-select out via elections. Hitler was within a year or so of killing virtually every Jew in Europe. Would he have stopped there, with Catholics and Gypsies next on his list towards a pure aryan race? Japan used pregnant women in Manchuria for bayonet practice. Would they have subsequently passed a Bill of Rights for the peoples they enslaved? If someone breaks into your house seeking to kill your family, do you make them dinner and help them decide which member of your family should die first?
As many here have said, many Americans we honor today have died in wars poorly led, poorly conceived and wholly unnecessary. Among those we honor today, however, many made the ultimate sacrifice that gave us a much better world than would otherwise exist. We honor them all. And the best way to thank them for the world they left us is to preserve our freedom and seek to improve the lives of all as best we can. On that I suspect we can nearly all agree.
I could give you a whole list twice that long of U.S. war crimes that are totally horrific, many now ongoing and much of it in recent history, inasmuch as in the past, starting from American Indians and slavery, onward. The equivalence game just doesn't work, people just can't handle the cognitive dissonance. We aren't better than anyone else. No idea or action will make the past okay. If we admit that we actually are as fallible as the people who, e.g., would allow tyrants like Mao to lead them, maybe there is room for change. Until we pull our heads out of our assess and admit that we're as flawed as the rest and our "freedom" as an ideology is as dangerous as any other (because that's just human nature, we'll use any story we can to justify our bullshit rather than admit we're wrong), none of this will change.
You are indoctrinated as the rest. Most people didn't "sacrifice" themselves, that's a bunch of conceited, self-interested, jingoistic bullshit. People did were either drafted (e.g. Vietnam) or do it because they don't have any other choice. The heroism is a rationalization -- you can't get anything else, especially in industrialized, mechanistic warfare.
We are all sinners; some of us have been saved by Grace. The US Constitution was a set up recognizing that fact of humanity to a) limit the power of government, b) to put checks on each of the functions (branches)of government by the others, and is arguably the best vision of how a government should be structured.
Ben Franklin recognized the danger: when he said, we have given you a republic, if you can keep it.
We have allowed and even encouraged the federal government to exceed the bounds of set forth in the COTUS, and therefore the limits on the necessary evil of government.
You sir, would vilify the imperfect good for not being perfect. You likely think that Trump will literally be Hitler if he gets elected, but have no problem with Joe Biden's corrupt regime.
I suggest that you either do something to improve the situation here or move to that country that is pure enough to meet your lofty standards. In the meantime STFU.
Wonder why so many keep coming here. As far as that tired old American Indian story. There is not one grain of sand on this Earth that hasn't been conquered at some time or another. Do YOU own property? Have you given your land back to the Indians (since it is so distasteful to you). Also there is no one living today in America that has ever owned a slave or been a slave.
Sea Sentry: And how did US military actions ever do anything but propel ever more “poorly conceived wars,” or fix the quality of “life in Asia” and where is this “better world” you claim exists today in the midst of an ongoing genocide and among millions more dead?
Millions dead at whose hand? Actually it’s the LACK of U.S. military action due to political dithering that made things much worse. Hitlers own generals wanted to depose him prior to his invasion of Czechoslovakia, but the Allies turned their backs in the name of “peace”. Because of us, half of Korea is free and prosperous. We rebuilt Japan and Germany at our expense- name ONE other country that has ever done so. AFTER Hiroshima Japan commissioned a domestic army of nearly 30m and vowed to fight to the last person. Since the end of WWII, poverty has plummeted and living standards have soared due to the highly imperfect Pax Americana. We are living in this better world.
So, war is very popular. You can go back to Homer, who referred to war as "hateful" thousands of years ago, in a poem (the Iliad) about how one group of people destroyed another, destroyed their cities, and enslaved the survivors. The poem is so popular it became one of the primary foundations of European literature.
Maybe if we could admit _our_ violent nature we could try to control or limit it, but as it's always _them_, the chances seem dim.
I think it is certainly fair to draw a line of prudence in the decisions to go to war between Korea and Vietnam.
The MacArthur Constitution/occupation of Japan is quite likely the greatest US foreign policy success in history, in both immediate and long term impacts.
Ours, the US military is responsible for the vast majority of deaths in conflict throughout the globe. Who gave you the right to destroy and rebuild nations? This is the arrogance of Western supremacy, and its insistence, at the behest of billionaires and weapons manufacturers, that you can’t save people without killing them.
what a load of bull crap. When are you limiting the time frame for your assertion?
Certainly you are not including the whole of the 20th century.
Do you count the deaths from the response to the the initial aggressor as heavily as you do those from the initial aggressor?
War is hell. There is no getting around that. Should the US Civil War not been fought and slavery allowed to persist (I refuse to go down the hypothetical of what would've happened to the institution of slavery absent the war).
23 SKIDOO: True, yet when we still had presidents who knew warfare (Daddy Bush was the last), the depravity wasn't quite as blatant as it is now. Or maybe I just imagine it to be so.
when I was young Memorial Day was a day of reverence. I remembe my Dad (WWII) bein very somber. But we lost that. Even by the 80's he was much more relaxed about he whole thing. We could do with at least one somber day once a year to remind us what we lose (including those who do not fight) when we go to war.
Now for some unknowable reason, Memorial Day Has Turned into a day to buy a mattress. When I lived in portland, every mattress store was having a sale with somebody standing on the corner on the corner waving some sort of Banner inviting us to come into the store. Every holiday, no matter how sacred, has been turned into another sale day in the United states.
