11/11

Some of you have the day off - good for you. Veteran's Day never meant much more than that to me either, until I became enthralled by the English poets Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, and others. That led to a fascination with WWI in general, and the Western Front in particular. I think I could make a pretty convincing argument that much of the way we think today, and many of the international crises we currently face, can be traced back to that terrible conflict that ended 90 years ago, and the botched carving up of Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East that followed. Whether it's "the former Yugoslavia", Iraq, the Congo, or many other places, just look back to 1918-19 and you'll usually find the peremptory and unrealistic decisions that all but guaranteed animosity and bloodshed would erupt again in a matter of decades.

Today, the English will all wear red paper poppies on their lapels in memory of the fallen from WWI and other wars. Perhaps we should all adopt the same practice as a reminder that the costs of war are measured not just in lives, not just in dollars, but in generations to come who will be burdened with our folly. It is not only our hearts that are stained, but also the hearts of those who follow us.