The Hill News

War changes people. After the Mexican War, contention between the urban, industrializing Northeast and the rustics of the heartland was no longer metaphysical. It began to take form as physical contention. After the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, war that had been brewing â€" in Churchill’s estimation â€" since the Boer wars began to bring blood to the streets, and it wouldn’t stop flowing until Yalta. It began in 1914, but America wasn’t fully ready to fight until Pearl Harbor, 1941. And as Ulysses S. Grant said about earlier conflict: If you didn’t serve you would be left out. We have been at war for 10 years now and those pundits, politicians and salon diplomats most reluctant to go at first lead the way here at the end against Gadhafi. Last to serve, they end up at the front of the parade when the war is over. 'Twas ever thus in war. My uncles and cousins and grand-uncles and great-grand-uncles, participants in peace and war from Cem! etery Ridge to Khe Sahn, had a name for them: “flag wavers.”

Read more...