Attila the Hun, the Islamic Berbers, Xerxes, the Ottoman Empire, and the Mongols all invaded Europe throughout the centuries. Their aim was conquest.
When the United States of America did it, the aim was to end a war.
June 6, 1944, deserves to be commemorated for all time as an amazing moment of military might, strategy, bravery, and heroism. But D-Day was also monumental as the greatest invasion ever launched for liberation rather than conquest. In that regard, D-Day is a commemoration of America’s unique and virtuous role in world history.
President Ronald Reagan delivered the best ode D-Day has ever received. Everyone remembers the lines he uttered from atop the cliffs in June 1984. “These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc,” he began. “These are the men who took the cliffs,” Reagan said next, escalating the praise for the old soldiers who sat before him. “These are the champions who helped free a continent,” he said, before reaching his climax: “These are the heroes who helped end a war.”
D-Day was the world’s greatest invasion, and its objective was to end a war. It was America at its best. The greatest military in the world’s history took action not to start a war, but to end it.
“War is Hell,” a revered general famously said. William Tecumseh Sherman was so ruthless, so efficacious in his fighting because he saw his job was ending the hellish Civil War. That was Eisenhower’s task as well, to end the war in Europe.
From Sherman’s March to D-Day, the United States Army has excelled at ending wars. But somehow, three presidents have failed to do the same in Afghanistan.
Our war in Afghanistan, which was just and prudent at the outset, will turn 18 years old this fall. American soldiers are still dying today, but these heroes lack a mission that could plausibly end the war. Our leaders seem incapable of letting go of President George W. Bush’s Utopian dreams of a liberal, Western-style democratic republic based in Kabul.
There are parts of Afghanistan to which no occupation, no surge, no brilliant military strategy could bring a lasting peace. The U.S. could fight and keep killing insurgents there and never run out of money, weapons, or soldiers. But unending war isn’t what the U.S. military is made for. Ending wars is what we do best. It’s what those heroes did 75 years ago today. And America’s men and women in arms today deserve a mission that will give them the chance to do so in Afghanistan.
