Tag: Veterans Day

Remembering World War One

What we call Veterans Day was originally designed to celebrate the end of the Great War….on the 11th hour or the 11th day of the 11th month….

We Americans have lost the meaning behind the day and the celebrations….it is more about a “White Sale” or deep discounts on a new truck than the people that fought our many wars.

The legacy and the cost of that war is all but forgotten…..so on this Veterans Day of 2019 I would like to offer a remembrance of World War One……

World War I was the first industrial war: poison gases, flamethrowers, aerial bombing, submarines, and machine guns intensified the scale of war wreckage and war dead, setting the norm for 20th and 21st century wars. By government policy, British war dead were not sent home lest the public turn against the war. Instead they were buried in vast graveyards near battle sites in France and Belgium. Even today Belgian and French farmers plowing fields in places of intense, interminable fighting and mass death on the Western Front unearth an estimated ½ million pounds of war debris and soldiers’ bones each year. (During the Afghanistan and Iraq wars Pentagon policy prohibited media coverage of US war dead arriving at Dover Air Base in Delaware until the ban was lifted, with conditions, in 2015. Many regarded the ban, like the Word War 1 British policy, as hiding the human cost of war that could turn the public against the war.)

From the unyielding ugliness and butchery of World War I emerged soldier poets, notable among them Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, whose unsparing style and content separated them from the tradition of glorifying war. These soldier poets, living in a trench war fraught with dead bodies and rats that fattened on them and with rear guard commanders who sent battalions of teenage boys into the slaughter of machine gun fire, rebuked their country’s warmongering politicians and industrial profiteers. (Likewise today, the majority of veterans of US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – in stark contrast to politicians of both parties – agree that the wars they fought wasted human lives and achieved no human progress.)

November 11: Remembering the Tragedy and Legacy of World War I

Take a few moments out of your busy day and remember all that has been given by our veterans….

A poem that describes the horror of WW1

http://lobotero.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/a4cb8-flandersfield.jpg

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

F*ck Veterans Day!

Closing Thought–23Nov18

***(A thought NOT a statement on my part.)***

That is the impression that I got on Veterans Day post comments here on IST…..I have been reading lots on the subject of Veterans Day……

Keep in mind that this is one person’s opinion…one that I am beginning to agree with…..

No one cares about the wars we are fighting these days……NO one talks about them….not the MSM or Our Dear Supreme Leader and especially the Congress…..but they will without shame trot out some Vets as a political prop for some ‘patriotic” porn they feel they need to win over voters……and then there is the laziness of the average person that will trot forward and offer a ‘thank you’ to a veteran….without no care of what that means……it means nothing to a veteran that cannot get his treatment from the very people that sent him to fight and are using the services that they depend on and cannot receive……

So I agree……why not just cancel Veterans Day altogether?  NO one really cares anymore!

Veterans’ Day – maybe we ought to drop the whole charade. Don’t get me wrong, there will be celebrations a plenty: the NFL will roll out the ubiquitous stadium-sized flags and march uniformed service members in front of the cameras; cities across the nation will hold parades; and millions of Americans will take a moment to go through the motions and “thank” the nation’s soldiers. Sure, the gestures are sometimes genuine and certainly preferable to the alternative. Still, all this martial spectacle misses the salient point hidden just below the surface: the American people are absolutely not engaged with U.S. foreign policy. Most could hardly name the seven countries its military actively bombing, let alone find them on a map.

Worse still, hardly anyone even talks about America’s wars these days – not the mainstream media, not the president of the United States, not the Congress. Veterans’ Day just happens to fall about a week after the midterm elections – which both President Trump and Barack Obama each told their supporters was “the most consequential of our lifetimes” – but the truth is that foreign policy was hardly even on the agenda this past Tuesday. Americans argued about healthcare, taxes, immigration, and Mr. Trump’s personality, but ignored our supposedly adulated soldiers.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/should-we-do-away-with-veterans-day-altogether/

So since the people only see it as a day off from work why not just make it a special shopping day in the time before the big day, Christmas?

