Remembrance Day 2017

"In combat, there are no winners.  The victors just happen to lose less than the vanquished.  One side may impose its will on the other, but there is nothing noble or virtuous about the process.  People are killed and maimed, homes and communities are destroyed, lives are shattered, families are broken apart and scattered to the wind--and just a few years later, we can barely remember why." - Eric L. Haney, Inside Delta Force

November 11th is recognized in a slightly different way in many other countries.  Here in the United States, we observe Veterans Day, while Great Britain and several of its former territories call it Remembrance Day, and other nations observe Armistice Day.  These holidays both trace their origins back to the end of World War I, specifically the signing of the armistice that officially brought the war to a close.  It seemed like a symbolically fitting way to commemorate the event.  World War I devastated most of Europe in an unspeakably horrific conflict that nobody wanted to repeat.  That's why a lot of people associate it with the phrase "the war to end all wars," because its sheer destructiveness was enough to inspire mankind to end war forever.

But that is a wildly naive and idealistic goal, and people knew it even immediately after the Great War.  War has been around since the first prehistoric clans of people bumped into each other, and it's still with us a couple of billion people later.  We can design weapons with unprecedented destructive capability, believing that if the stakes get high enough nobody will want to fight - and yet, nations still find ways to fight.  We can proliferate technology that helps make us more interconnected - and people still find reasons to fight.  War has always, and will always, be with us. 

And maybe that's not necessarily a bad thing.  Occasionally (very rarely, in my opinion) there's a valid reason for the organized brutality of war.  Maybe it's a severe injustice that can't be remedied any other way, or a tyrant whose aggression needs to be checked.  But no matter what reasons are behind it, war is always horrific, whether it's a single bomb that obliterates an entire city, an emplaced machine gun that mows down charging troops by the dozen, or a roadside bomb that rips an armored Humvee apart like an aluminum soda can.

Perhaps that's why Remembrance Day or Armistice Day seem more appropriate to me.  They are more of an acknowledgement that while we can't eliminate war, we should always remember its destructive cost, so that we work as hard as we can to avoid it as much as possible.