The Guns of August

The title of this column is a reference to the beginning of The Great War, later renamed the First World War, it's also the title of a classic book on the war that is on my to-read list by Barbara Tuchman. Ninety-six years ago now, 1914 is a watershed year in human history, a dividing point between the old world and the modern world of industrial might and the ability of mankind to wage total warfare. Like pretty near all wars, it seemed like a good idea at the time and was easily justified by the powers that be and accepted by the general populations that would have to suffer the actual fighting. Like most wars, it was expected to be a quick and decisive show, people thought it would be over by Christmas. And like most wars, it morphed into something seemingly unimaginable at its commencement, something that no contingency plans could account for.

Nearly a century later, the war to end all wars hasn't lived up to its moniker, and it took an even more deadly conflagration a couple decades after to begin to validate the premise that American got into on, namely to make the world safe for democracy. We are still fighting wars, ostensibly to make the world a safer and more democratic place, and the jury is still out on how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, assuming they ever come to some conclusion, will impact the goals for which they are being fought.

I suppose that fighting and conflict is in our nature, and by that I refer not just to Americans, but to humanity in general. The original work of literature in Western Civilization is also the original war story, the tale of the semi-legendary Trojan War as told in Homer's Iliad. The second leg in the trilogy of Western literature is the Bible, and it is certainly full of ancient battles and the fight of good versus evil. So perhaps it is too much to expect of humankind that we will ever end all wars. But couldn't we have learned by now to be a bit more discerning in the fights we choose to take on and support?

Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying that there has never been a good war or a bad peace. I find it striking that those who are the most vehement against war are those who have experienced it first-hand, and conversely many who are the most supportive are those without such experience. I also find it fascinating that the men who fought in what I would consider to be history's one shining example of a necessary war, the Second World War, didn't think about grand causes such as ridding the world of tyranny or ending the Holocaust as much as they were motivated to fight for the guy next to them, and to do what they had to do to get through it and catch that big boat home. Both my late father-in-law and my late grandfather fought in WWII, but neither talked much about it, and when they did there was no sense of heroism or bravado in their stories.

I wonder how the men and women fighting in the Middle East and Central Asia today will regard their experiences whenever it is that they finally get the opportunity to come home and reflect. I hope they don't become as adversely affected as the generation of Vietnam Veterans, but I fear that it is impossible to reconcile the things you are expected to do in war with civilian life, and that the memories one must have from such an experience can't be avoided. You hear stories about soldiers coming home who nonetheless want to get back to the fight. I don't think it's because they love being in war as much as the desire to be back with their comrades, and to do whatever they have to do for as long as they have to do it in order to get the job done. The problem is that it is getting increasingly opaque as to what that job is. Perhaps in another ninety-six years we'll have figured out a way to exist peacefully, I realize that the odds and the lessons of history say otherwise, but one can certainly hope.