This weekend, too few of us are likely to spend sufficient time remembering why we have a holiday: To commemorate with gratitude and grief the many thousands of Americans who gave their lives for their country.

We might think back to wars that even preceded America’s founding, like the French and Indian War where George Washington fought alongside the British. Had the English speakers lost, we’d live on a very different continent.

Then we’d remember those who fell in wars that were just because they were absolutely necessary.

Necessary and Just Wars

• The War for Independence, which preserved the free government the colonies had evolved over hundreds of years, from a British regime that was raping and starving India.
• The Civil War, which determined whether the U.S. would stay united, and outlaw slavery.
• The Second World War, provoked by Japan and declared by Nazi Germany, which toppled racist and genocidal totalitarian governments.
• The Korean War, which reversed a brutal invasion by Stalin and Mao’s allies, who hoped to force millions of South Koreans into a brutal, racist police state.
• The Cold War, in which the U.S. stopped the biggest winner of World War II, Stalin’s Soviet Union, from spreading Communist tyranny through all of Europe and Asia.

Dubious Wars that Benefited America

Next we might remember the wars that weren’t absolute last resorts, and whose justice we might argue about, but which at least granted great benefits to America:

• The Mexican-American War, in which Ulysses Grant fought bravely, but which he called “one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.” It seized lands that Mexico had left mostly empty, and increased the size of the United States by as much as the Louisiana Purchase. It gave us the whole southwest, including California.
• The Spanish-American War, which was fought on a dubious pretext (the Spaniards didn’t sink the U.S.S. Maine). It gave us control of the crucial Caribbean, and powerful trading outposts in Asia. But it also saw us become a colonial power ruling Cuba and the Philippines.
• The First World War, in which America’s unnecessary intervention prevented a negotiated peace. Instead, three regimes collapsed, making room for the bloody Russian Civil War, the rise of the Soviet Union, and the chaos that led to the rise of Adolf Hitler. However, our decisive entry into the war did make the U.S. a premier global power.

Futile, Tragic Wars

Next we must recall wars which weren’t justified by being an absolute last resort, and whose outcome either damaged our country, or else gained us nothing at all in return for our heroes’ sacrifice.

• The War of 1812, which we fought against a Britain desperately resisting Napoleon’s aggression, and in which we invaded and tried to conquer an unwilling Canada. At the war’s end, after thousands of deaths, we returned to the pre-war status quo. We gained nothing.
• The Vietnam War, in which we poured billions of dollars and more than 50,000 lives into propping up a government with no popular support, led by corrupt generals. The tyrannical draft in this undeclared war forced American boys to fight in distant jungles or potentially go to prison. The insistence of liberal elites (!) on “building a Great Society on the Mekong” helped radicalize millions of American college students, and revive long-discredited Marxism among their teachers. And in the end, the Vietnamese still ended up under Communism. Vietnam-era radicals educated a whole generation of Americans, such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
• The War in Iraq, fought on the twin false claims that Saddam Hussein had been involved in 9/11, and that he was building weapons of mass destruction that allegedly threatened America. This war killed at least 600,000 civilians, led to the genocide of almost a million Iraqi Christians, and left Iran the dominant power in the region.
• The War in Afghanistan, which didn’t stick to the limited objective of punishing the Taliban, and didn’t capture Osama bin Laden. Instead it became an occupation that lasted a full generation, a futile attempt to build a centralized liberal democracy in a tribal Muslim backwater. The Biden administration didn’t just leave but surrendered, handing China’s ally the Taliban more than $80 billion in military equipment, abandoning U.S. citizens and thousands of Afghan allies whom we’d promised U.S. visas. Mission: demolished.

It’s Not Always Munich 1938. Sometimes It’s August 1914

In light of all this, maybe we should consider the proposition: Peace is patriotic. Not in every single instance, of course. As Christian Just War doctrine teaches us, there are times when we must fight. They’re just pretty rare, as the absolute last resort when no other course of action will prevent us being conquered and dominated.

Yes, it was absolutely foolish to appease the Nazis in the 1930s. At that time, so-called “warmongers” like Winston Churchill were the genuine patriots.

But is that always true? Is it even usually true? The Nazis and the Imperial Japanese were outlier phenomena — political movements driven by real demonic forces, bent on conquest and genocide. They were essentially terrorists, with whom you cannot negotiate.

Who Were the Real Patriots?

Was that really true in 1914? Were the jingoists who eagerly pushed their countries to war in Germany, France and Russia the genuine patriots in their day? Or were the real patriots those who called for restraint, for calm discussions, for painful compromise instead of rashly rushing into a brutal, total war? The latter were labeled “cowards,” “weaklings,” and “traitors,” even if they were military leaders who wisely counseled caution. (Likewise, those of us on the Right who warned against the Iraq War got excommunicated by National Review as “unpatriotic conservatives.”) 

The thousands of surviving soldiers, often traumatized or disabled, might well have thought very differently about who the real patriots were in the wake of such futile wars. 

These are issues to keep in mind as military contractors, the Biden regime, and jingoistic politicians in the GOP urge us toward a military confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia, over a border dispute between two corrupt, religiously intolerant Slavic one-party states.

Let’s remember to pray for the fallen and their families, and be grateful for their sacrifice. Let’s try our best not to swell their ranks with new victims of futile, foolish wars in the future. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find the phrase, “Blessed are the warmongers.”

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He is co-author with Jason Jones of “God, Guns, & the Government.”