by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review\u00a0Online\u00a0<\/em> The world is a better place because Adolf Hitler did not preserve his conquest of the European continent, and because the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere of Hideki Tojo and his militarists imploded at Midway, Guadalcanal, and Okinawa. Italy and the Mediterranean were far better off without Benito Mussolini and his mad plans for a renewed but debased Roman Empire, which ended on his own Italian soil at exotic-named places like Anzio and Monte Cassino.<\/p>\n The dream of Soviet rulers from Stalin to Brezhnev was a global gulag overseen from the blood-stained Communist Kremlin. It ended only through the 50-year deterrence of the American military. South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan are somehow still free and independent \u2014 and would not be without American carriers, jets, and submarines.<\/p>\n Our generation\u2019s own rogues\u2019 gallery of killers \u2014 Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Manuel Noriega, and the Taliban \u2014 have lost their tyrannies. If South America chooses to become Communist, it will be by its own volition and not because of an unfettered cross-border invasion from Cuba, Nicaragua, or Venezuela. Even our enemies can export or import oil freely from the Middle East without worries of armed intervention or piracy \u2014 as long as an American carrier is nearby in the Gulf.<\/p>\n It seems as if the more Europe disarms and gnashes at the United States, the more we are there when it needs us. If an ascendant China decides to bully Japan or Taiwan in earnest, only one country can thwart it. No one will call the European Union or Russia should North Korea tomorrow cross the 38th parallel or Iran decide to launch a missile. If Turkey rearranges the border in Cyprus or claims airspace over the mid-Aegean, anti-American Greece will turn pro-American. There will be no second Holocaust, in part because of American military support for Israel.<\/p>\n The list of American wars, interventions, and campaigns, past and present, is endless \u2014 a source of serial political acrimony here at home over the human and financial cost and wisdom of spending American lives to better others. Sometimes we feel we are not good when we are not perfect, whether trying to stop a Stalinist North Vietnamese takeover of the south, or failing to secure Iraq before 2008. But the common story remains the same: For nearly a century, the American soldier has often been the last, indeed the only, impediment to butchery, enslavement, and autocracy.<\/p>\n It was the custom of great leaders from Pericles to Napoleon to declare that the graves of their soldiers in far-off foreign soils were testaments to their nations\u2019 grandeur, power, and reach; yet our white crosses in American cemeteries from Epinal, St.-Mihiel, and Normandy to Manila, Tunisia, and Sicily are tributes to American military courage and competency \u2014 and a willingness to see an end to wars that brutal men started and might have won had our youth not crossed the seas.<\/p>\n We should remember all that in the present age of cynicism and nihilism, recalling that nothing has really changed, as some Americans this Memorial Day seek to foster something better than Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, and Moammar Qaddafi. Behind every American soldier, dozens of their countrymen tonight sleep soundly \u2014 and hundreds more in their shadow abroad will wake up alive and safe.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson National Review\u00a0Online\u00a0 The world is a better place because Adolf Hitler did not preserve his conquest of the European continent, and because the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere of Hideki Tojo and his militarists imploded at Midway, Guadalcanal, and Okinawa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[194,99],"tags":[233,612,177,1015,1028,141,114,374,250,579],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-IA","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6814,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ignoring-history-the-folly-of-our-iran-pact\/","url_meta":{"origin":2764,"position":0},"title":"Ignoring History: The Folly of Our Iran Pact","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Dictatorships abandon treaties when they become inconvenient. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 According to our recently proposed treaty with the Iranian government, Iran keeps much of its nuclear program while agreeing to slow its path to weapons-grade enrichment. The Iranians also get crippling economic sanctions lifted.\u00a0 The agreement\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iran"","block_context":{"text":"Iran","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iran\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11642,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/stalin-gets-another-hollywood-pass\/","url_meta":{"origin":2764,"position":1},"title":"Stalin Gets Another Hollywood Pass","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 4, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Please read this piece by my colleague Paul Roderick Gregory in Defining\u00a0Ideas The December 17 Oscar short-listing of Marianna Yarovskaya\u2019s\u00a0Women of the Gulag\u00a0in the documentary-short category created a stir in the world-wide Russian intellectual community. Yarovskaya, a dual citizen and a graduate of both Moscow University and USC, is the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "World War II"","block_context":{"text":"World War II","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/world-war-ii\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9068,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-return-of-appeasement-collaboration-and-isolationism\/","url_meta":{"origin":2764,"position":2},"title":"The Return of Appeasement, Collaboration and Isolationism","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 22, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Tribune Media Services World War II broke out when Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. A once preventable war had become inevitable \u2014 and would soon become global \u2014 due to three fatal decisions. Most infamously, the Western European democracies had appeased Hitler during\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8716,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dont-trust-putin-in-the-mideast\/","url_meta":{"origin":2764,"position":3},"title":"Don\u2019t Trust Putin in the Mideast","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 8, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online Contrary to the principles of American foreign policy of the last 70 years, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry tacitly invited Russia to \u201chelp\u201d monitor things in the Middle East. Now they are learning that there are lots of Middle\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Russia"","block_context":{"text":"Russia","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/russia\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"(Mikhail Klimentiev\/Pressphotos\/Getty)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/vladimir-putin-coalition-r-500x500.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1575,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/history-down-the-danube\/","url_meta":{"origin":2764,"position":4},"title":"History Down the Danube","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 8, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Nuremberg: Triumph of Will A German remarked on our Tour 2010 that he found it odd that, given all the graffiti one sees, there is never any defacement on the great stone stage at Nuremberg (patterned by Albert Speer after the Pergamon altar) that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "June 2010"","block_context":{"text":"June 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/june-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":169,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wars-paradoxes-from-pearl-harbor-to-the-russian-front-to-the-38th-parallel\/","url_meta":{"origin":2764,"position":5},"title":"War’s Paradoxes: From Pearl Harbor to the Russian Front to the 38th Parallel","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media From time to time, I take a break from opinion writing here at\u00a0Works and Days\u00a0[1] and turn to history \u2014 on this occasion, I am prompted by the 71st anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Here are a few of the most\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Retrospective"","block_context":{"text":"Retrospective","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/retrospective\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2764"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2764"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2765,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2764\/revisions\/2765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/span><\/p>\n