Celebrating the Start of WWI
Recently
by Joel Poindexter: State
by State, a Nullification Domino Effect
Greatly overshadowed
by the manufactured “fiscal cliff” crises, another
controversy is brewing in Washington, D.C.
This lesser-known argument is between the various interest groups
squabbling over where the official monument to the First World War
will be located. This is because the centennial of the “Great
War” is approaching, and lovers of war need an officially-sanctioned
location to throw their party.
For years various
groups have been lobbying for one to be built on the mall in Washington,
to be located amongst the other memorials that commemorate the state’s
greatest acts of plunder and mass murder – World War II, Korea,
and Vietnam. Opponents argue that another monument on the mall will
clutter the place up, and other locations around D.C. would be better
suited. One such site is Pershing Park, named after General John
Pershing, commander of U.S. forces in Europe during WWI.
The disagreement
over location isn’t limited to Washington however, as the Liberty
Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri has been home to a World War I
museum and monument for many years. Just a few weeks before the
“fiscal cliff” deadline dominated the news cycle, the
House passed a bill to designate the Kansas City location as the
official memorial site, but the Senate failed to concur. Living
near Kansas City, I’ve noticed this discussion has been closely
followed by the local news media, as most everyone here is hoping
that congress will shower the city with prestige – and loads of
money – to be divvied up amongst the politically well-connected.
I hadn’t given
it much thought until just the other day, when I wondered what all
the fuss was over the WWI centennial. To be sure, it takes an awfully
long time to get congressional legislation passed through both the
House and Senate. Everyone tries to stuff their own special interest
amendments into the bills, then they’re bickered over in one committee
or another for weeks on end. Eventually they get signed into law,
then myriad contractors swoop in to gobble up as much of the appropriated
money as possible.
But still,
I thought, we’re five years away. And then I realized they aren’t
getting ready to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the
end of the war. They’re about to throw a bash in celebration
of the outbreak of one of the most destructive wars in human
history. It’s bad enough that Armistice Day, a holiday meant to
celebrate the cease-fire, has been turned into a day to glorify
soldiers and the wars they fight in. But it’s absolutely repugnant
for anyone to glorify the start of a war that killed nearly 17 million
people, and ushered in the rise of fascism and Bolshevism throughout
Europe. Indeed, without World War I, World War II and the subsequent
Cold War, with all of its battles, would never have come about.
Only a sociopath
would laud the beginning of a war that introduced mustard gas, battle
tanks, greatly-improved machine guns, and aerial bombardment. World
War I consisted primarily of protracted trench warfare, interrupted
only by the occasional rush on foot across no-man’s-land, resulting
in the death and injury of tens of thousands of conscripted soldiers
at a time. Memorializing such an event is shameful, and is nothing
more than a blight on humanity.
This
year marks the tenth anniversary of the invasion and occupation
of Iraq, a war I’m ashamed
to admit I participated in. No doubt, Americans
will also be inundated with coverage of that catastrophe, and plenty
of air time will be dedicated to the opening of that ongoing crime
against humanity. Another sad aspect of the undeclared “war
on terror” is that it will never officially end. Not only will
the killing and destruction of property continue for the foreseeable
future, but there won’t be a particular day in which we may one
day celebrate its conclusion; at least World War I eventually came
to a close.
So enough with
glorifying war! The monuments of the state’s greatest contribution
to the world – death, dismemberment, torture, suffering, and pestilence
– must be smashed. No more celebrating the war machine, no more
tributes to the fallen “heroes” who needlessly fight and
die to consolidate the power of politicians and monarchs. If anything
related to the First World War is to be held in high esteem, it
should be the Christmas truce of 1914, when the common soldiers
displayed enough humanity to lay down their arms and meet one another
face to face, that is a centennial worth remembering.
January
4, 2013
Joel
Poindexter [send
him mail] is a student of economics and part-time writer;
he is a columnist for the Tenth
Amendment Center and a contributing author to Voices
Of Revolution: Americans Speak Out For Ron Paul. See his
blog.
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