The comment Friday by Gov. Gary Herbert — “There is still the fight against evil,” — illuminates a lack of perspective about World War I.
World War I was precipitated by the decrepit, interbred monarchies of Europe and was the final death knell of their systems. It was a war based on the centuries of war-like habits those people had been enabling for generations.
What caught them by surprise was the vast destruction that they could now bring down on their hapless citizenry and that, by the end of it all, the world changed around them. It was an obscene waste brought on by little more than royal egos.
Newer wars are still enabled by rich liars in high places, just not by the royalty of old. The habits haven’t changed but the enablers have.
The historian Branden Little quoted in the article gets it right. A retired Special Forces friend of mine in my early college days reflected when I asked him about our war in Vietnam. He said, “Charlie is not a nice guy, but it is his country .”
It is not a “fight against evil” that sends people away to other people’s countries to kill and to die. The driving force is the self interest of the power structures who send them.
Lewis Downey, Salt Lake City