The politicians in Washington looked for a fig leaf opportunity to give federal employees another 3 day weekend (my guess overwhelmingly Democrat politicians. IMHO, none of those holidays should be Mondays, but the actual days: MLK Jr's birthday, Lincoln's birthday, Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, Columbus Day. Let the kids be in school, have special assemblies and instruction about the reason for the holiday, perhaps local parades, or speeches: Gettysburg Address, Washington's Farewell Address, MLK's I have a dream speech, etc. Have some actual American history and civics be part of the celebration.
Costco, at least the one in my neighborhood, was closed today. Confused would-be consumers were jammed up at the gates to their parking lot. I guess someone, maybe just one person, said "No." There can be a lot of power in a single syllable.
Daddy Bush indeed knew war. Did not stop him from Desert Storm while in office or heralding the New World Order as the brightest gain for all humanity as he bought a large parcel of land in Brazil next to rich oil fields and a freshwater aquifer that could sustain the world's population for 200 years (Guarani). Just some planning ahead with his riches so his family lives on.
I remind people daily. I can still hear his nasally voice, "A thousand points of light. One World Order." BOTH parties sold out the American People years ago..
By “Godly Men” I mean those rooted in the true, the good and the beautiful; those who rooted in the “Laws of nature and nature’s God.”
Such men do indeed exist, but if they have never been in positions of power as your anecdotal evidence suggests, whose fault is that? The question points to the point at which I was trying to aim - we get the government servants we deserve. But to choose wisely, we must be able to recognize those Godly people among us and to do this we must strive also to be a Godly people.
Men who imagine themselves to be godly are usually among the most ruthless, relentless, and cruel on earth. Far better, if there must be war, to have it led by those with some humility and empathy, as well as skill.
godly men? No such thing exists in politics. We used to hire better men for public office than we do today. You'd have to go back 60+ years to a time when we elected that type for public service.
Memorial Day isn’t about standing your ground in your home, it’s a gleeful celebration of state sponsored violence. I haven’t experience a single “imminent threat,” from another nation (despite the braying of despotic politicians that some ideology will infect us all if we don’t kill and bomb immediately), once in my lifetime of forever wars. “Godly men” would be diplomats, not warriors.
Memorial Day has NOTHING to do with a "gleeful celebration of state sponsored violence." Visiting the graves of those who fell in battle is not "gleeful." Families & friends remembering those who fell in battle are not "gleeful." They are mourning the loss of youth, the ending of lives cut short.
Air Force brats were never exposed to Wilfred Owen. I grew up idolizing my WWII and Korean War father and followed in his footsteps, nearly dying in Vietnam. It took me almost no time at all to realize we were not the good guys.
This today from Sgt. Dan McKnight, Chairman, Bring the Troops Home:
"We are determined that no American soldier should ever be forced to die in vain or die in an illegal war. Permitting that would be like spitting on their grave.
So today we remember the sacrifice, but we also remember the insult; how their willful forfeiture of life is besmirched and impugned by politicians who send others off to war but are too gutless to bring the war to a vote.
So this Memorial Day, I think it behooves you to contemplate the duality of bravery and cowardice; the folks who have one, and the folks who have the other."
Wilfred Owen drafted a preface, which was later used in a collection of his work and which became hauntingly accurate for us all this time later:
“This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.
Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War.
Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.
'My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.”
He could easily have been talking about you, or any of us who dare to ask questions and tell the truth. All we can do is warn…
"Rhymes of a Red Cross Man," by Robert Service is full of similar haunting poems of WWI. The book is dedicated to, "My Brother, Lieutenant Albert Service, Canadian Infantry, killed in action, France, August 1916."
"Through sickly fields all shrapnel-sown,
and meadows reaped by death alone."
It's good to remember the harshest of lessons, as grim as that task can be.
R.W. Service is a jewel. As good as his poems of the Yukon gold rush are, it's unfortunate that they draw attention away from some of his others which have some really poignant and profound observations about humankind.
At the same time we must be respectful of those who risked, and sacrificed, their lives honestly and sincerely believing that they were doing so as a service to their family, friends and countrymen. Greater love has no man than this: to lay down his life for his friends.
And all the more shame to those who would cynically take advantage of such noble motivations.
Thanks Matt, the old lie indeed. War is not pretty. I'm reminded of President Lincoln who penned a little classic in remembrance of those who gave "their last full measure. " We should not forget the sacrifices of relatives, friends and ancestors who gave their life so that we didn't have to.
Although I would not state this opinion to a serving soldier, who probably needs to believe, I do not think that any of the wars since Korea have been to protect us the common citizen. Therefore I do not think it's the case that they die so that I do not have to. They die because they have been economically drafted for the most part, and to enrich the war profiteers. Nothing else.
I don’t disagree regarding protecting the common citizen. But I had a good friend who I grew up with. His number came up, mine didn’t. He came home but was never the same and ended up taking his life. That was 40 years ago. Im past the remorse but miss him still and remember him most days but particularly on this day. He served his country but his country didn’t serve him well.
Having been in the military for quite some years, I have seen first hand that the great majority of those with whom I worked, volunteers all, were drafted by economic necessity.
Those who support forever wars do not have to fight in them, nor any member of their families, but they do profit obscenely from promoting endless war.
Thanks Matt - as a mother and a woman who has raised sons plus a daughter it is imperative that we teach our children to think clearly about what and whom the military serves. Not them but corporate masters who have been manipulating the truth to line their pockets on the backs of our children via “war” without end see Palestine and the fact we give US military benefits to dual citizens serving in the IDF. When will it end ? It won’t future wars will be fought by robots when humans refuse to serve.
