…all those who have served in defense of our country, and most especially those who have died serving the cause of freedom.
Victor Davis Hanson has a wonderful column putting the 100-yeear anniversary of the end of hostilities in World War I in content. The lessons from that period should be obvious:
What can we learn from the failed armistice of 1918?
Keeping the peace is sometimes even more difficult than winning a war.
For an enemy to accept defeat, it must be forced to understand why it lost, suffer the consequences of its aggressions — and only then be shown magnanimity and given help to rebuild.
Losers of a war cannot pick and choose when to quit fighting in enemy territory.
Had the Allies continued their offensives in the fall of 1918 and invaded Germany, the peace that followed might have more closely resembled the unconditional surrender and agreements that ended WWII, leading to far more than just 20 years of subsequent European calm.
Deterrence prevents war.
The only way to truly honor all those who lost their lives and their precious futures is to do whatever it takes to make sure the same mistakes are not repeated. Somehow, however, I don’t see that happening anytime soon: there are too many politicians with too large egos and a thirst for power to make that possible. It’s been part of our human nature since the days of Cain and Abel.
A sincere and humble thanks for all those who fought and died in the service of this country. Your sacrifices will always be honored and remembered.
Picture courtesy of The Conservative Treehouse.
Just to note, Our president was “too busy” to attend veteran day
services at Arlington national cemetery. Such a disgrace for
Those who served. Total putz.
Comment by Killer — November 20, 2018 @ 10:39 am
Have to agree with you there, Killer. It was inexcusable. Makes you wonder what’s going at at the White House. It was certainly bad optics for someone who ought to know better. But being a glass “half full” kind of guy, here’s the way I look at it: no American ambassador, serviceman, or contractor was slaughtered in some ill-fated gun-running to terrorists scheme then assign some flack to blame it on a video. No Syrian man, woman, or child were left blue-faced and gassed on the other side of an American “red line”. No family was left without their doctor after being forced onto some government-driven health care requirement after being repeatedly lied to that that wouldn’t happen. No border agent was killed by a gun run across the border by an Attorney General hell-bent on trumping up gun violence along the border against innocent citizens as an excuse to take guns away from law-abiding citizens. No lawless, terrorist regime was paid billions of dollars of hard cash delivered by plane on a palate in the middle of the night under the guise of a “diplomatic breakthrough”. And no Russian dictator was allowed to take the Crimea while some other “putz” president looked the other way. So excuse me for saying, faults aside, I’ll take my “putz” president over the previous two-term racist, narcissist, bullshit artist any day. At least my “putz” president is restoring long-forgotten American industries and putting whole sectors of American workers back to work and giving them money in their pockets and hope for the future. But Of course, you’ll never hear that on PBS, the major news networks, MSNBC and CNN, so I guess I’ll just have to give you a pass on your comment.
Comment by The Great White Shank — November 20, 2018 @ 8:39 pm