The tragedy of this essay is that it holds up
World War One as a sacred crusade. That'a a very unfunny joke. The U.S entered that war against its own interest, on a side which had no moral superiority to the other; we probably prolonged thw war, got 116,000 of our men killed for nothing, and a similar number came back crippled or blind from chlorine and mustard gas, all to make the world MORE likely to do the same damn thing again in the next generation.
I certainly welcome the meditation in a general sense, but the choice of application bears against the main purpose of the essay.
Well-stated. Our entry into WWI was a horrific crime perpetrated by Woody Wilson and an out of control federal government against the American people. The end result of the War to End All Wars was an even more horiffic war.
Good point. That was in the back of my mind as I read the essay, but I decided its general point was important enough to post it anyway. This emphasizes the difficulty of recognizing a case for just war without the perspective of time.