My 88 year old husband died recently he was an F 4 pilot in Vietnam in 1969 bombing Laos when Nixon said we weren’t. His disgust and anger at what he had been part never went away and he suffered PTSD for 55 years. He would caution anyone seeking to serve because it will mark and maim them forever, do not become a weapon for anyone.
As the wife of a retired AF pilot who kept his home and family safe during many deployments, trainings, tdy’s and unexpected “trips” , the details of which I will never be able to know about, we too look back and see now how he - WE - were used for purposes not always noble. It makes me sick. So we cannot recommend military service to our grandchildren- but I do encourage political service and engagement. We need to cultivate more virtuous political leaders- and many of them.
On Memorial Day and Veterans Day, I try to avoid reading what we've all read a thousand times before, so many sentimental and patriotic lies (even from writers who are skeptics on every other day of the year). You -- and Wilfred Owen -- finally said something more honest about how states treat those they send away to war. Thank you.
I'm a retired Soldier and a veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. I keep journals where I write to my sons, 6 and 2, to share memories and thoughts that they might not understand until they're older. I'm going to print out two copies of this post and place them in their journals. Thanks, Matt.
Thank you for your service, and sincere hope that your sons never experience war.
Awww... but then no one will ever thank them for their service.
And all them ragheads and gooks will get off lightly!
I imagine people like this genuflecting before those murderous assholes in the helicopter video and thanking them for every journalist and innocent child killed by American imperial troopers' "service".
Disgusting.
Did you tie your shoes too tight today? I remember a Peanuts strip in which Lucy tied Linus’s shoes way too tight, and the reaction he let out was approximately as sensible as your comment.
So I suggest you loosen those laces.
Sure, dude. Because ALL US military folks just love killing children & journalists.
Wow.
You really need to get out more.
You join the gang. You wear the colors. You kill the kids.
I kind of get it though.
The personality type that deliberately joins an organization that involves an idiotic hierarchy and 24/7 bootlicking has got to be hiding a load of mindless fury somewhere in that robotoid meat jacket.
What's disgusting is "ragheads" etc.
Agreed. That particular end of American English is foul.
From the NYT comments:
Thierry La Jambe
Now, among the many euphemisms and synonyms for killing, we have "droned". Death, not touched by human hand, nor guided by a human heart.
I've been actively and vociferously against war all my life. But l've never been disrespectful to kids who, rightly or wrongly, join the military to fight for their beliefs. I wish that pretty young girl were dancing tonight at a party, and holding on to someone special. Instead we're mourning another death. As always, we must ask: Why? If you too want to find the truth, perhaps start looking here:
"Dulce et Decorum Est" BY WILFRED OWEN
Siegfried Sassoon was another warrior poet who was fortunate enough to survive World War I. His chilling poem "Suicide in the Trenches" concludes this way:
"You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go."
"Goodbye to All That" by Robert Graves, a friend of both, I believe, is also utterly brutal in eviscerating the "noble" fight of WW1. Clearly some people have not read deeply of that generation, or some of these comments would not be made. Owen, Sassoon, Graves would either laugh or be horrified at the utter lack of getting the point.
A present "horror" is that mucthof Graves work is going out of print.
The other observation from this article is that (among the literate classes), people were more literate in 1918 than they are now.
We probably started going down a slippery slope once we stopped teaching Latin.
But on the other hand, better literacy might lead to more potent sophistry in the political class, inspiring people to support even deadlier conflicts. Could be a double edged sword.
Probably good the Hillary Clinton, Victoria Nuland and Michael McFaul weren't exactly Churchillian in their language.
Cornel West criticized Howard University sharply for eliminating its Classics Department..
He really nails it here:
"The Western canon is, more than anything, a conversation among great thinkers over generations that grows richer the more we add our own voices and the excellence of voices from Africa, Asia, Latin America and everywhere else in the world."
Crazy that this obvious fact isn't carrying the day.
Thank you for letting me know about this. I'm reading it now. He makes a great argument.
Once the classics are gone, it is hard to make another Cornell West.
Hell, yeah...
True. Read Albert J Nock (Memoirs of a Superfluous Man) who also pointed out that the quality of literature follows the quslity of readers; hence, the more readers, the lower the target...
Certainly a person who was schooled through the 6th or 8th grade (the standards for that time) were definitely more literate
Than the average or even above average similar student today.
This is not in any way true. The number of books read per person has NEVER been higher. Or, more people reading more books now than at any time in human history.
Yes BUT what are they reading?
I have to confess I was a 'book snob' for years and read every author of note.
Since all this non-stop SHIT we are hearing I decide to read all sorts of novels about romance etc because it gives me a release.
Please do not tell me about books.
On several websites I see what Americans are reading...............if 1000 people read History/ or Biography/Philosophy/ I would be very surprised.
Escapist Literature is just that. NO different from stupid TeeVee programs!
Add censorship, AI and outright banning to the purging and rewriting of great literature to conform to political correctness. Collecting great literate is now a revolutionary act. How long before possession of great literature is considered criminal. RACKET'S vital and important report on Trudeau's C-63? Generally crickets. On an Australian train, two young men were cuffed and arrested because of an innocuous conversation that upset a nearby politically correct snitch. Great Britain is full bore on for speech and thought crime arrest, prosecution and incarceration. In America sterile totalitarianism is testing the waters for an all out open assault on access to all things human and free.
"People will do anything, no matter how absurd in order to avoid facing their own souls." C.G. Jung
Read Fahrenheit 451
I really do not know about all this.
