One of the most significant personal changes that has happened in my belief system is how I view days like Memorial Day. In my younger days it was a day without nuance. They went and died to protect America and freedom. Therefore we honor them. I wrote in my Memorial Day post last year:
As a younger man, one who didn’t serve in the armed forces, I was an unabashed neocon warhawk who believed the narrative that America was making the world freer and safer by invading countries, breaking their shit and then coming home to parades. Due to changing religious convictions, I began to see war itself as something anti-Christian. It wasn’t until I finally took the red-pill, followed by the rest of the red-pill bottle, that I really started to question the military-industrial complex that sends young White men to die, often while killing other young White men.
Memorial Day is a day fraught with emotional landmines. I would never want to disparage the service of most Americans that perished in war. That is especially true as I didn’t serve in the military and generally in our culture that means that my voice takes a back seat to those that did serve, even if their service was stateside. Many of my readers served in combat and lost buddies in America’s foolhardy wars over the last quarter century and the last thing I would want is to disrespect their motivation for serving and their sacrifice. You can die a noble and heroic death even when doing so in the service of a foolish or even evil cause.
On the other hand, looking back as I have in years past it has become clear that virtually none of those that died in war did so to “protect America”. Not in the last century anyway. Hitler wasn’t going to invade America, neither was Japan. Nor the North Koreans or the Viet Cong. The Kaiser certainly didn’t plan on invading South Carolina. The only real attack on American soil was Pearl Harbor and Roosevelt did everything he could to provoke the attack short of bombing those battleships with American planes painted with a rising sun. My opinions on the European theater have changed even more radically.
Here is the repost of my annual Memorial Day musings. To those that served, living and dead, I honor your courage while ashamed of my part in supporting the wars that you were sent to fight.
A lot of people living in America don’t know the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day. They also don’t care. It is another day where they don’t have to work and get to drink some beer and grill out with family. I would cautiously say most of the men who died in the various wars would be happy that people spent the day with family and friends, even if they didn’t know for sure why
As Memorial Day winds down, I saw something interesting from the New York Post:
A lot of that is likely historical ignorance, I doubt you could find many Americans on the street that could locate WW II on a timeline within a decade, much less give more specific dates like Pearl Harbor and D-Day. On the other hand, what exactly did we “win” in WW II?
Almost 300,000 U.S. soldiers and sailors killed in action, mostly in Europe.
As soon as the war ended, the Soviets took over half of Europe and enslaved tens of millions of people for almost 50 years.
Five years after WW II ended, we were fighting communists in Korea and then a few years later in Vietnam. Another 80,000 killed in action and millions wounded physically and emotionally.
In the aftermath of the Allied “victory”, Western Europe seems to have lost any will or desire to survive and they are slowing surrendering their freedom through mass migration, a refusal to have children and growing degeneracy.
The United States had a few decades as the leader of the free world but within two decades of the end of the war, our culture was collapsing and at a mere 75 years after WW II we are on the verge of complete collapse and ruin.
By the time we reach the 100th anniversary of the end of WW II in 2045, there likely won’t be a West around to commemorate it.
Let me be clear that by no means is any of that to brush over the terrible things the Nazis did (nor the often equally terrible thing the U.S. and our allies did), or to deny the things that actually happened (as opposed to the cartoonish Hollywood villainy). My father’s people in Poland and the rest of the Slavs were marked for replacement in favor of Germans as part of Generalplan Ost. There was plenty of tyranny under the Reich but there has always been and always will be bad people in the world.
On the other hand, Hitler rose to power in no small measure because the U.S. entered the First World War and tipped the balance, and that was definitely a war we had no business fighting in. In fact, you will be hard pressed to find a war since 1812 that was waged for a legitimate U.S. national interest with the notable exception of the Pacific theater of World War II. After all the Japs actually attacked us, after we goaded them into it of course so FDR could get his pretext to declare war. We couldn’t really let that go.
I still maintain that if the boys in the landing craft on D-Day could have seen what would become of America and Europe in 2021, they would have forced the drivers of those craft to turn around. None of them would have wanted to die for what the West has become.
Maybe people are starting to wake up and realize that most of the wars we have fought have been about something other than what was best for the American people. We can honor the memory of those who nobly made the ultimate sacrifice while questioning the motivations of those who sent them to die.
Hats off to the real soldiers out there. My service was just peace time and mostly National Guard/US Army Reserves.
Good point on most people not knowing the difference between Veterans Day and Memorial Day.
I just stay away from public events and parades nowadays.
I have also awaken to our govt’s irresponsibility.