Look at the many wars we are now fighting.  I comment and post on them on many occasions and yet NO one seems to give a shit one way or the other that Americans are still dying for goddamn reason than to keep the M-IC is pocket cash.

In closing …..I do not think we should abandon the day….just making an observation by what I see here on IST.

I call it a day and will start my weekend…..leftovers are on the menu…..damn the leftovers!

Veterans Day–2018

To start our president cancels a visit to a WW1 American cemetery…..

President Trump and first lady Melania Trump cancelled their trip to the Ainse-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial in France on Saturday due to “scheduling and logistical difficulties caused by the weather.”

The details: The Trumps were scheduled to participate in a wreath-laying ceremony and moment of silence, the Independent reports, to commemorate the more than 2,000 U.S. soldiers that died there during World War I. French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau all went ahead with plans to visit World War I memorials. According to the White House, Chief of Staff General John Kelly and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joe Dunford would visit in their place.

Screw the American dead….his hair is more important.

This year the true Veterans Day falls on a Sunday so the holiday will be observed on Monday, 12Nov18.

I send a shout out to all veterans on this day and to say a heart felt THANK YOU…..your sacrifices will be remember by me and my family forever.

Keeping with a small tradition here on IST I post a video of the unit I served in while in Vietnam for 2 and half years….I was a LRRP for the 9th Division…..

It is a lengthy video but well worth the view.

Even though the LRRPs were absorbed by the Rangers….I care not I was a LRRP then and will die a LRRP.

For your musical delight I shall leave you with the songs of my time…..

I leave you now….I have things that must be done on this day….thanx for all your support and I appreciate each and every one of my followers.

Peace Out!

World War One Remembered–11 November

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month

We approaching the 100 year anniversary to the end of the Great War, World War One……and most Americans have NO idea what the war was about or how the US was involved…..

100 years ago today……the Great War ended!

As a political historian I feel that all wars must be remembered for it could help deter any further wholesale slaughter in the name of civilization…..but first since this war is not well remembered here in the US I shall give my readers a 2 part breakdown of the War…(not to worry they are short videos)……

The popular belief was the the Great War was unavoidable…that as the countries militarized a confrontation was inevitable…..but was it?

There is another school that believes the Great War was an accident that was never intended to go beyond punishing the Balkans for their part in the deaths of the crown prince and his wife…..but was it?

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the start of World War 1, formerly called the Great War.

Not surprisingly, this has brought all sorts of stories and op-eds discussing the disastrous events that killed some 16 million people and wounded an additional 21 million others.

To this day, most observers continue to claim that World War I was an inadvertent war: that is, that none of the countries involved particularly wanted war but war came nonetheless. Some claim it was the major armament programs and offensive military doctrines adopted by European countries in the run-up to the war that made WWI inevitable. Others claim it was the hypernationalistic populaces that caused the war. Still others blame the tight alliances that European nations formed in the years prior to WWI, which created an environment in which the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by an anarchist could plunge the entire continent into a bloody war. And then there are those that blame the situation on the irreconcilable interests of a rising Germany and a declining Great Britain. Regardless of the particular explanation invoked, most seem to agree that the war was an accident.

https://thediplomat.com/2014/08/the-great-myth-world-war-i-was-no-accident/

August 1914 was the start of the Great War, the War to End War, World War One (only after the start of hostilities with Germany in 1939)……

This war needs to be remembered because of the massive amounts of casualties, millions upon millions died from combat and that does not include the civilian deaths…..

It wasn’t the good war. But, in our popular imagination, it wasn’t the bad one either.

Instead, it’s identified by a vague mixture of concepts, names, and events: the Lusitania, “Wilsonian Idealism,” Versailles, Theodore Roosevelt.

