Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Poem for the day
There is only one poem today.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
— Lt.-Col. John McCrae
That is why, by the way, there are people wearing red paper "poppies" on their lapel all over London today. Or at least I assume there are, just as there have been on other Remembrance Days that I happen to have spent there.
This old post at Winds of Change has all you need to know about Veterans Day (in the United States) and Remembrance Day everywhere else.
I'm the guy wearing red and blue today.
MORE: The Wall Street Journal has a nice Veteran's Day editorial, much of it given over to Frank Buckles, the last surviving American veteran of World War I. He is 107.
There is also this bit about casualties:
The guns fell silent 90 years ago today. Between the time that the terms of the Armistice were signed in the predawn hours of November 11, 1918 and the moment it came into effect at 11 o'clock that morning, the Western Front registered as many as 11,000 casualties, including a conservatively estimated 320 Americans killed and 3,200 wounded.
That's right. There were more American KIA in the morning of November 11, 1918 than there have been in Iraq in the last twelve months.
6 Comments:
By 
, at
Tue Nov 11, 08:37:00 AM:
Actually, Remembrance Day in Britain is celebrated on the second Sunday in November.
By 
TOF, at
Tue Nov 11, 10:48:00 AM:
Yes, it's remembrance Sunday with ceremonies at the Cenotaph. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/11/11/europe/EU-Britain-Armistice-Day.php
I didn't understand the significance of the red poppy until I lived in the UK. It's a remembrance of buddies who died in the fight.
By Dawnfire82, at
Tue Nov 11, 11:09:00 AM:
"There were more American KIA in the morning of November 11, 1918 than there have been in Iraq in the last twelve months."
Well then that clinches it. WWI was the worst American foreign policy disaster in history.
By , at
Tue Nov 11, 11:49:00 AM:
There were more American KIA in the morning of November 11, 1918 than there have been in Iraq in the last twelve months.
So therefore, what? We shouldn't complain? Iraq doesn't count?
By TigerHawk, at
Tue Nov 11, 12:36:00 PM:
Not "therefore" anything, other than some perspective. Tough as Iraq has been in the modern perception, in the sweep of history American casualties there have been astonishingly low.
By Escort81, at
Tue Nov 11, 12:42:00 PM:
Anon 11:49 -
I think TH is trying to put things in perspective in terms of casualties, that's all. All war is horrible, and all casualties are tragic. Having just visited the Gettysburg battlefied last week, where approximately 8,000 soliders on both sides died in three days of fighting in July, 1863, I was thinking along the same lines of proportionality -- how the U.S. military is now able to accomplish remarkable things with so few casualties.
Sure, would it have been better to go into Iraq heavier -- with Turkey's red light changed to green so that a thrust from the north would have put more troops in theatre more quickly -- and with a specific COIN plan in place from Day 1 and different ROEs in place once Bagdhad fell, such that the insurgency would have been suffocated in its infancy? Would we feel better about the decision to go in the first place had a couple of bunkers full of tons of WMDs been found? Maybe. Probably W's popularity would be above a 26% approval rating now. Heck, throw in no Katrina and a captured OBL and no mortgage meltdown, and W's popularity is likely close to 50%, and then we now have a President-elect McCain. For that matter, if the Eagles had a short yardage running game, they'd be 9-0 and atop the NFC East.
Faulty intelligence about WMDs or no, Congress voted for the AUMF, of which WMDs were one of many reasons provided. A majority of Americans at that time favored taking out Saddam's regime. The military executed a three week war to take Bagdhad with a high degree of professionalism. That the post-war conflict did not go well is more of a political failure than a military one.
So complain all you want. But even President Obama will still have many troops in theatre two years from now during the 2010 midterms, and there will have been at least a handful of U.S. casualties during 2010. Complain then, too.