BUT I can tell you one thing anyone who comes for my books will be kneed in the groin and hit over the head with an axe. I am pretty certain they will all be men!
Savanarola burnt books in front of the Medici Palace. The Palestinians Libraries have been burned to the ground.
I have a bit more faith in Europe BUT who knows?
We have a lot of old houses and hiding places in France.........when 'push comes to shove' we will all pretend we are illiterate and vote for Trump!
Why do you keep insulting Trump supporters? I voted for Trump twice & will do so again. I have always been a voracious reader. Don't believe all the propaganda about Trump voters.
“ kneed in the groin and hit over the head with an axe. I am pretty certain they will all be men!”
Those scummy censorial men! So many groins to kick. So little time.
Let’s see, there’s:
Renée Diresta - Stanford Internet Observatory
Nina Jankowicz - Our short lived disinformation czar and former Alethea Group exec.
Cindy Otis - former CIA employee who relo’d to Alethea Group
Lisa Kaplan - Founder Alethea Group
And so many, many more.
Of course none of these monsters will be at your house torch in hand to burn your books.
They just want to make a few choice edits. Save us all from the MAGA.
Anyways,
enjoy the kicking of groins.
--pardon the typo---
Let's see...while recovering from a stroke my beautiful Korean wife read a 15 volume series on the Roman Empire. She has books everywhere...next to her bed, in the bathroom, on the floors. Not novels, not romances, not entertainment...serious books about history, science, medicine, philosophy, comparative religion, atheism, psychology, etc. She reads for knowledge and is one of the most learned and intelligent persons that I know.
Jenny, how is it that you justify reading romance novels as a "release," yet when those boorish Americans choose to read something fictional and not of History, Philosophy, i.e., you disparage it as "escapist" and no different from stupid TV.
Your snide, gratuitous swipes at Americans are ubiquitous in everything you write, diminish your credibility, and verges on the pathological. For your own well being, lighten up girl.
See my nearby post challenging your assertion and I would say that the number of books, ignoring the quality and depth of the books is not a useful metric. A person who has read Moby Dick and Gulag Archipelago as well as the Bible and nothing more is much more literate than someone who’s read Heather has Two Mommies, Gender Queer and 20 graphic novels a month for the past year.
JJ I am shocked to hear that. Where did you get that info?
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/the-decline-of-the-american-book-lover/283222/
Interesting. I only have anecdotes. I ask young well educated men what books they read and they tell me they don’t have time to read books. Can read a blog or article on the web. That’s anecdotal
Where did you find the statistic that readership is higher
How many have read Kants Critique of Pure Reason?
Many people brag about the spy fiction they read though
Thank you so much for bringing him up. There is also this grim short poem by him.
The Kiss
To these I turn, in these I trust;
Brother Lead and Sister Steel.
To his blind power I make appeal;
I guard her beauty clean from rust.
He spins and burns and loves the air,
And splits a skull to win my praise;
But up the noble marching days
She glitters naked, cold and fair.
Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this;
That in good fury he may feel
The body where he sets his heel
Quail from your downward darting kiss.
If I remember correctly Owen and Sassoon met briefly at a convalescent center in England during that war. Keith Douglas (WWII) is another British warrior/poet worth reading. Also died during conflict.
Owen and Sassoon did meet in a hospital where they were recuperating emotionally and spiritually from the war. Owen was gay and fell in love with Sassoon, who wasn't gay. Their story is told brilliantly in Pat Barker's "Regeneration Trilogy," one of the best things ever written about World War I. The three books are "Regeneration," "The Eye in the Door," and "The Ghost Road." It would be a wonderful way to spend one's time this summer reading them.
You took the words out of mouth! Even liked the 4th and 5th book after the trilogy.
AND Pat Barker is a woman!
I just read an interview with Pat Barker where she said that one of the reasons she wrote the trilogy was because she was tired of being asked if she could write about men.
Interesting. I didn't know this. She did a great job.
Yes, and Pat Barker memorialized it in her award winning novel Regeneration
♥♥
Thanks, Matt. I will go today to visit my parents' graves. And expect that somebody will have placed an American flag on my father's grave, since he was a WWII vet, although nothing on his stone shows that. He was always reticent about his "service" and shunned the "greatest generation" talk. There may have been wars which were necessary, but they were never good.
I have never thought the title was about war, but how that Generation took care of one another & sacrificed for one another. How the country worked together to be successful. Maybe I misunderstood.
What a relief to read this brief sensitive note. I just drifted over to the “Free Press” pages where a clueless hoard of vicious commenters are outdoing themselves comparing the students protesting war to Hitler Youth; celebrating the incineration of children, glorifying the poor kids dying for oil companies, as giving their lives for ‘freedom’.
Our world is reaching a point where death, never welcome, will seem less like leaving a wonderful party, and more like walking out of an awful movie before the end.
Good people give me hope, make me want to stick around. And that’s why I read this column.
Brilliant statement about the inevitable. The economist Ludwig von Mises, in the same vein, was once asked what the best hedge against inflation was. He replied, "Old age."
At least the young are no longer drafted into slavery, uh, service. I feel bad for the ones who see it as their only opportunity. I hope industry comes back to the United States so they have better options.
Still have tax slavery and it’s much worse in USA Today for the middle class if you take into account all taxes sales property ferderal state city excise tolls for driving, gasoline tax, water etc
Ha. The US is finished even in weapons production.
