I do not want to overly-politicize a thread that is about a documentary and the history surrounding it. I look forward to what Mr. Jackson has put together in his film.
I think this article summarizes my thoughts, though:
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...armistice-day-more-comfortable-war-than-peace
The way you describe Memorial Day and Veterans' Day makes them functionally the same. I think you need two different concepts here -- one to commemorate service and sacrifice, and one to celebrate peace and learn the about horrors of war.
You dismiss Armistice Day because it was not the "war to end all wars" and it ultimately failed. We all know the long list of horrible conflicts that continued throughout the rest of the Twentieth Century and continue to this very moment.
But that is taking November 11, 1918 literally. That was not its spirit and its hope, even if the next generation of leaders (and, indeed, every one before it and after it) failed miserably holding up those ideals. The very fact that we have hopes and dreams to end the senseless slaughter and destruction -- that the ultimate hope here is for peace, for the end of a need for the heroism we commemorate on Memorial Day -- is entirely the point. Like you said, if there is ever another big war, the risk that it goes nuclear is very real, and it ends terribly for all.
Any conflict between Great Powers now (e.g., with Russia over the Baltic States, or with China in the Strait of Taiwan) needs to be brief and theater level, otherwise the chances for escalation and cooler heads losing control goes up way too fast.
Russia diving on Estonia or China attempting to invade Taiwan, and threatening tactical nuclear strikes to dissuade us from intervening with conventional forces, which then naturally means we have to threaten equally or greater back... not something I like to imagine. That kind of nuclear brinkmanship can get out of hand really fast. It almost did in 1962.
And in discussing Orwell, while I love 1984, remember that it was written in 1948 before modern thermonuclear weapons existed. The Soviets first got the bomb in 1949, and MAD was not the watchword of the day until the mid-1950s. His endless three-way war of attrition makes sense looking back at the World War, but there is no way in such a situation that Oceania, East Asia, or Eurasia would not use H-bombs, if they had them.
Hiroshima was terrible, but much of the city remained. The whole prefecture would be destroyed given what modern nuclear weapons can do.
No modern, industrialized nation survives that.
I also look forward to watching this documentary. We need a good reminder of what actually happened and why it happened.
For most rational people, the thought of total war is unthinkable. Yet our military still plans for and trains and equips itself to wage one.
If you look at Western History, about every hundred years, Western Civilization has waged a "Total War" "World War". We are about a hundred years out from the last one. There are many signs we are forgetting the horrors of that war and doing the same things that led us to that war.
I think we agree on many things and many of the views expressed in the articles you referenced.
I too am upset in the way Veteran's Day is being bastardized. It is no longer a time for the country to stop and reflect on the costs of war. A moment to pause and ask our selves if what we are doing is worth the cost and the damage is has done to the living. Same with Memorial Day. Why were these lives cut short? Was it worth it? Changing its name to reference one specific generation and one specific war will not change that. These sacrifices encompass all generations and the way the days are named reflects that.
Instead we have politicians running around using vets as political props abusing the service and sacrifices of our living and dead service members claiming that if you question what they are doing to promote an endless war you are somehow dishonoring their sacrifice. Total BS. And one of the prime tactics used by dictators to get a democracy to vote to give up its freedoms.
But, to me, an Armistice Day would be even more hypocritical. Just exactly what peace would we be celebrating?
The US has been prepared for and on a hair trigger to launch a total war for the last 70 years. We are in the middle of an active 17 year war that involves US military forces and contractors conducting active military operations in over two thirds of the world. The lead up and causes of that war started with the First Gulf War at about roughly the same time as the cold war with the Soviet Union ended when Berlin Wall came down.
We have become so numb to that war that we no longer require Congress to take another vote to reauthorize the open ended war authorization vote they took in the aftermath of 9/11.
We no longer require the Pentagon to report to the American people costs and what they are doing to wage that war.
We no longer require the President to tell the American people what is the plan to end that war. Worse yet, we have a President that told the generals to do what they want to wage the war. He has washed his hands of all responsibility for how that war is being conducted. All we do is keep authorizing hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for it and we keep sending more forces in to fight it without question.
This is not a R vs. D argument because both parties sat in the White House and controlled Congress over that time span of this active war. Neither party did anything to reverse the path we are on. This is a WTF are we doing argument.
Memorial Day is to remember the dead and the lives that were cut short by war. Veteran's Day is to remember the havoc war causes in the lives of the living that survived the war. They are two very functionally different things that need to be approached in different ways. But they are both a time when we ask the country to remember the costs of war and ask ourselves if what we are doing is really worth that cost. They should not be used to glamorize war and engage in hero worship. An Armistice Day would be meaningless because this country has not known a time of peace since the beginning of WWII
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