The world is a better place because Adolf Hitler did not preserve his conquest of the European continent, and because the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere of Hideki Tojo and his militarists imploded at Midway, Guadalcanal, and Okinawa. Italy and the Mediterranean were far better off without Benito Mussolini and his mad plans for a renewed but debased Roman Empire, which ended on his own Italian soil at exotic-named places like Anzio and Monte Cassino.
The dream of Soviet rulers from Stalin to Brezhnev was a global gulag overseen from the blood-stained Communist Kremlin. It ended only through the 50-year deterrence of the American military. South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan are somehow still free and independent — and would not be without American carriers, jets, and submarines.
Advertisement
Our generation’s own rogues’ gallery of killers — Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Manuel Noriega, and the Taliban — have lost their tyrannies. If South America chooses to become Communist, it will be by its own volition and not because of an unfettered cross-border invasion from Cuba, Nicaragua, or Venezuela. Even our enemies can export or import oil freely from the Middle East without worries of armed intervention or piracy — as long as an American carrier is nearby in the Gulf.
It seems as if the more Europe disarms and gnashes at the United States, the more we are there when it needs us. If an ascendant China decides to bully Japan or Taiwan in earnest, only one country can thwart it. No one will call the European Union or Russia should North Korea tomorrow cross the 38th parallel or Iran decide to launch a missile. If Turkey rearranges the border in Cyprus or claims airspace over the mid-Aegean, anti-American Greece will turn pro-American. There will be no second Holocaust, in part because of American military support for Israel.
The list of American wars, interventions, and campaigns, past and present, is endless — a source of serial political acrimony here at home over the human and financial cost and wisdom of spending American lives to better others. Sometimes we feel we are not good when we are not perfect, whether trying to stop a Stalinist North Vietnamese takeover of the south, or failing to secure Iraq before 2008. But the common story remains the same: For nearly a century, the American soldier has often been the last, indeed the only, impediment to butchery, enslavement, and autocracy.
It was the custom of great leaders from Pericles to Napoleon to declare that the graves of their soldiers in far-off foreign soils were testaments to their nations’ grandeur, power, and reach; yet our white crosses in American cemeteries from Epinal, St.-Mihiel, and Normandy to Manila, Tunisia, and Sicily are tributes to American military courage and competency — and a willingness to see an end to wars that brutal men started and might have won had our youth not crossed the seas.
We should remember all that in the present age of cynicism and nihilism, recalling that nothing has really changed, as some Americans this Memorial Day seek to foster something better than Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, and Moammar Qaddafi. Behind every American soldier, dozens of their countrymen tonight sleep soundly — and hundreds more in their shadow abroad will wake up alive and safe.
We are truly blessed to be under the protection of the greatest military force ever assembled in the entire history of mankind - indeed, the skills and capabilities of our men and women in uniform really have no rival.
The NRO has a survey on now asking "Which would you rank as the greatest U.S. military victory?" My answer, they all were great in their own way. However, in the 80's I had the privelege of working with a man in Wisconsin who was a crewman, a gunner I believe, on a Catalina PBY of the Black Cat Squadron. In the opening days of WWII after Pearl Harbor, they attacked Japanese shipping at night. He told me at times all they could do was toss Coke bottles out of the planes to drop on those ships to harass them. What was the greatest battle? To me it is the battle of the spirit that says when all seems lost, fight with a Coke bottle if you have nothing else left.
So true and so well written. When our son entered the army, I did a quick calculation of the number of full-time soldiers vs. total US population - about 200:1. Counting the National Guard and Reserves, I believe the number drops to about 150:1.
They need more respect, publicity and encouragement - they, not the press(which they protect), are our defense against some very sick and cruel people in the world.
It is good be part of a nation that has stopped so many wars in so many places and prevented even more wars from ever starting. Just think without American military power there would have been so much more killing, so many more wars of conquest and far more bloodshed in the world. Truly America has done great service to the world by limiting war and intimidating dictators. Something very much worth remembering this memorial day.
I am a great fan of Dr. Hanson, however I wonder the references to Anzio and Monte Cassino are the best example to use with regards to the Italian campaign.
Anzio, as this occurred after Mussolini was relegated to the status of German underling (having been dismissed by Victor Emmanuel III).