You have a point. Russia is much more capable of producing the arms it needs, and primarily those arms, not technological wunderwaffen that costs billions to build and hundreds of billions to maintain.
It won't come back as long as people keep buying imports.
Then why stay here if the opportunity is there?
What opportunities? Slave labor?
So glad I recently unsubscribed from The Free Press. Could no longer stomach their completely one-sided articles and comment sections. Blech!
I unsubscribed months ago because of what I knew would be the very one-sided pro Israel position that b a r i always takes. She is of course entitled to her own opinion, but free, the Press is not. I don't miss it at all. I still have Matt and Glenn
Nellie has lost a lot of her sassiness over the last 9 months . What was a “ must read” has become a routine. Bari has Always been such as a NYT alumnae, she has not changed much from the herd
My sentiments exactly!
I'm outta there when the month is up too. I'm not going to participate in moderated discussion and yea, the content morphed into something I didn't originally buy.
They are very one-sides on Israel. I still appreciate keeping a pulse, though, because overall it’s always helpful to find ways to avoid succumbing to echo chambers. Nellie’s TGIF sometimes has me laughing out loud - and not because I agree with her about things but because she keeps it light, which I think it important.
When I let my paid subscription go, I was saddest to lose TGIF. I still think Nellie is a gem, but I can't support the warmongering right now.
Understandable
Understandable. Before 10/7, I enjoyed much of the content from contributing writers. Not so much with TGIF, though, as I felt Nellie was not only still too biased, but also cited too much legacy media, which I had subscribed to TFP as an *alternative* to legacy media.
Yeah, I don’t read TGIF as news so much as for laughs and the level of news that just lets you know some of the conversations that are happening - and helping myself not to take my own views too seriously. I don’t even read it every week and rarely read all of it (usually long!) But I also want to make sure I’m never getting too narrow about reading only one side of things. Also, they just publish a lot which gives the opportunity to pick and choose that way.
I get it. I used to feel the same. But there were just too many things she got wrong (intentionally or not), leaving me more frustrated than amused.
I get that too! And feel that too. It can be annoying and frustrating. We all have to tend to our own minds and sometimes that definitely means avoiding some voices - the freedom to speak, not speak, listen and not listen!
my post on The ( not so) Free Press includes a link. please take a moment to read about Willian "Bill" Butler. a true American hero.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/William-Butler-veteran-and-volunteer-dies-4365011.php
I started subscribing to The Free Press after Bari Weiss was one of the Twitter
Files writers.
Damn, did that place change Oct 7.
There were more conservative voices here after Matt’s work on Twitter, but they added richness, not hateful drivel. New subs to the Free Press seem to be relatives of either Ben Shapiro or Ariel Sharon.
I know without asking you’ve been called an antisemite over there; have you gotten “Jew-hater” yet?
I can't with the "Free Press" anymore. Ew. On the bright side, most of the "commenters" are probably bots.
Really? I can’t get my head around the use of bots. The comments section is definitely full of a lot of insufferable commentary. I either ignore it or make a contrary comment and try not to come back to it, lol.
No, seriously: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2024/5/22/are-you-chatting-with-an-ai-powered-superbot
Very interesting, thanks for the link.
I just got back from a 33 year old ritual of meeting with old friends and colleagues at the grave of my former partner Captain Mark A. Connolly, MD, who was the only physician killed in Desert Storm, the first Gulf War on the last day of the war (actually after the ceasefire had been declared), leaving behind a wife and two school age children (his young son the spitting image of him to the extent that when the son walked his big sister down the aisle, for a moment I thought I was seeing Mark!)
The only consolation was and is that we know that he is with the Lord in heaven.
33 years ago the meaning of Memorial Day became for me forever personal.
Thank you for sharing this story of your friend, doctor. For those who want to know more of the story of remembering Captain Connolly, this may be of interest:
https://lancasteronline.com/news/curious-medic-traces-clinics-name-to-local-doctor-killed-in-desert-storm/article_8395e9fe-bb9b-5677-8882-6840fdf907cb.html
We must always remember such people of sterling character who served and died. Not just for just wars, to honor their sacrifice, but for any war, so that we all think twice about advocating for wars to be fought not by us, but by the young.
Thank you, Tom for your kind and true words and for doing that research; reading that clip and writing my post brought tears to my eyes .
another hero.. a different war.. a good man. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/William-Butler-veteran-and-volunteer-dies-4365011.php
Yes, another good man, and another hero, but comment better suited for Veterans Day. William got to come home and live a life of honor and service and continue blessing his family and community. Mark did not. And it is those who did not get to return that this day is dedicated. I will look forward to you posting this on November 11, 2024 (and annually thereafter if you so desire). Back then it was harder to get into veterinarian school than in to medical school, I don't know if that is true anymore.
Veterans' Day, November 11, used to be Armistice Day. Our great leaders could not bear it that even a single day be named for peace, even a temporary, compromised peace. Instead, they turned it into yet another celebration of war, death, and destruction. As I said above, people do not choose to recognize the problem. Or maybe they enjoy it.
Well, I believe a more accurate version would be that they wanted d to honor the service of those who served in all wars, but that’s just me.
I was a nurse in Desert Storm, I remember our unit hearing about the death of Dr. Connolly. It was very sobering as we set up next to the highway to hell near Basra and there was still skirmishes taking place in close proximity. Thank you for the reminder I had forgotten one of the medical community had given the ultimate sacrifice.
Thank you for your service! I just read two wonderful books about nurses serving in the frontlines of Viet Nam. One fictional, “The Women,” by Kristin Hannah and “Healing Wounds” by Diane Carlson Evans about her fight to build a memorial to the women who served in Viet nam.
