Thoughts on Memorial Day

A world where no military forces were needed sounds nice, but that is not reality. Without military protection other countries would eventually try to attack and conquer our nation and enslave our people, or revolutionary armies within the United States would eventually try to overthrow the government. That's just the way it is and the way it has always been.

On this Memorial Day when men and women are honored for sacrificing their lives for this great country we should also be aware that too many of the wars we have been involved in should not have taken place, the military was ordered by priests, philosophers and politicians to fight and die in wars that could have been avoided. Military forces are defensive in nature, and when they are not, when they make “preemptive strikes" attacking nations or organizations that may or may not intend to do harm, then the military moves down the wrong coarse. 

Warriors have too often been treated as disposable material to be expended in war. If the U.S. had been more isolationist, more nationalist, which is the way the Founders envisioned America, the things that triggered US military action might not have sent us to war. The lives lost in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan probably wouldn't have happened. Pat Buchanan even thinks that both world wars were unnecessary; if not for the blunders of Winston Churchill the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been largely avoided. (“Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War : How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World”)

It sounds counter-intuitive but if the military had their choice, and if priests, philosophers and politicians were less involved in wars, there might be powerful armies but fewer wars.