Let us assume that I am an historian and that the date is in the year of 2510. If my arithmetic is correct, that would be about 500 years from now. I believe it would be fair to say that such an historian might conclude that the times in which we are currently living were a time of one war after another.
My recollection is that this century of war for the United States started in 1917. That war was called the First World War. The United States was involved for two years, ending on November 11, 1918. The President of the United States at that time was a fellow from New Jersey named Woodrow Wilson. Mr. Wilson proclaimed that this was the war to end all wars. If he were around to read this essay, I believe he would say, “Holy mackerel! Was I wrong!”
For the United States, there was an interval of peace lasting from 1918 to December 7, 1941. Coincidentally, that was the time of the Great American Depression. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. That was on Sunday. On Monday, Franklin Roosevelt, who was then the President of this country, declared war on the Axis powers. Those powers were Germany, Italy, and Japan. The Second World War lasted until August 15, 1945. I remember that date fairly well because my first marriage took place on the following day. In the Second World War, approximately 400,000 American lives were lost. As a matter of interest, it took more than 50 years from the conclusion of that war for a monument to be built in Washington, DC. I viewed that monument on a rainy day in November, 2003, and I concluded that it was not a superior monument.
Five years after WWII concluded, the Korean War started. Harry Truman was the President at that time, and he called it a police action. I do not have access to the exact figures of the losses of American lives in the Korean War but I believe that it was on the order of 54,000.
The next war happened in the 1960s, and it took place in Vietnam. More than 58,000 American lives were lost in that war.
In August, 1990, the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, invaded Kuwait. George H.W. Bush was the President at that time and he arranged for a coalition of troops to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. In short order, the Iraqi troops were routed and sent back on their way to Baghdad.
After the Kuwait invasion, a few years passed until September 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked, which led to our invasion of Afghanistan. Now, nine years later, that war in Afghanistan is still under way. It is the main reason for the title of this essay, which is, of course, “Making Progress.”
Donald Rumsfeld was the Secretary of Defense during the George W. Bush administration and he made loud noises to the effect that there were many more inviting targets in the country of Iraq. Bear in mind that Iraq had nothing to do with the bombing of the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. It is as though in the Second World War we had an argument with Germany and therefore attacked Canada. The Iraqi war has now wound down. At least 4,500 American lives were lost. My best estimate of the losses of American lives in Afghanistan is now on the order of 2,000.
Now, in between all of the wars, there were the adventures of Ronald Reagan. When he was President, he sponsored a warlike attitude from this country toward Nicaragua. Fortunately few American lives were lost in that adventure.
So I believe that it is entirely reasonable for that historian of 500 years from now to conclude that this period in which we are living was essentially one of war. In my own case, I am more than able to recall the Second World War. In that conflict, for the first 18 or more months, the progress was all backwards. France, Poland, the Czech Republic, and myriad other places were overrun by the forces of Adolf Hitler. In the Pacific, the news was no better. There, the Japanese overran the Philippines and took a big bite out of China. I am sure that you will recall the Bataan Death March. My efforts in that war had to do with North Africa and Sicily and then Italy. When it came to making progress, we were able to say that various towns are now in Allied hands and that the German forces had been beaten back.
In June of 1944, the landings in Normandy took place. May I assure you, that was a bloody affair. Once the landings had occurred, the Allied forces liberated one town after another and the American public was assured that we were indeed making progress. The same is true of the segment of the war in which I was involved, Italy, and before that there was the invasion of Sicily and the North African campaign. In all of those cases, the American public could look at a map and see that towns previously held by the Germans were now in fact safely in American hands. That meant clearly that we were making progress.
In the Pacific, our strategy was to take one island after another until we eventually arrived at the island of Japan itself. One of the major battles involved Iwo Jima, where the Japanese had to be slaughtered individually. In that battle, incidentally, my great and good friend Donald Maier took off his helmet to wipe his brow and a Japanese sniper killed him.
So much for the history of World War II. Since that time, our efforts in warfare have become less definitive. In the invasion of Iraq, for example, in the past ten years we have been told that the war is going well and that we are “making progress.” When American forces were involved in the war in Iraq, we came close to wearing out the reports of “making progress.”
The same would apply to the war in Afghanistan as well as the other conflicts, including Iraq. Now, after almost seven years in Iraq and nine years in Afghanistan, the commander of that theater, General Petraeus, as well as a host of visiting U. S. politicians assure the public that we are “making progress.” It seems to me that if we are making all this progress, we ought to be able quite soon to withdraw our troops and bring them all home. Obviously, this old soldier views the reports of “making progress” dubiously.
While we are making progress, according to the generals on the ground and in the Pentagon as well as politicians, we are told that we should be patient and that we should send more troops into the maws of battle so that they could be killed and promote our safety. Again, as an old soldier, I don’t believe that sort of thing is worthy of any consideration.
I conclude that the historian in 2,500 would be correct when he assesses this period of our time as a war of 100 years. And even more, to bring it back to real time, I believe that the announcements by our generals and politicians about making progress are thoroughly without foundation.
There are five grandchildren, all male, in this clan. If one of them were to tell me that he intended to become a member of the American armed forces, I would feel obliged to ask him how American democracy would be advanced by his taking a bullet in the Middle East. If taking such a bullet in the head is conducive to the promotion of our well-being, it is lost on me. Perhaps it must be that taking such a casualty would be a reason for the politicians and generals to promise that the Carr grandson had contributed to our making progress and was therefore a bit of a hero. I would tell the Carr grandchildren that we don’t need these kinds of heroes.
What I am really getting around to is to say that when war is involved, don’t believe what the generals tell you or much more so, what the politicians have to say. When they tell you that we are making progress, my hope is that you tell them that such reports are fraudulent and that they should get lost.
E. E. CARR
December 19, 2010
Essay 519
~~~
Kevin’s commentary: I think there is very little chance that any of the grandchildren are ever going to enlist. I think the closest to that point would have been my older brother at age ten or so, when he wanted to be a fighter pilot until he learned that that would probably involve killing people, so he changed his mind. Now he finds people to write Twitter content for companies in Japan. Close enough. Come to think of it, he’s actually expanding back into the states. Making progress.
On a more serious note it has been hard to make real progress with many of these wars because they have had bogus intentions. For example, one would be hard pressed to make progress on eliminating weapons of mass destruction from Iraq, because they didn’t have any.