The First World War – known as the “Great War” in Europe – has largely faded from memory on this side of the Atlantic. Arguably, this is because our involvement was so brief – joining the slaughter over two years after it began and leaving it just over eighteen months later.

https://original.antiwar.com/Harry_Blain/2018/09/10/everything-about-2018-shows-why-americans-should-remember-world-war-i/

The US learned valuable lessons in the fields of Flanders…..lessons that we have carried forth…..

Is there an “American way of war?” To answer this question, one would do well to start with the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in World War I, often rightly said to be America’s first modern war. The AEF exhibited both good and bad traits. To begin with the bad: One finds arrogance and the conviction of superiority vis-à-vis America’s allies and enemies, along with the assumption that they had nothing to teach U.S. forces. The good: Notwithstanding the initial arrogance and conservative institutional culture, some commanders and their men displayed an ability and willingness to learn, especially at the operational and tactical levels. Most importantly, they recognized that in fact America’s allies had a great deal to teach the U.S. military. Rather than let their self-confidence close their minds, they saved it for assertiveness on the battlefield.

https://warontherocks.com/2018/08/how-the-u-s-military-learned-to-learn-in-world-war-i-lessons-from-the-american-expeditionary-forces/

Around the world unlike the US….people remember the war and all its horror……https://www.bbc.com/news/world-46168105

Class Dismissed!

Turn The Page!

Saturday–10Nov18

Once again we have gone from the 80+ range to the low 50s….we all hope for some moderation…..50s+ is perfect weather…cool enough for a light jacket and warm enough for the need for a heater does not exist…..Mo is loving the weather she spends her time chasing birds an squirrels…..damn!  I wish I had all that energy.

Enough of the old fart stuff……

The day before Veterans Day and the day before the celebration of the 100 years since the end of World War One…..

I have tried to help my readers get the grip on the war that killed 110,00+ Americans in 8 months….the carnage in this war has never been matched to date…..

There are a bunch of myths about the War…..plus it is a war that most Americans have NO idea what it was aall about or why we were involved…..

https://www.historyextra.com/period/first-world-war/the-great-misconceptions-of-the-first-world-war/

World War One has had a lasting impact….get to know what the situation was all about…..https://graphics.wsj.com/100-legacies-from-world-war-1/

World War One ended 11 November 1918….and began America’s Grand Strategy……

On November 11, 1918, World War One, the Great War, ended. Amid the chaos that followed—revolution, the fall of empires, and rise of nations—the United States attempted to build a rules-based world which favored freedom. American power had won the war, and President Woodrow Wilson was trying to shape a peace along the lines of what we now call a rules-based or “liberal” world order. Wilson’s Fourteen Points, presented the previous January, challenged the imperial, balance-of-power system of the European powers (on both sides) which had started the war, and at the same time took on Lenin’s revolutionary alternative. Wilson’s ideas were a rough draft of American Grand Strategy in what has been called the American Century.

http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/one-hundred-years-of-american-grand-strategy

Originally, Veterans Day was called Armistice Day to celebrate the end of World War One……we should remember the day for what it was…..

Those of us of a certain age may remember that Veterans Day used to be called Armistice Day – the day the guns fell silent in war-torn Europe at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. The Great War, the Global War that we now call World War I, had reached a ceasefire. In the months and years that followed, the victorious allies would rearrange the boundaries of much of the globe, uprooting peoples and nations in a fragile peace that set the stage for World War II.

This year marks the centenary of the Armistice and a reminder that the old is ever new. In 1821, John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State and future president said our young republic would be the friend of liberty and independence everywhere, but the vindicator and champion only of our own. America, said Adams, “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” Otherwise, she might gain an empire and, in the process, lose her soul.

https://original.antiwar.com/Jack_Kenny/2018/11/08/remembering-armistice-day/

Adams words do NOT ring hollow!  America is slowly losing its soul a small piece with every war it fights…..