Both books grasp the nobility of service above self, even (and especially) when the awesome power and responsibility of placing a nation’s most assets- it’s people- in harm’s way, is placed in the hands if men (& now women) who should never have had it.
Incredibly inspiring.
Both excellent books. Diane Evans inspired many nurses to put service above self. I also recommend Home Before Morning by Linda Devanter.
Thank you for the recommendation! My Aunt served at Okinawa during Vietnam- all the worst after surviving first round.
Deborah, Thank you for your service and your response.
It wasn't just Mark, there was a woman who was a medical assistant or nurse, I forget which who was sitting next to him in the Humvee who was also killed by the IED. She was from Connecticut, if I recall correctly. There were only 87 fatalities in Desert Storm, if I recall correctly.
This is very true, but there are times, when leadership is in the hands of Godly men, we must respond. Whether it be to defend your family from an imminent threat, or to defend your nation from despicable despotism, we need good men who are willing to fight.
I, too, was impressed by Owen's famous poem as a boy, as well as "the Death of a Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell. Nevertheless, I went on to serve for over twenty years in the U.S. Navy. As @Kristine Chrislieb noted, there is a place for competing views about war, so long as mankind is fallible. I refer to John Stuart Mill's expression below about the unfortunate necessity of war, and today I honor those who have fought and died for us. I hope it may not need to happen again, but I know it will.
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”
― John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy
"When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people." But it seems too many including myself that all the wars we have had since Korea have been to enrich the war industry in this country. Because of that, I think it would be most appropriate for the so-called Defense Department to change its name back to what it used to be, the War Department.
John Stuart Mills was wrong. No one enters a war of their own free will. It is always at the behest/admonition of someone or some group seeking power and profit. He was a shill.
You are a cynical leftist with no understanding of our history. What you assert was not true of the American Revolution, was not true of large segments of the armies of both the North and the South in the American Civil War, not true of the French Resistance in WWII, the Texans avenging the Alamo…
Wrong headed or not a large number of the volunteers after 9/11 entered freely…
Well, I suppose that makes me a dupe. But I’ll still put myself on the line for the safety of you, your family, and and your descendants.
I’m so glad you shared this from JS Mill. It has been posted on the wall in our home for years. The very real dichotomy of war.
Both points of view must be held in awkward tension.
My entire life has never seen anything remotely resembling a "Godly man" in power. Anyone making that claim is an ideologue.
Perhaps in your fantasy, that is how things work. But reality is power versus power, and the lies people are willing to tell to hold onto that power.
It’s hard to argue with your criticism of the term “godly men”. Who indeed might they be? Our leaders seem more self-interested and self-important than anything.
Yet while fighting is something no healthy individual seeks, history has given us some truly evil regimes. Study carefully what Japan did when they invaded Asia, and how Germany (Hitler really) pursued its vision. Cruelty beyond belief became institutionalized. One need not even mention the tens of millions of your fellow man killed by Stalin and Mao. We only know for sure what our lives are like having ended those regimes. But what if no one had fought back. Think for a minute what life would be like in Europe had Hitler prevailed. Think what life in Asia would be like had Japan prevailed. Such regimes don’t self-select out via elections. Hitler was within a year or so of killing virtually every Jew in Europe. Would he have stopped there, with Catholics and Gypsies next on his list towards a pure aryan race? Japan used pregnant women in Manchuria for bayonet practice. Would they have subsequently passed a Bill of Rights for the peoples they enslaved? If someone breaks into your house seeking to kill your family, do you make them dinner and help them decide which member of your family should die first?
As many here have said, many Americans we honor today have died in wars poorly led, poorly conceived and wholly unnecessary. Among those we honor today, however, many made the ultimate sacrifice that gave us a much better world than would otherwise exist. We honor them all. And the best way to thank them for the world they left us is to preserve our freedom and seek to improve the lives of all as best we can. On that I suspect we can nearly all agree.
I could give you a whole list twice that long of U.S. war crimes that are totally horrific, many now ongoing and much of it in recent history, inasmuch as in the past, starting from American Indians and slavery, onward. The equivalence game just doesn't work, people just can't handle the cognitive dissonance. We aren't better than anyone else. No idea or action will make the past okay. If we admit that we actually are as fallible as the people who, e.g., would allow tyrants like Mao to lead them, maybe there is room for change. Until we pull our heads out of our assess and admit that we're as flawed as the rest and our "freedom" as an ideology is as dangerous as any other (because that's just human nature, we'll use any story we can to justify our bullshit rather than admit we're wrong), none of this will change.
You are indoctrinated as the rest. Most people didn't "sacrifice" themselves, that's a bunch of conceited, self-interested, jingoistic bullshit. People did were either drafted (e.g. Vietnam) or do it because they don't have any other choice. The heroism is a rationalization -- you can't get anything else, especially in industrialized, mechanistic warfare.
We are all sinners; some of us have been saved by Grace. The US Constitution was a set up recognizing that fact of humanity to a) limit the power of government, b) to put checks on each of the functions (branches)of government by the others, and is arguably the best vision of how a government should be structured.
Ben Franklin recognized the danger: when he said, we have given you a republic, if you can keep it.
We have allowed and even encouraged the federal government to exceed the bounds of set forth in the COTUS, and therefore the limits on the necessary evil of government.
You sir, would vilify the imperfect good for not being perfect. You likely think that Trump will literally be Hitler if he gets elected, but have no problem with Joe Biden's corrupt regime.
