War is much easier to enter than to exit

chicago.suntimes.com · Mar 1, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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America has fought many wars. And built many war memorials.Wandering around Washington, D.C., I made a point to stop by the biggies — the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, No. 1 in my book, for breaking war’s symbolic stranglehold on imagined glory. A black granite gash in the earth featuring not eagles but the names of the 58,318 American dead.The Korean War Veterans Memorial, a night patrol of 19 stainless steel figures, in ponchos against the cold rain, faces etched with stress and fatigue, frozen in mid-stride. Even the sprawling, soulless World War II Memorial.The World War I Memorial wasn’t on my radar. Until I found myself next to it, at the corner of 15th and Pennsylvania Avenue. A few extra steps, and there was Sabin Howard’s epic sculpture “A Soldier’s Journey.” Starting with a doughboy taking leave of his wife and daughter, charging into combat, men around him killed, wounded, with a homecoming at the end.World War I is a stark reminder of the greasy slope of war — what started with an assassinated Austrian archduke exploded into fighting in across the globe, ending 31 years later — historians consider World War II an extension of World War I, after a 21-year intermission to raise a new generation of cannon fodder.War between the United States and Iran commenced Saturday. It’ll end... nobody knows, of course. We assume it’ll be a few tightly contained airstrikes, like last summer.But then war always seems quick, at the outset, with the boys hurrahing down to the recruiting office to sign up, worried the action will be over before Christmas. The Russians, don’t forget, rolled into Ukraine four years ago, expecting to be in Kyiv in a few days. They’re still fighting, having lost an estimated 200,000 men.When World War I broke out in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson, promised not to get involved. “He kept us out of war” was his re-election slogan in 1916. “No new wars,” Donald Trump echoed in 2024.Both promises worked. Both were broken. Both with reason. Iran is the worst sponsor of international terrorism — Hamas could have never pulled off the Oct. 7 attacks without Iran’s enthusiastic backing — making it impossible not to welcome the elimination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “It’s been mass terror, and we’re not going to put up with it any longer,” Trump said.You go, Mr. President. Add it to the list of Trump successes, along with elimination of the penny. Whether that counterbalances scuttling voting rights, well, you decide.We’re attacking Iran now... why exactly? To destroy its capacity to produce nuclear weapons? Sounds laudable. But also very... familiar. Didn’t we just do that?“A spectacular military success” Trump said after the strikes last July. “Iran’s key enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”“Totally, again, obliterated,” Trump said Saturday. Maybe it’ll stick this time. We’re also calling for regime change. That seems naive — how well did that work in Afghanistan? Or to return to World War I: remember the regime Germany ended up with after Versailles. We liked the Nazis even less. A black plume of smoke rises from a warehouse at the industrial area of Sharjah City in the United Arab Emirates following reports of Iranian strikes in Dubai, United Arab Emirates Sunday.Altaf Qadri/AP The new war seems doubly troubling when you look at our own besieged democracy.“It’s domestic politics,” said Timothy Snyder, whose books such as “On Tyranny” explore the rise of repressive regimes and how we risk becoming one of them. “The need to create some kind of foreign conflict so Trump can say we have to do special things around the elections. I honestly think its as simple as that.”Alas, World War I has lessons here, too — the government cracked down on dissidents, jailing pacifists, deporting foreign nationals who dared oppose the bloodshed.War is a gamble. When you win big early on — kidnapping Maduro, killing Khamenei — you can fall under the spell of imagining it’s a game you can win.It could be argued that to start a war is to lose it. That’s the sense you get, standing before any war memorial. Though now might not be the time to go to Washington — I know people who were afraid to step foot in Chicago Sunday, worried about blundering into some ad hoc Iranian counterstrike.But if you do go to D.C., definitely visit the memorial to Vietnam, that bloody bog that took years to extricate ourselves from. And do seek out the World War I Memorial. The 58-foot wide sculpture is a true masterpiece, including a bit of the glory that some still itch to attach to war.Here is how the National Park Service web site puts it: “At the center our hero calls his comrades into battle, illustrating the famous American battle cry from Belleau Wood: ‘Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?’”