One of our invited guests for a barbecue today is a career serviceman with 16 years in and a brand new baby. He only very narrowly escaped another deployment around the holidays late last year and has vowed to retire, this close to his 20 year mark, rather than risk his life for the Brandon regime. The home front comes first, and never was that more true than it is today. Godspeed, soldier.
“A lot of that is likely historical ignorance”
As is your simpleton Wiki knock-off version of the eebil Natzees chomping at the bit to destroy the Poles/Slavs. They were much better off under the Soviets huh?
Ever read about what really prompted Hitler to attack Poland? How about what the Poles did to the ethnic Germans in Danzig and Pomerania?
When it comes to WW2 try reading John Wear instead of that little cunt Vox Day!
And yes, most of those boys would have either turned the landing crafts around or insisted on fighting alongside the Germans.
@Saoirse
I’m sure he’s well aware. While the Germans were not the monsters that (((Hollywood))) has made them out to be, they still did some bad things.
As did the Americans, and British, and the Soviets, etc. No one walked away from that conflict with clean hands.
@Berglander
Name one if the “bad things” they did – and before you pontificate further, ask yourself if you wouldn’t have done the same thing in the same predicament.
@saoirse
Calm down, no one is pontificating.
No one, not even our beloved Reich, is spotless. Hitler was a great man, but he was only a man, fallible like all of us.
As far as doing things differently, no, I believe that Germany was backed into a corner and that everything that was done, was likely the best decision in largely no-win scenarios.
Specifically, the starvation of Soviet POWs in the East was a tragedy, but I also understand that there was no way the Germans could have adequately prepared for the sheer numbers of people they had to care for-the Soviets being non-signatories of The Hague Conventions notwithstanding.
I’m quite calm, it’s you that can’t handle constructive criticism. Furthermore, you saw fit to answer on behalf of the person I directed my comment to like some self-appointed majordomo.
“Spotless” is another subjective term that tends to be amplified to the nth degree when someone needs to tar something that doesn’t meet some lofty puritanical standard. Hardly applicable to wartime but you keep trying nonetheless.
Revisionist historians have exonerated the Reich of all the charges levied against it by jew infested kangaroo courts, politicians, military hacks and the media. The starvation you mentioned was no more intentional than the starvation that occurred in the camps. Are there any more charges you can think of?
@Saoirse
Intentional or not, it was still awful.
And, your criticism is hardly ever constructive. Perhaps the tone you mean just doesn’t come across correctly, to me, in writing.
Marine Veteran here, 1977-1981. My Father Navy 1934-1938. One Uncle Navy, Submarine service Pacific Theater WW2. Another Uncle Bataan survivor. Both Grandfather’s WW1 service. Relatives Union and Confederate Armies, 1861-1865. Relatives War of 1812. And, finally service in the Revolution.
” War is of vital interest of the State. It should be throughly considered. For it can be a road to victory, or one of ruin”. Sun Tzu the Art of War.
“Know your Enemy as you know Yourself, and you will fear the outcome of 100 Battles”. Also Sun Tzu, The Art of War
P.S. correction: Know your Enemy as you Know Yourself, and you will never have to fear the Outcome of 100 Battles.
Arbeit macht fweedom fwies.
We have to fight them over here/over there before it goes nookular?
You’re with us, shirker, or with the terraists, there goes the Bin Laden family plane leaving now, comrade.
Forward with The War Against Terrorism. (TWAT)
Update-Deplorable kulak untermenschen scum get to be the terraists now.
“Thanks for fighting for our freedom.”
“Um..do you remember flying pre-9/11? Are we more or less free 23 years later?”
Pa Wilder (before he died) was not pleased.
“The only real attack on American soil was Pearl Harbor and Roosevelt did everything he could to provoke the attack ”
Hawaii became a colony of the US in 1900. This was over the objection of 50 percent of the populace.
The Pearl Harbor attack happened in 1941.
Hawaii became a State in 1959.
Not sure if it IS American soil… When I was stationed there, we were treated as outsiders, and I was USCG. There was no “thank you for your service” BS.
The Oligarchs have destroyed Lahaina on Maui. The captive gov’t says the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction (re 2nd Amendment) in the state. And over a thousand young children have gone missing and nobody cares.
Hawaii is a beautiful place. But so is pretty much everywhere, if we could keep the war-mongers and oligarchs out or at least restrained.
[C&H Sugar – California & Hawaii Sugar. Probably an evil company, like United Fruit. But do you think that any sugar comes from California? From Hawaii in any real amount? I’m thinking that the borg has had its way with these states, so they are about used up. And I live in California.]
I tell my kids, who are older, that the last time Americans fought to defend their homes were southerners in the Civil War. Every war since has been an imperial adventure.