I suggest that you either do something to improve the situation here or move to that country that is pure enough to meet your lofty standards. In the meantime STFU.
Wonder why so many keep coming here. As far as that tired old American Indian story. There is not one grain of sand on this Earth that hasn't been conquered at some time or another. Do YOU own property? Have you given your land back to the Indians (since it is so distasteful to you). Also there is no one living today in America that has ever owned a slave or been a slave.
The US is responsible for slavery?
You’re god damned right l agree
Sea Sentry: And how did US military actions ever do anything but propel ever more “poorly conceived wars,” or fix the quality of “life in Asia” and where is this “better world” you claim exists today in the midst of an ongoing genocide and among millions more dead?
Millions dead at whose hand? Actually it’s the LACK of U.S. military action due to political dithering that made things much worse. Hitlers own generals wanted to depose him prior to his invasion of Czechoslovakia, but the Allies turned their backs in the name of “peace”. Because of us, half of Korea is free and prosperous. We rebuilt Japan and Germany at our expense- name ONE other country that has ever done so. AFTER Hiroshima Japan commissioned a domestic army of nearly 30m and vowed to fight to the last person. Since the end of WWII, poverty has plummeted and living standards have soared due to the highly imperfect Pax Americana. We are living in this better world.
So, war is very popular. You can go back to Homer, who referred to war as "hateful" thousands of years ago, in a poem (the Iliad) about how one group of people destroyed another, destroyed their cities, and enslaved the survivors. The poem is so popular it became one of the primary foundations of European literature.
Maybe if we could admit _our_ violent nature we could try to control or limit it, but as it's always _them_, the chances seem dim.
I think it is certainly fair to draw a line of prudence in the decisions to go to war between Korea and Vietnam.
The MacArthur Constitution/occupation of Japan is quite likely the greatest US foreign policy success in history, in both immediate and long term impacts.
I agree, though I would call it the "Truman" constitution/occupation/what have you.
Ours, the US military is responsible for the vast majority of deaths in conflict throughout the globe. Who gave you the right to destroy and rebuild nations? This is the arrogance of Western supremacy, and its insistence, at the behest of billionaires and weapons manufacturers, that you can’t save people without killing them.
Here’s a primer: https://davidswanson.org/books/warisneverjust/
what a load of bull crap. When are you limiting the time frame for your assertion?
Certainly you are not including the whole of the 20th century.
Do you count the deaths from the response to the the initial aggressor as heavily as you do those from the initial aggressor?
War is hell. There is no getting around that. Should the US Civil War not been fought and slavery allowed to persist (I refuse to go down the hypothetical of what would've happened to the institution of slavery absent the war).
23 SKIDOO: True, yet when we still had presidents who knew warfare (Daddy Bush was the last), the depravity wasn't quite as blatant as it is now. Or maybe I just imagine it to be so.
when I was young Memorial Day was a day of reverence. I remembe my Dad (WWII) bein very somber. But we lost that. Even by the 80's he was much more relaxed about he whole thing. We could do with at least one somber day once a year to remind us what we lose (including those who do not fight) when we go to war.
Now for some unknowable reason, Memorial Day Has Turned into a day to buy a mattress. When I lived in portland, every mattress store was having a sale with somebody standing on the corner on the corner waving some sort of Banner inviting us to come into the store. Every holiday, no matter how sacred, has been turned into another sale day in the United states.
I agree with you , Dorothy.
The politicians in Washington looked for a fig leaf opportunity to give federal employees another 3 day weekend (my guess overwhelmingly Democrat politicians. IMHO, none of those holidays should be Mondays, but the actual days: MLK Jr's birthday, Lincoln's birthday, Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, Columbus Day. Let the kids be in school, have special assemblies and instruction about the reason for the holiday, perhaps local parades, or speeches: Gettysburg Address, Washington's Farewell Address, MLK's I have a dream speech, etc. Have some actual American history and civics be part of the celebration.
Costco, at least the one in my neighborhood, was closed today. Confused would-be consumers were jammed up at the gates to their parking lot. I guess someone, maybe just one person, said "No." There can be a lot of power in a single syllable.
One of my cynical pleasures is watching people zealously celebrate holidays they know nothing about.
Daddy Bush indeed knew war. Did not stop him from Desert Storm while in office or heralding the New World Order as the brightest gain for all humanity as he bought a large parcel of land in Brazil next to rich oil fields and a freshwater aquifer that could sustain the world's population for 200 years (Guarani). Just some planning ahead with his riches so his family lives on.
I remind people daily. I can still hear his nasally voice, "A thousand points of light. One World Order." BOTH parties sold out the American People years ago..
By “Godly Men” I mean those rooted in the true, the good and the beautiful; those who rooted in the “Laws of nature and nature’s God.”
Such men do indeed exist, but if they have never been in positions of power as your anecdotal evidence suggests, whose fault is that? The question points to the point at which I was trying to aim - we get the government servants we deserve. But to choose wisely, we must be able to recognize those Godly people among us and to do this we must strive also to be a Godly people.
Totally agree.
Men who imagine themselves to be godly are usually among the most ruthless, relentless, and cruel on earth. Far better, if there must be war, to have it led by those with some humility and empathy, as well as skill.
A man lacking humility is most definitely NOT a Godly man.
*OR empathy…
godly men? No such thing exists in politics. We used to hire better men for public office than we do today. You'd have to go back 60+ years to a time when we elected that type for public service.
When has leadership ever been in the hands of “godly”men? What exactly is a godly man?
