You may have noticed most of my recent blogs have been about soldiers, battles, and heroes of American history. For the sake of full disclosure, much of my reading in the last fifty years or so, has concentrated on military history. In my lifetime, the United States has (have) fought (whether Constitutionally or not), in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Serbia, Somalia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan. I can’t count the number of wars that have been fought by other nations of the world.

It’s possible that there has not been a day since Cain killed Abel that there hasn’t been a war fought somewhere. To ignore the central influence of military conflict in the history of the world and especially our own past is like studying Woodstock without mentioning music.

When I was a graduate student in the late 1970s, I was assisting a brilliant professor whose specialty was the “middle period” of the 19th century. The professor asked me to teach the part of the class that covered 1861 to 1865 because “the Civil War itself is not interesting and is actually not as important as the causes and the tragic failure of Reconstruction.” In recent years, universities that were formerly known for their military history programs have abandoned them even when large endowments have been offered to fund the department. Hostility toward military service occasionally surfaces through opposition to ROTC programs in elitist educational institutions.

While I respect my more anti-war libertarian friends, I find military history fascinating and vitally important to a proper understanding of history. But more than that, I believe military service on behalf of our own country is still an honorable undertaking for a young man, and makes memorializing their sacrifices through the centuries a happy, if not sacred, duty of every citizen.

That is not to say, however, that American soldiers get a pass for honorable and just behavior in war and in peace; nor does our respect for the fighting man gloss over the necessity of our government to abide by Constitutional law when sending our forces into combat. I also believe that war ought not be prosecuted against civilians, which unfortunately has been difficult to prevent in our combat history.

I would argue that the vast majority of American soldiers who have been ordered into combat have laudably fulfilled their duty and many have performed far above expectation. The Circa History Guild salutes the honorable service of the fighting men of the United States and will continue to offer programs related to understanding the reality of war in our history and the heroic sacrifices of her citizen soldiers.

Bill Potter