The War to End Them All

--Anzac Day

Liberty has never come from the government.
Liberty has always come from the subjects
of the government.
The history of liberty is a history of resistance.
The history of liberty is a history
of the limitation of governmental power,
not the increase of it
--Woodrow Wilson

We'd fight and never lose
Those were the days
Oh, yes, those were the days
--Those Were the Days, My Friend,
Mary Hopkin
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There was a time the United States used to fight wars and at least pretend that they were being fought to put an end to wars.

World War I -- that was The War to End All Wars. It was certainly savage enough and meaningless enough to earn that title, but it did not work. It has been hypothesized that some countries grew sick enough of the carnage after WWI, due to their proximity or profound losses, that it did put an end to their war lust. But the U.S. was not one of those countries.

Just 92 years and at least a million casualties later and the U.S. now gladly accepts the concept of a long war that even might be an endless one. Now we fight not to achieve a goal, but to keep the restless natives in check. For their part, the indigenous will do their best to fill their roles, too.

Remember when Congress declared war? Now we accept generational war commitments which fly in the face of the previous "get in and get out" once the objective is filled ethos. America is no longer a refuge against the ravages of war.

Republicans actually fought in wars back then (and not just Academy graduates.) There were active isolationists, too, who touted an "America first" platform. Reserve forces, including the National Guard, were adjunct forces, rather than additional professional deployable assets. Our military was actually a combat force defending the shores of America rather than the back streets of Mogadishu, Baghdad, Kabul or Kandahar.

Remember when threats were quantifiable and the National Intelligence Estimates were based upon concepts like capabilities and intent of hostile forces? The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Agency (NSA) were oriented towards defeating enemy states rather than nebulous undefined individual non-state threats.

Being a citizen meant having in alienable civil rights, back then, too.