{"id":44825,"date":"2023-11-23T07:03:15","date_gmt":"2023-11-23T15:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=44825"},"modified":"2023-11-23T07:03:15","modified_gmt":"2023-11-23T15:03:15","slug":"war-thanks-but-no-thanks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/23\/war-thanks-but-no-thanks\/","title":{"rendered":"War: Thanks But No Thanks"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Battle of Missionary Ridge, fought the day before the \u201cThanksgiving Day\u201d proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When I think of Thanksgiving, I seldom think of the Pilgrims and Wampanoag people dining together (likely sans turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie) in Massachusetts in 1621.<\/p>\n

Rather, my thoughts wander to Abraham Lincoln\u2019s 1863 proclamation inviting his fellow citizens \u201cto set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What was Lincoln thankful for? \u201cFruitful fields and healthful skies\u201d \u2026\u00a0 and Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and provoke their aggressions, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wartime Thanksgiving holidays are the rule, not the exception. As Christian Oord reports<\/a> at War History Online, the United States has enjoyed a whopping 17 years of peace in its 247 years of existence. It\u2019s been at war 93% of the time since 1776 (that article was written in 2019, but nothing\u2019s changed in a big way since then).<\/p>\n

America\u2019s wars are seldom formally declared. Nor does the US regime always go whole hog \u2013 in many cases, it fights through proxies, arming, funding, and looming threateningly behind client states (as in Ukraine\u2019s war with Russia and Israel\u2019s war with the Palestinian Arabs).<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not thankful for America\u2019s wars.<\/p>\n

I suppose I SHOULD be thankful that it\u2019s been more than two decades since those wars last\u00a0 came closer to my home in the form of major \u201cblowback,\u201d but I find it hard to dredge up much gratitude.<\/p>\n

The deaths, injuries, and dispossessions caused partially or wholly by US foreign military adventurism \u2013 the toll comes to millions even if we write off everything prior to 9\/11 \u2013 constitute a huge karmic debt, put on all our tabs in a perpetual dine-and-dash by the American political class.<\/p>\n

We may not be noticeably paying that bill down now, but we\u2019ll beyond doubt pay eventually, with interest \u2026 at which point the warmongers who brought the next terrible thing down on our heads will whine bitterly, from their secure bunkers in undisclosed locations, that the debt collectors \u201chate us for our freedom\u201d and that the only solution is yet another round of war.<\/p>\n

Is all that a little dark for a Thanksgiving column? Yeah, I guess so. But it\u2019s where my thoughts are turning this week, which also marks 60 years since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, likely by elements of the very national security state that keeps the US constantly at war and its people constantly in danger.<\/p>\n

I am, of course, thankful for my family, my friends, my readers, etc. And as the American holiday season kicks off, my wish for all of you is that ever-elusive goal: An America, and a world, at peace. Happy Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:\u00a0@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Battle of Missionary Ridge, fought the day before the \u201cThanksgiving Day\u201d proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln. When I think of Thanksgiving, I seldom think of the Pilgrims and Wampanoag people dining together (likely sans turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie) in Massachusetts in 1621. Rather, my thoughts wander to Abraham Lincoln\u2019s 1863 proclamation inviting his fellow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-44825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44825"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44827,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44825\/revisions\/44827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44825"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=44825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}