- Evan Vucci/ AP Photos
Veterans Day, originally known as Armistice Day, commemorates the end of World War I in 1918. Germany lost, a resolution it was hard for Germans to get their minds around, as the guns that fell silent were all on foreign soil. A war that began as a snappy invasion of Belgium and France expected to settle matters in a few weeks turned into an endless slog Germany was unprepared for, and then into even worse.
The USA is a nation on a serious losing streak—Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq—in wars that go on forever. It’s what happens, Bolger says, when an army designed for one-punch knockouts comes up against dogged insurgents we don’t understand and our local “allies” are corrupt and incompetent. If we send in the army to clear out ISIS it’ll probably happen again, he thinks: “If insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, I think we’re there.”
