Lives and Families destroyed

We welcome another member of the Coalition for a Democratic America to Sirens as a writer. Kyle is a veteran that served his nation as a soldier in Iraq. His wise words and thoughts are a most welcome addition to our staff. This post begins a multiple part series~ Dusty

By PraetorOne, Kyle, Donatra, SweetPea, Kelli, and Rachel

PROLOGUE: To Paris! To Berlin! To Baghdad!

In 1914 in the weeks following the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand, and leading up to the outbreak of the First World War, the people of Europe somehow managed to convince themselves that the ensuing war would be a brief one. Flushed with a collective, nationalistic fever of 106.7, the people of France turned out in the Streets, shouting “TO BERLIN! TO VIENNA!” The people of Germany and Vienna turned out in the streets, shouting “TO PARIS! TO MOSCOW! TO LONDON!” ad nauseum. Virtually no one believed that the war would be a long one, that their nation’s armies would soon overrun the armies of the other side and that valor and glory would rule the day. And yet, within a short period of time, it became all too apparent that the war wouldn’t only be a long one; it would also be a brutal and very bloody one; that it would go on for year, after year. Trench warfare, mustard gas, rape, mass murder, disease, and famine: Those were the horrors of World War I, horrors which created a new medical/psychiatric term: “Shell Shock.” And to make matters even worse, hardly a generation had passed but what Germany, once Europe’s problem child, was on the march again, led by a sociopathic dictator who, as a younger man, hadn’t only served in the trench warfare of World War I, but who himself had also been gassed.

The only difference between this young man and so many others of his generation, was that he had walked away from the war with the wrong lessons learned. Instead of recognizing the stupidity and futility of war, THIS young man, this raving butcher of an Anti-Semite learned that war was a solution to most problems; that survival of the fittest was the natural order of life. I am of course talking about the primary architect of World War II, Adolf Hitler, the madman who through blood soaked atrocities and war crimes taught us that war is the great evil of the 20th, and yes, even the 21st Century

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