Memorial Day 2006

George W. Bush, in his commencement address at West Point this weekend, noted that in the early years of the Cold War, the victory of the West was neither obvious nor assured:

In 1947, communist forces were threatening Greece and Turkey, the reconstruction of Germany was faltering, mass starvation was setting in across Europe. In 1948, Czechoslovakia fell to communism; France and Italy appeared to be headed for the same fate, and Berlin was blockaded on the orders of Josef Stalin. In 1949, the Soviet Union exploded a nuclear weapon, giving our new enemy the ability to bring catastrophic destruction to our homeland. And weeks later, communist forces won their revolution in China, and claimed the world’s most populous nation for communism. And in the summer of 1950, seven North Korean divisions poured across the border into South Korea, marking the start of the first direct military clash of the Cold War. All of this took place in just the first five years following World War II.

The Cold War (which included hot wars in Korea and Vietnam and a nuclear confrontation over Cuba) lasted more than 50 years.  But it ended in a victory so total and comprehensive that some thought history had ended.

In the opening pages of Volume II of his monumental “The Second World War,” Winston Churchill described the “facts and looming prospects” as he took over the office of Prime Minister in 1940:

Within a week the front in France, behind which we had been accustomed to dwell through the hard years of the former war and the opening phase of this, was to be irretrievably broken.  Within three weeks, the long-famed French Army was to collapse in rout and ruin, and our only British Army to be hurled into the sea with all its equipment lost.  Within six weeks we were to find ourselves alone, almost disarmed, with triumphant Germany and Italy at our throats, with the whole of Europe open to Hitler’s power, and Japan glowering on the other side of the globe.

But five years later, it “was possible to take a more favorable view of our circumstances:”

The mighty German Army had surrendered unconditionally.  Hitler had committed suicide.  In addition to the immense captures by General Eisenhower, nearly three million German soldiers were taken prisoners in twenty-four hours by Field-Marshal Alexander in Italy and Field-Marshal Montgomery in Germany. . . .  The contrast was certainly remarkable.  The road across these five years was long, hard, and perilous.  Those who perished upon it did not give their lives in vain.  Those who marched forward to the end will always be proud to have trodden it with honor.

Looking at history from a point of view many years after the story has ended, we tend to think of both World War II and the Cold War as conflicts with a single trajectory toward eventual victory.  But history in real time is less clear — a story of mistakes and miscalculations, unforeseen events and remarkable reversals — and perseverance is easier to praise in hindsight than it is while history is actually occurring. 

But the lasting historical fact about the current war may eventually be not the discouraging circumstances of the day-to-day conflict, but the fact that America — having saved the world from a thousand-year Nazi dictatorship and then an imperialistic Communist totalitarianism — is engaged in bringing the beginnings of representative government to the heart of the Middle East as an alternative to Islamic fascism.  If that effort succeeds, the result will be world-historical.

We may not be in a position to fully appraise our effort until the story ends.  As Christopher Hitchens writes in his essay on Memorial Day in the Wall Street Journal, silent reflection may be appropriate for the time being, “when we are in mid-conflict with a hideous foe, and when it is too soon to be thinking of memorials to a war not yet won.”  But it is not too soon — and this is the day set aside to do it — to remember the sacrifices of those who fought to establish a better world for our benefit:

This Memorial Day, one might think particularly of those of our fallen who also guarded polling places, opened schools and clinics, and excavated mass graves.  They represent the highest form of the citizen, and every man and woman among them was a volunteer.  This plain statement requires no further rhetoric.