On Veteran’s Day Let Us Remember Who Keeps the Peace

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, fighting between the Allies and Germany ended.

The four-year war claimed 116,000 American lives. Men fought in trenches full of rats and disease for weeks at a time. Standing in wet mud led to “trench foot” – swollen and numb feet that at times required amputation.

Modern weaponry, including machine guns and mustard gas,  made it the first conflict in history to have more death from combat than disease. Soldiers suffered from “shell shock” – tremors, confusion, nightmares, impaired sight and hearing. What is now identified as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was not understood at the time. Many thought the condition was caused by cowardice and could be cured with more discipline, but doctors struggled to treat the mass psychiatric casualties after major offensives.

The utter devastation was unimaginable at the outset – in fact many Europeans were in favor of war. Patriotic citizens assumed their armies would win quickly. Enthusiastic soldiers that left for battle would return –if at all—with permanent psychological and physical scars.

America entered the conflict in 1917, at the behest of Britain and France.

“The world must be made safe for democracy,” President Woodrow Wilson told the Senate in January 1917. Wilson believed that America could help end war permanently by breaking the stalemate, and creating an international organization that would resolve conflict peacefully.

“There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not convince others by force that it is right,” Wilson said.

Wilson believed that history led to constant progression and rejected the understanding of the American founding – that human nature is unchanging, and government should be designed around it. Instead, he wanted government to go far beyond securing unalienable rights. Wilson envisioned progress pushed forward by expert bureaucrats insulated from politics.

Both at home, and abroad.

Convinced his League of Nations would make war would be a thing of the past, Wilson commemorated the soldiers who died in World War I on November 11, 1919:

“To us in America the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service, and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of nations.”

Armistice Day would be changed to Veterans Day in 1954, because far from ending wars, the Treaty of Versailles set the stage for the next world war.

Peace, hard won by America’s military veterans, squandered by bureaucratic ideologues convinced they knew better.

Scholar Angelo Codevilla contends America’s foreign policy elite –incapable of objectively evaluating evidence and consumed by hubris – lost the peace three times in 20^th century. First, when Wilson set the stage for World War II. Then again when Roosevelt underestimated the Soviet Union leading to the Korean and Vietnam wars. Finally, the mishandling of the fall of Communism left America “flailing,” leading to the Gulf War and the continuing war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Politicians and bureaucrats, from the safety of their desks, overestimate their ability to control events and it is America’s soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who correct the mistakes. They accomplish the difficult task of preserving America and her founding ideals –notwithstanding the foolishness of the experts.

And contra Wilson, there will never be a world so peaceable and so safe, that we can do without them.

Let us never forget to whom we truly owe our freedom.