And the destruction of Monte Cassino may not have been the necessity that the military demanded at the time.
I spent the better part of this past weekend away from Fort Jackson SC. I took my family to the coast and we found ourselves on the 11th floor of a resort looking out directly onto the beach.
The beach heat eventually forced us to our room in the heat of the day. I turned on the televison and saw Turner Classic Movies was commemorating all the young men of the World War II generation.
I looked down at the beach and for a moment I saw them all: the young men at Guadalcanal, Normandy, Leyte Gulf.
Let us never forget their courage and sacrifice. All VDH says above is all anyone needs to say.
Thank you Sir for your moving prose.
This last weekend I looked down at the beach at Murrill's Inlet South Carolina. Amidst the happy people in the bright sun I thought of the young men who found themselves on different beaches: Normandy, Guadalcanal, Anzio, Leyte.
May their memory always be uppermost in our mind on this and every Memorial Day
VDH, Thanks for these most appropriate words for Memorial Day. Thank you also for your introduction to Eugene Sledge's fantastic account of the Battle of Peleliu ("With the Old Breed"). We should all be so very thankful for men like "Sledgehammer,' and for all those who never came back.
I was arguing with a friend of men on the morality of the Cold War. My position was that overall, the US were the good guys (the British not as much, but the US I can defend in the 20th century) and the Soviet Union were the bad guys, while he was arguing that both sides did bad things for their own interest and that you cant make a definitive moral judgement on the Cold War.
Although he did concede that internally, the US was a freer country. But the discussion was about foreign policy.
Anyway, a lot of people take his view
and on the surface, it sounds like the more sophisticated view
but it's the wrong one.
And the example I always give is the Korean War.
Would you rather live in North Korea or South Korea? And which side backed which country? And there we go.
My own view is actually quite sophisticated, because I think that the Korean War, and wars like it, was a mistake, and that the US has no business liberating the Korean people.
Yes, it is unfair for the South Koreans, since the North Korean are getting help from the Soviet Union and China.
and perhaps I'd be symphathetic to giving them weapons and money.
MAYBE air support. Maybe.
But certainly not ground troops.
George Will made an interesting remark though, on that view, in the context of the NATO bombing of Libya and earlier, in the 90s, in Yugoslavia.
He asked, what is the morality of saying that a confict is worth bombing from 10,000 feet in the air, but not worth actually putting our troops at risk?
I’ve been to S. Korea and at best I can say they are ambivalent about America...something like the further away we are, the better.
I’m Ok with that, over 30,000 Americans died to defeat the aggressive advance of Communism, not to make the S. Koreans our friends.
We are a selfish country. I admit it, we fought a war on foreign soil not out of compassion, but out of our national interest to win the cold war.
We’re arrogant too, believing defense of our virtues is good for everyone else. It’s good South Korea is free from the selfish pursuits of others like Stalin, Mao and Kim Il-Jong. They are infinitely better off because we are selfish. Selfish in our belief that liberal, open, market based societies are better than the Communist alternative.
South Korea now has a remarkably industrious, prosperous, free, and secure society, one that is certainly free not to like us.
Point is, S. Korea and the world is a better place because our Servicemen and Women fight and die for our blessedly ‘selfish’ ideals.
I don't agree with that - we lost in Vietnam, and what happened? Pretty much nothing. The Domino theory was wrong; all of Asia didn't become Communist.
In terms of American interests, the Korean and Vietnam Wars were absolutely not worth the blood and treasure. However, we did make the world a better place.
But of course, that shouldn't be our job. We should spend more time being concerned about the American people, and less time being concerned about the Korean or Iraqi or Vietnamese or Afghan or Libyan people.
Thank you, once again, Dr. Hanson, for stating the American case based on history. My father was in the Marines in the South Pacific from Guadalcanal in 1942 to Okinawa in 1945. When I think of what he and his fellow Marines did at places like Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Iwo Jima, and the other hell holes where the Japanese were dug in and fighting to the death for the emperor, I feel very small and very grateful. When I hear modern day so-called liberals downplay or even dismiss America's past and present sacrifices to help preserve what is a truly precious anomaly in human history - liberal Western ideals enabled in practice - I cringe at the widespread lapses in an educational system that seems too often to have abdicated its responsibiliity to pass on both knowledge and fundamental values.
