The Last Doughboy
28th February 2011
George Will celebrates the last American veteran of The Great War.
Buckles never saw combat, but “I saw the results.” He seems vague about only one thing: What was the First World War about?
The First World War was also the first ‘modern war’ in which the government of the United States, under the reins of its most fascist President ever, decided to stick its nose into the sort of conflict that hitherto had been considered solely the business of the Europeans.
On June 28, 1914, an assassin’s bullet in Sarajevo killed the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The war that followed took more than 116,000 American lives — more than all of America’s wars after the Second World War. And in a sense, the First World War took many more American lives because it led to the Second World War and beyond.
Funny how Democrat Presidents seem to have a talent for getting us into these wars and shit. (Republicans are more constrained — ‘kick some wog ass and go home’ is more their style, except we seem to have lost the ability to go home afterward.) Sigh.
February 28th, 2011 at 12:43
It was a shock to realize that he is the last of the WWI vets. RIP.
On the subject of “modern war”, I have to say that there is a good arguement that the War of Northern Aggression (referred to in some rusty and socialistic parts of the country as the Civil War) was really the first modern war. First successful submarine attack, steel ships, trench warfare, flying machines (balloons), mechanized troop movements (train), rapid communication (telegraph), massive displacement of civilians, … all found in the 1860s. The Europeans had observers on both sides taking notes and their tactics in The Great War illustrate what they learned.
February 28th, 2011 at 18:41
The American Civil War was certainly one of the first ‘modern wars’ in the *technical* sense, along with the European wars of the 1860s and 1870, and the Boer Wars in South Africa. But they were still internalized; the Americans didn’t get involved in the European wars, and the Europeans didn’t get involved in America.