Today is Veteran’s Day, a day set aside to honor all those who served in the U.S. Armed Services. With the end of the draft in 1973, Americans who have given up civilian life to don the uniform, for a period of time or a career, have done so for a multitude of reasons. Some served for family honor or out of a sense of duty to their nation, and some served because they wanted to support their fellow countrymen, at home or abroad.
This does not mean that every person who served in the military saw combat or was deployed to a combat zone in a support role, in fact most did not. Nevertheless, every man or woman who has enlisted made the conscious choice to leave behind a normie civilian life and fully accepted that they could someday be sent off to war.
The Contemporary Military Mood
After America’s twenty year wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our nation has been rather reserved in its strategic military deployments. In fact, one of President Trump’s campaign points was a promise not to start any new wars. Moreover, there was a feeling by some in the later years of those wars (especially in the wake of the last administration’s shameful withdraw from Afghanistan), that the Pax Americana brought about by the Cold War and the War on Terror after 9/11 had changed our nation’s character to one that had “gone full imperial and lost any pretense on hiding it.”
In America’s attempts to combat the legitimate threat of militant Islam around the world, we had forsaken the words of John Quincy Adams in 1821 who declared America to be a “well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all,” but also warned that “She is the champion and vindicator only of her own,” and we should “not go in search of monsters to destroy.”
While there are still some veterans still living from the Second World War, as well as the many Cold War conflicts around the globe, many of the veterans we honor today served during the last two decades of military adventurism in the Middle and Far East and fought (mostly) against the sophisticated barbarism of radical Islam. Conflicts that may have changed the political landscape of those lands, but not the culture, and which left many a veteran with a bitter and jaded realization that much of their service and sacrifices had not amounted to much. This feeling was portrayed by the musical group Five Finger Death Punch in a song dedicated to the veterans of those wars who came home to a world that knew nothing of the hardships and stress of modern war, where the voice declares “I’m no hero, and I’m not made of stone, right or wrong, I can hardly tell. I’m on the wrong side of Heaven, and the righteous side of Hell.”
New Rumors of War
Without a doubt, the election of President Trump to his second term, and the appointment of Pete Hegseth as the Secretary of War, has changed the mood in the military—even if there are some who don’t think this change is for the better. While there still seems to be a lingering reluctance to get involved in conflicts abroad that have little to do with our vital national interests, there are still many new rumors of war on the horizon which seem to be getting more volatile every day. President Trump’s sending of naval warships towards Venezuela, his bombing of drug boats in Caribbean, the gathering intel on the Mexican drug cartels by special operations troops, the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, and now the possibility of sending units to Nigeria to protect Christians, all reinforce the reality that the world outside of our borders is a very dangerous place.
This is something that most Americans can appreciate on an intellectual level, and yet they cannot help but view those dangerous realities of the world the same way they see dangerous animals. For example, when they visit a zoo, they know that some of those animals would tear them apart and eat them if they were to encounter them in the wild, but behind the bars or glass barriers they are able to experience the danger in complete safety. In a similar manner, most Americans live lives of comfort and freedom and do not need to think about, let alone deal with, the multitude of dangers that exist out there in the world.
Yet in a world of instant communication and rapid travel, the dangers are very real, and a lot closer to us than we would like to think. As much we would like to ignore those lethal dangers out there in “the wild,” we do so at our own peril. The men and women in our armed forces play a vital role in keeping at bay the hostile and barbarous forces in the world, even if in doing so it leads to a larger conflict. For as English philosopher John Stuart Mill once wrote,
Today is the day that we honor all those “better men” (and women) who are in a way like modern-day paladins, who view their military service as a form of sacrifice made on behalf of their country and its citizens. These are the people that some have called the sheep dogs (as used in the film American Sniper, but first popularized by Lt. Col Dave Grossman) who are both willing and able to head into the shadows, sorrows and strifes which are present on this “wrong side of Heaven” and the “righteous side of Hell”—referencing General William T. Sherman’s admonition that war is hell—in order to protect those who cannot defend themselves.
These are the men and woman of the U.S. armed forces that we honor today. They are our grandparents, parents, children, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. Individuals who are fully aware of the Realpolitik realities of the world, and that not every military action or war will be just or prudent, but who nonetheless still chose to sacrifice a portion of their lives in order to serve and protect their beloved nation. Today is the day that we say “thank you” to all of our veterans, for both their selfless sacrifice and their brave service.
Photo Credit- US Veterans Magazine and CBC.