The American Empire - One

The American Empire - One of the best things the late Stephen Ambrose ever wrote was toward the tail end of "Citizen Soldiers". I'll paraphrase it: throughout history, a squad of foreign soldiers was something to fear. The Roman legionaire, the Cromwellian levy, the Napoleonic cannon-fodder, the Japanese soldier or German soldat or Russian draftee from the steppe was usually nineteen or so, and in conquering his hated foe, usually developed a keen sense of revenge. They commandeered goods, took the winter's food supply, raped the women, burned the houses for a laugh.

And yet at the end of World War II, Germany and Japan and Italy learned to see the squads of nineteen year old GIs (and British "Tommies") as something different. The same band of olive-drab snuffies that had scaled the cliffs and blasted their own nations' übermen out of their concrete bunkers at Omaha Beach, or learned to stalk the jungles to kill the samurai in their lairs, came in as conquerors - and gave out candy, and kept the peace, and rebuilt the conquered nations in their own images, and gave them the power to be what they'd never been. Like us. For the first time in history, a squad of nineteen year old kids with guns was not a force for malevolence.

Bill Whittle weighs in with an excellent essay that extends this idea. It's long, but worth the read.

(via Rachel Lucas)