“They say it was a shocking sight, After the field was won; For many thousand bodies here lay rotting in the sun; But things like that, you know, must be … after a famous victory.”
AFTER BLENHEIM, Robert Southey
I wonder why it is that the English have always been so much more eloquent in honoring their war dead. Whether it’s Southey, or Canadian John MacRae’s haunting “In Flanders Fields,” or a host of others, their words can almost make you feel the sacrifice of so many young lives, often for such poor reasons.
When was the last time we sent our young off to war without the motive being questioned? When was the last time our military men and women really felt they were fighting to protect our freedom and the folks back home agreed with them?
It doesn’t really matter. It has been said that war is old men sending young men off to die, and even if the cause isn’t all that just, it in no way diminishes the selfless sacrifice the young make. That’s why I was so infuriated to hear Dick Cheney when he blamed Abu Ghraib on “a few sadistic prison guards (who) abused inmates in violation of American law, military regulations, and simple decency.”
There isn’t a military unit in the world where those at the bottom of the ladder take that sort of thing upon themselves. Soldiers follow orders, and if they didn’t get specific orders about how to treat prisoners, they certainly followed the tone of what their superiors said.
That’s why when President Eisenhower warned us of the emerging “military-industrial complex” in 1961, he also said privately, “God help us if we get someone in this office who doesn’t understand these people.”
Yes, the world is changing. Particularly with Vietnam almost 50 years in the past and World War II nearly 80 years gone, we’re more likely to get presidents without first-hand military experience than we once were. The last president to serve in a foreign war left office in 1993. The last three presidents never even served in the military.
Since we won our independence, there have been exactly two foreign wars we had no choice but to fight. England invaded us in 1812 and Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. The War of 1812 and World War II were not optional wars. Everything else was by choice, although I’m willing to grant you our 2001 invasion of Afghanistan if you want. Although not Gee Dubya’s expansion of that war into Iraq.
It’s why Marine Gen. Smedley Butler, one of the few men to win the Medal of Honor twice, said he knew whenever he was deployed outside the U.S., it was an an enforcer for American business. It’s called empire building.
When we get presidents — and vice presidents — who want to use the U.S. military for empire building, we not only cheapen the sacrifice, we make it far more likely that young men and women in our military will die in unnecessary ways. It isn’t our job to police the world, or to decide which dictators to overthrow. It isn’t our job to bring democracy to the Middle East.
We need to elect wise leaders, leaders who will send men and women into battle only when it is truly necessary to protect the people of the United States and our allies.
Otherwise, some future poet will again be writing of bodies rotting in the sun, and calling it a famous victory.