Armistice Day

Today, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, World War I came to an end. I always marveled at the poetic license used by the various diplomats of the warring nations in bring to an end this colossal waste of life--forcing the combatants to continue the slaughter that much longer so historians could write about the curious timing. I wonder what it must have been like in the trenches, what the reaction of the soldiers must have been like. After having to had endured hell on earth for so long--the mounds of mutilated, rotting flesh, the very earth itself torn and upturned beyond recognition, I can't imagine it was met with any sort of enthusiasm.

"They want us to fight until 11 A.M. on the Eleventh? Well, why the hell not? Makes as much bloody sense as everything else in this war. Why not let the meat grinder eat up a few more hundred or thousand bodies, especially after the millions already offered up in the great patriotic struggle!"

I wonder how many more deaths occurred between the time it was agreed to end the war and when the final shot rang out. It would be interesting to get some sort of figure on that. Can you imagine being that last poor son of a bitch cut down; the final corpse laid down upon that stinking mountain of death? And to die with the knowledge that your death meant fuck all? That while your life's blood came pouring out upon the diseased-ridden ground, off somewhere in some great official hall corks were being popped off bottles of champagne? But that is war for you. The soldier eats it while the politicians that started the bloody war so easily celebrate its ending. And how many politicians that start wars know their horrors close up? TR did, Eisenhower did (who warned us to "beware the military-industrial complex"), JFK did (who was going to pull us out of Vietnam before he was assassinated). George W. Bush does not, and neither does Cheney. There should be an international law passed that only those that have seen war close up should be able to start them. Bush's father flew and was shot down in WW II, and he wasn't about to march into Baghdad and destabilize the region (besides, that may have brought very uncomfortable questions to light about who exactly was supporting Saddam while he was massacring his people during the 1980s).

Make no mistake about it--too many soldiers are still waiting for the coming of the eleventh hour while politicians and diplomats are still off playing their chess games far away from the stench of war.

What has changed?