In June of 1970, several months after President Richard Nixon decided that the best way to get out of the Vietnam War was to invade Cambodia, the hit song War was released. Originally a Temptation song, Edwin Stars’s version become a Billboard Number 1 hit. It held that spot for three weeks in August and September; and was later rated the Number 5 song of 1970.
Most of us are familiar with the bold drum opening and guttural question shouted out in the song: “War, huh yeah! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing uhuh…”
It must be good for something or someone because it seems as if we humans are constantly at war or continually marching towards it. If one pursues the files of history we come across several significant political and military events that occured in the month of June that sit right up with what is going on in the Ukraine and Gaza.
The first event that comes to mind is D-Day, the “Longest Day,” June, 6, 1944. It was the largest amphibious, airborne assault in history. Its aim was to liberate Europe from Nazi domination. Once the Allies established a foothold in Nazi occupied Europe, it was the beginning of the end for Hitler and his Nazi cronies quest for a thousand year Third Reich. A Germanic fascist pipe dream built from a belief that Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire was the First Reich.
The National Socialist German Workers’ Party, according to historians, the complicated moniker reveals more about the image the party wanted to project and the constituency it aimed to build than it did about the Nazis’ true political goals, which were building a state based on racial superiority and brute-force governance.–snopes.com
Three years earlier, on June 22, 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia. This invasion was the largest military operation in history. The invasion had more soldiers, armored vehicles, artillery and aircraft than any offensive in WWII. It resulted in four years of brutal war. The Eastern Front racked up more death than the all the other theaters of war including the North Africa, Italy, Pacific, India and China Fronts. Russia alone lost 8.6 million soldiers and another 26 million Russians citizens were killed in WWII. It is estimated that 1,700 towns and another 70,000 villages were destroyed. This does not include a death toll from the countries that the two armies fought through to get each others homeland. I really don’t want to sound flip, but I will. It makes what is going on in the Ukraine and Gaza look more like urban renewal compared to the carnage of WWII bombing campaigns, concentration camps and nuclear attacks on Japan. But it is still War, and to those who are experiencing it–“it ain’t nothing but a heartbreaker…’cause it means destruction of innocent lives…“
On June 28, 1914 “The Great War, The War to end all Wars,” was instigated with the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. For the next four years European troops gassed each other, dug trenches throughout France and Belgium and started aerial bombardment of cities: all giant steps forward for mankind. France, Britain and Germany had a whole generation gutted from their populations creating social and economic upheaval. “The point of war blows my mind, War has caused unrest within the younger generation…”
As for the Russians, the 500 year rule of the Tsars came to an end from the weight of the war. Eventually, the Bolsheviks under Lenin took control bringing about the world’s the first communist socialist government. The end of WWI just reset the pins back up to be knocked back down again in WWII.
One might have thought the Europeans would come to their senses, but not so. As the Soviet Union slowly rusted away from Cold War pressures, the grip it held behind the Iron Curtain started to disintegrate. It could be argued that the Balkan Wars of the 1990s started with the breaking apart of the six republics that made up the federated Yugoslavia. According to United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, “experienced a period of intense political and economic crisis. Central government weakened while militant nationalism grew apace. There was a proliferation of political parties who, on one side, advocated the outright independence of republics and, on the other, urged greater powers for certain republics within the federation.” The melting pot that was Yugoslavia was beginning to boil over.
Political leaders from used nationalist rhetoric to erode a common Yugoslav identity and fuel fear and mistrust among different ethnic groups. By 1991, the break-up of the country loomed with Slovenia and Croatia blaming Serbia of unjustly dominating Yugoslavia’s government, military and finances. Serbia in turn accused the two republics of separatism and the displacement of both Croats and Serbs. –United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
This nationalist rhetoric began “to erode a common Yugoslav identity and fuel fear and mistrust among different ethnic groups. On June 25, 1991, Slovenia became the first of six Yugoslav republics to declare its independence.” From there it became a domino effect with Croatia declaring its independence. Its claim for independence became a back-and-forth conflict with Serbia, which resulted in more than 20,000 deaths.
But the disintegration of Yugoslavia was just getting warmed up. As Gill Scott Heron sings in B-Movie “…first one wants freedom, then the whole damn world wants freedom…” To intensify hostilities, throw in a spark of religious difference to the already centuries of smoldering ethnic divisions. Without the central control of the communist government a flash of ethnic cleansing ignited In Bosnia and Herzegovina. “It is estimated that more than 100,000 people were killed and two million people, more than half the population, were forced to flee their homes as a result of the war that raged from April 1992 through to November 1995.”
