By Tom Burke / Herald Columnist
On June 24, 1916 the Battle of the Somme began with a British artillery barrage. On Nov. 18, 1916 the English commander called an end to the engagement.
The butcher’s bill was 1,070,000 dead or wounded British, French and German soldiers.
And it changed nothing; not the lines of battle, not the overarching strategy, not public support, and especially not the tactics. Nothing was changed to lessen the slaughter. (The 1918 “Spring Offensive” registered 1,539,715 total casualties.)
The Great War’s aftermath was 40 million dead and a screwed-up peace, setting the stage for the still-raging conflict in the mid-East and a Second World War that left 54 million dead.
And that war’s aftermath was the Cold War and a continuation of the hot-war, Middle East mess.
Which on Jan. 28, 2024 cost the lives of three U.S. soldiers in a drone attack, resulting in the U.S. retaliatory bombing of 85 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force targets. It was a massive reply; and it continues.
Which got me wondering if our attitudes toward death has changed over the years.
We lost 26,277 in our World War I Muse Argonne campaign and 38,490 on the Marne, and the American people still supported the idea of “Making the world safe for democracy” in 1917-18.
In World War II 29,204 died on the Normandy beaches, with 407,000 total U.S. service dead, and people still said, “We can do it.” (And did.)
However, in Korea, 38,000 were killed as part of a United Nations “police action” and the public barely noticed.
With Vietnam things changed and the 58,000 names that would go on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall sparked protests that eventually ended the conflict.
Today, our 7,000 dead in the Mid-East has eroded popular support since the death of almost 3,000 when the World Trade Center fell and we embraced the War on Terror.
So does the death of three soldiers in January, and our response, indicate a shift in American attitudes? When in 1918 or 1944 support, despite the losses, never wavered today we seem to want a vigorous response to the killing of those serving; but, strangely to me, the murder of hundreds in scores of mass domestic killings gets not much more than some pious “thoughts and prayers” and little to actually curb these horrors.
Clearly support for our wars has waxed and waned over the years; in World War II serving families proudly displayed a Blue Star pennant in their windows. And families who lost a loved one, a Gold Star. And the nation mourned the dead.
But today, Donald Trump, now leader of the Republican Party, and running to be commander in chief of our armed forces and supported by millions of MAGA Republicans asked his senior staff, on the morning of his scheduled visit to American World War I cemeteries in France, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” And in a separate conversation on the same trip, he referred to the more than 1,800 Marines who lost their lives in Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.
And not a word of protest — let alone acknowledgement — from the right.
To help me understand these things I went to an expert who teaches at history at the University of Washington and asked him about how death and war have been viewed from a historical perspective.
My take-away from our conversation was: It depends.
It depends on whether we’re talking about a “war” or an “incident;” on how popular the conflict is; when it happens; and it depends on how politicized the conflict is. Clearly, it’s complicated.
For instance, Republicans, who vigorously supported the actual Gulf Wars, recently tried to kill the PACT Act which provides aid to Gulf War veterans stricken by military burn pits.
And despite the MAGA outcry over the death of our soldiers, or Ashley Babbit (who was shot by police as she stormed the floor of House trying to overturn an election) there has been no corresponding outrage on the right for the score of mass shootings at schools, churches, temples, shopping malls, or grocery stores.
Indeed, the current Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson, mocked and attacked teenage survivors of the 2018 Parkland, Fla., shooting for their advocacy for gun control measures. In posts, Robinson called the students “spoiled, angry, know it all CHILDREN,” “spoiled little bastards,” and “media prosti-tots;” while Trump told us, after the murder of two in an Iowa school, “we have to get over it.”
To be real, 900 words is not nearly enough to deal with a subject as complex as this. I yearn for a simpler time, when the country seemed unified and goal driven.
Today, the right has substituted politics and power for accomplishments – consider the conservative-authored compromise border/immigration bill torpedoed by Trump because he thinks chaos at the Rio Grande helps his campaign.
It seems we will continue a conflicted nation, perhaps less tolerant of the death of a few, if they are wearing a uniform; but so virtually uncaring about the death of many in a classroom or church that we do nothing to stem the slaughter.
I daily thank my god that we hold the life of a single soldier as precious, and no longer send tens of thousands to their deaths for a few feet of ground.
When, I wonder, will we feel the same about little children or those praying in a temple.
Slava Ukraini.
Tom Burke’s email address is t.burke.column@gmail.com.
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