Warning: if you have no appetite for a rambling word salad, click away now
I am a veteran of what I stubbornly call Gulf War I. I don't have a high opinion of my own valor during that war-- I spent the bulk of it driving a pickup truck well behind the "front", and the most praiseworthy thing I did was
not run away in the presence of the possible threat of gaseous or explosive death.
I mostly observe Veteran's Day in honor of others who actually saw The Enemy through iron sights, or more accurately,
were seen by The Enemy that way. Although none still live, I celebrate the memory, valor, and sacrifice even of those Americans who served their cause in gray uniforms, even as I see the picture on my wall of my ancestor who wore blue.
I have lately had the dubious privilege of reading remarks from those who claim that America's wars of intervention of preemption abroad were all illegitimate, even those declared as such by act of Congress in accordance with the Constitution. Apparently, some people believe (for example) that until German troops stormed the beaches in North Carolina, we had no business waging war against them.
(In that instance, it may have been forgotten that Germany declared war on us, and that it took eleven months for US and German troops to meet in battle-- in North Africa.)
I have lost the citation, but agree with the quote (or paraphrase): "Non-interventionism does not mean that
nothing happens; it merely means that
something else happens."
Or, to paraphrase the reviled George W. Bush, "it is better to fight them there than to fight them here."
I believe that non-interventionism in Gulf War I would have resulted in the consolidation of the Arabian Peninsula under Iraqi Ba'athist rule; that this "greater Iraq" (for want of the name it would have taken for itself) would have pivoted toward China and Russia, trading their oil supply (a large proportion of the planetary reserve) for weapons and luxuries for the dictator and his flunkies, and bringing the US to a situation worse than the present case twenty years sooner.
(To those who would ask "how could it be worse?", I suggest the very question betrays a failure of imagination.)
I believe we were right to do it.
I believe we were right to go into Afghanistan in 2002 and Iraq in 2003. I tried to volunteer to be a part, both times; I was not wanted. I believe that the fault lay in trying to fight a kinder, gentler war when we should have done it like World War II (see Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo-- not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki). I believe that there will come a time when it is again necessary to go elsewhere to find the bad guys where they are rather than wait for them to come to us.
My personal standard for this is:
(1) If bad guys confine their activities within their own borders, let 'em be (see Syria: non-Syrian actors there are there at the behest of the Syrians on either side of what amounts to a civil war). I was PO'd at the Taliban in Afghanistan in the 1990s, but as long as they stayed in Afghanistan, it was an Afghani problem. Once terrorists in the US could be credibly traced to Afghani sources, all bets were off.
(2) If a nation acts against a weaker neighbor, and/or demonstrates a desire to continue agains other neighbors (see Germany v. Poland, et al; Iraq v. Kuwait, et al) it is within the US moral compass to intervene. "Non-interventionism does not mean that
nothing happens; it merely means that
something else happens", in these case, the robbers get away with it, keep that which they have stolen.
(3) If the nation in item (2) loses, and makes agreements to bring about a peace, and then breaks that peace (see Iraq, no-fly zones), it is within the US Moral compass to resume the hostilities. I remember telling my comrades in Iraq in 1991 that if we left Saddam Hussein in control, we would have to return within five years. Either I was right, because of continued missile trading between US aircraft and Iraqi AA, or I was wrong by seven years due to the feckless responses of the Clinton maladministration to the repeated Iraqi breaches of the cease-fire agreement.
Personally, I am against ending a period of warfare with anything less than unconditional surrender (see US Civil War, World War II), as anything less leaves behind an unfriendly regime with a grudge (see Germany, 1918; Iraq, 1991).
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.†--Douglas McArthur
Often, the soldier, above all other people, understands and deplores the necessity of war, just as the fireman understands and deplores the necessity for firefighting. For most of us, the only thing we ask is that, if we are destined to die on foreign shores, let it not be wasted.