She wrote “….who imagine themselves to be godly…”
And there are plenty.
Memorial Day isn’t about standing your ground in your home, it’s a gleeful celebration of state sponsored violence. I haven’t experience a single “imminent threat,” from another nation (despite the braying of despotic politicians that some ideology will infect us all if we don’t kill and bomb immediately), once in my lifetime of forever wars. “Godly men” would be diplomats, not warriors.
Memorial Day has NOTHING to do with a "gleeful celebration of state sponsored violence." Visiting the graves of those who fell in battle is not "gleeful." Families & friends remembering those who fell in battle are not "gleeful." They are mourning the loss of youth, the ending of lives cut short.
Thank you.
"State sponsored violence" just reeks "That's what I learned at The University."
And by the way, my mom didn't participate in "state sponsored violence," but we put silk flowers on her grave today ----- because we remember.
I think the last time that was true was 1776 and 1812.......
Air Force brats were never exposed to Wilfred Owen. I grew up idolizing my WWII and Korean War father and followed in his footsteps, nearly dying in Vietnam. It took me almost no time at all to realize we were not the good guys.
This today from Sgt. Dan McKnight, Chairman, Bring the Troops Home:
"We are determined that no American soldier should ever be forced to die in vain or die in an illegal war. Permitting that would be like spitting on their grave.
So today we remember the sacrifice, but we also remember the insult; how their willful forfeiture of life is besmirched and impugned by politicians who send others off to war but are too gutless to bring the war to a vote.
So this Memorial Day, I think it behooves you to contemplate the duality of bravery and cowardice; the folks who have one, and the folks who have the other."
Well said, brother. I too despise those who send us to die for selfish, unserious motives.
Thank you, very well said.
Well said sir.
Wilfred Owen drafted a preface, which was later used in a collection of his work and which became hauntingly accurate for us all this time later:
“This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.
Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War.
Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.
'My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.”
He could easily have been talking about you, or any of us who dare to ask questions and tell the truth. All we can do is warn…
"Rhymes of a Red Cross Man," by Robert Service is full of similar haunting poems of WWI. The book is dedicated to, "My Brother, Lieutenant Albert Service, Canadian Infantry, killed in action, France, August 1916."
"Through sickly fields all shrapnel-sown,
and meadows reaped by death alone."
It's good to remember the harshest of lessons, as grim as that task can be.
R.W. Service is a jewel. As good as his poems of the Yukon gold rush are, it's unfortunate that they draw attention away from some of his others which have some really poignant and profound observations about humankind.
I agree with the sentiment.
At the same time we must be respectful of those who risked, and sacrificed, their lives honestly and sincerely believing that they were doing so as a service to their family, friends and countrymen. Greater love has no man than this: to lay down his life for his friends.
And all the more shame to those who would cynically take advantage of such noble motivations.
Thanks Matt, the old lie indeed. War is not pretty. I'm reminded of President Lincoln who penned a little classic in remembrance of those who gave "their last full measure. " We should not forget the sacrifices of relatives, friends and ancestors who gave their life so that we didn't have to.
Although I would not state this opinion to a serving soldier, who probably needs to believe, I do not think that any of the wars since Korea have been to protect us the common citizen. Therefore I do not think it's the case that they die so that I do not have to. They die because they have been economically drafted for the most part, and to enrich the war profiteers. Nothing else.
I don’t disagree regarding protecting the common citizen. But I had a good friend who I grew up with. His number came up, mine didn’t. He came home but was never the same and ended up taking his life. That was 40 years ago. Im past the remorse but miss him still and remember him most days but particularly on this day. He served his country but his country didn’t serve him well.
I agree both with this sentiment, and about the tact needed to approach ( or not) the subject with volunteer soldiers, as opposed to draftees.
Having been in the military for quite some years, I have seen first hand that the great majority of those with whom I worked, volunteers all, were drafted by economic necessity.
Beautifully said. Important reminder for those who support forever wars.
Those who support forever wars do not have to fight in them, nor any member of their families, but they do profit obscenely from promoting endless war.
Short and sweet. Wonderful.
At 74 hears old I have seen many wars and none of them was ever about "my freedom".
Thanks Matt - as a mother and a woman who has raised sons plus a daughter it is imperative that we teach our children to think clearly about what and whom the military serves. Not them but corporate masters who have been manipulating the truth to line their pockets on the backs of our children via “war” without end see Palestine and the fact we give US military benefits to dual citizens serving in the IDF. When will it end ? It won’t future wars will be fought by robots when humans refuse to serve.
My 88 year old husband died recently he was an F 4 pilot in Vietnam in 1969 bombing Laos when Nixon said we weren’t. His disgust and anger at what he had been part never went away and he suffered PTSD for 55 years. He would caution anyone seeking to serve because it will mark and maim them forever, do not become a weapon for anyone.
As the wife of a retired AF pilot who kept his home and family safe during many deployments, trainings, tdy’s and unexpected “trips” , the details of which I will never be able to know about, we too look back and see now how he - WE - were used for purposes not always noble. It makes me sick. So we cannot recommend military service to our grandchildren- but I do encourage political service and engagement. We need to cultivate more virtuous political leaders- and many of them.
On Memorial Day and Veterans Day, I try to avoid reading what we've all read a thousand times before, so many sentimental and patriotic lies (even from writers who are skeptics on every other day of the year). You -- and Wilfred Owen -- finally said something more honest about how states treat those they send away to war. Thank you.
And oh so many here did not get the point, at all. Yikes.