And then there was Kosovo. “Serb forces heavily targeted (Albanians) civilians, shelling villages and forcing Kosovo Albanians to flee. NATO entered the fray with a 78-day-long campaign of air strikes against Serbian targets in Kosovo and Serbia. In response, Serb forces further intensified the persecution of the Kosovo Albanian civilians.”
This year long war, according left more than 10,000 civilians killed or missing and displacing thousands. When the shooting finally ended the UN estimated that, “Some 750,000 Albanian refugees came home and about 100,000 Serbs – roughly half the province’s Serb population – fled in fear of reprisals.
In the 19th century, the U.S. Government’s drive for expansion clashed violently with Native Americans’ resolve to preserve their lands, sovereignty, and ways of life. This struggle over land has defined the relationship between the U.S. Government and Native tribes.–National Archives
The United States had its June moment, too. This moment actually starts on April 29, 1868 with a treaty signed between the U.S. Government and the Sioux Nation at Fort Laramie. Native Americans have been scammed out of their lands signing treaties since Colonials first crossed the Appalachian Mountains. But yet here they were signing another treaty. According to the National Archives The Treaty of 1868 “recognized the Black Hills as part the Great Sioux Reservation.” The treaty “set aside for the exclusive use by the Sioux people.” That is until Gold was discovered in 1874.
It is obvious that the Plains tribes did not hear about what happened to the Cherokee and The Trail of Tears when gold was discovered on their land in Georgia in 1830. Or maybe they had and saw history repeating itself. Because when interloping miners in the Black Hills discovered gold in 1874 the land was about to change hands. By the end of 1875 and early 1876 the gold rush was on trampling The Treaty of 1868 in a cloud of gold dust.
But unlike the 1830 Indian Removal Act, the Great Plains Native Americans had no intention of walking off to reservations under U.S. Army escort. Granted, a large portion of the Native American population were on the reservation, but those that were not raised concerns among miners and the government. There were skirmishes and battles between the Army and Native Americans. But none as the the battle that would take place at the Little Bighorn River. As one Indian Inspector wrote: “The true policy in my judgement is to send troops against them in the winter, the sooner the better, and whip them into subjection.”
The U.S. Army was tasked with whipping the Sioux, Cheyenne, Crow and other tribes that refused to relocate to their reservations into submission. A military operation of three columns of infantry and cavalry were sent out from various forts and directions. Any coordination between distant columns quickly fell apart and was exacerbated when Lt. Colonel George Custer galloped off on his own. What Custer found was was a Native American encampment of about 7,000 people that included 1,500 to 2,000 warriors.
The Battle of Little Bighorn was really a minor affair compared to already mentioned battles and wars. However, it was the worst defeat the U.S. Army suffered in all of the battles fought with Native Americans; and possibly one of the most complete defeats the Army has ever suffered. Although, the casualty figures were low, it was a massacre. All 210 soldiers with Custer were killed. It is estimated that Native Americans killed was around 100. As for the duration of the battle, according to some sources, Custer’s last stand lasted less then a half-hour. One Native American survivor later said the fighting lasted only “as long as it takes a hungry man to eat a meal.”
Custer’s Last Stand shocked the nation that was celebrating its Centennial. How could such a defeat happen? If anything, Custer’s defeat, as decisive as it was, only increased the demand to relocate the Plains tribes to reservations. It may have been Custer’s last stand, but it was also the Native Americans last stand.
The Americans Indian Wars started with the massacre of the first settlers at Jamestown in 1622 when the Powhatan tribe killed nearly 350 colonists. Of course no massacre goes unpunished. Colonist began attacking Native American villages and hence the dogs of war are unleashed. For more than 260 years a crude and brutal frontier justice was practiced between Native Americans and the U.S. Army, farmers, miners and settlers moving west. The war was officially ended with another massacre at Wounded Knee in December of 1890.
Trying to answer “what war is good for” could come down to why people go to war in the first place and what they are willing to die for. Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata said, “It is better to die on your feet then to live on your knees.”
Others might see war as Prussian General Karl von Clausewitz saw it, as “the continuation of politics by other means.” The definitions and the rationalization for wars are varied. Today we could ask what was Hamas thinking when it invaded Israel? What makes the Ukraine land so special that Putin would launch a “special operation” to have it become part of Russia? We could then question what good can come out of supporting combatants. What good will Iran get supporting Hamas or the U.S. supporting Ukraine?
However logical (or illogical) a war starts, it soons starts to slide down the slippery slope of faulty reasoning into some sort of elongated circular reasoning making it impossible to determine if the death and destruction, the outcome have any worth.
mystoryorhistory 