The last good war. . .

My father entered the US Army near the end of World War II.  I never served though my draft status for Vietnam was close to being called up.  There was an almost reverence toward the things of war in my small town growing up in the 1950s and 1960s.  We played army and had army toys, including legions of little green plastic soldiers we arranged in battles great and small.  We watched the post-WWII movies that continued to esteem and honor the sacrifices of those who fought against tyranny, fascism, and evil.  It almost did not occur to me that I was half-German or that one of my ancestors was the keeper of the Kaiser's horse.  There was no doubt about who was the evil and who was the good in the wake of WWII.  Korea and Vietnam did not have the impact you might have thought.  I would put it that these were tolerated wars but not accepted — wars which began with nobility but whose virtue was tarnished as the years dragged on.  This was especially true of Vietnam.  But when our town honored the dead on Memorial Day, everyone was included.  We lined up as children with our white crosses adorned with poppies to be loaded in cars and head to every local cemetery to pay tribute to the fallen of every conflict.  But the cannon in the public park was from WWII and most of the soldiers who pulled out their old uniforms and managed to button them up for the Memorial Day festivities had on WWII fatigues or dress blues.  It was the last good war.

At some point, we stopped having good wars.  It was not for lack of evil men and empires trying to steal away democracy and freedom.  We have always had those.  Maybe not on the scale of the Kaiser or der Fuhrer but enemies of all America stands for have always existed.  I wish I knew why wars against tyrants and dictators and terrorists stopped being good.  At some point we were worn down from a Cold War in which there was no battle to speak of but still the cost of it all in children huddling beneath desks in case of nuclear war or fall out shelter signs all over schools and community buildings or a thousand other small arenas in which the conflict was fought.  Then it all ended without a bang—more like a ballot box and a collapse from internal pressure and the wall came down and we even had hope for Russia.  The old evil empire seemed to be gone but not evil itself.  In my lifetime I have counted so many different armed conflicts or peacekeeping missions or whatever you want to call them that I have lost track of the number.  Some of them seemed good.  Desert Storm seemed noble enough until it didn't.  Then in Iraq and Afghanistan we seemed to be the good guys but they were not real wars.  We did not win as much as we got tired of it all, the political costs became too great, and an exit strategy was sought to save face.  Now we have had another fight with Iran—a commonly accepted bad player in a region of bad players doing bad things.  But it did not take long for the shine to be tarnished on this as well.

Americans have always honored those in uniform—well, except for those who came home from Vietnam and were treated as if they were the cause of that problem.  We have and should feel nothing but gratitude for men (and women) who sacrificed everything for God, country, apple pie, and our way of life.  But somewhere I think we gave up on the whole idea of a good war.  It seems that none of us can agree on an enemy or a cause anymore.  We are even second guessing the Great War and the last Good War.  We got over Germany, Korea, and Vietnam and they became partners with us in supplying our economic thirst for goods.  We forgot the atrocities of the past—mostly.  But we still cannot swallow the idea that any war for any cause can be good.  Even theologians argue over what wars were or are just and what are or were unjust.  It is not as easy as it once was.  The wartime presidents have been shown to have their own dark sides or they have been blamed for the decisions they made then that some might not make now.  The postwar presidents have thought that a conflict might unite support for them and their policies but it has not worked that way.  Trump said he would get us out of wars but has blood on his hands.  We do not have the stomach for war anymore.  We decry civilian casualties and live in the illusion that wars can be fought in a sanitized way in which there are no grieving mothers or fathers or parents or children—but there always are.  We live in an age of angst about every war and struggle to conceive of any reason why anyone would fight.  Have we lost the fight or simply lost the causes to fight for or to fight against?  In less than a month Memorial Day will happen again.  Has it become simply another day off that is filled with distractions to keep us from thinking about wars, bad wars, great wars, good wars, and those who fought in them and gave up everything for that fight?  I hope it is not true.  Please tell me it is not.