A veteran’s haunting question: Was his sacrifice worth it?

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Nov 12, 2025

This year as we celebrated Veterans’ Day, honoring those men who sacrificed to safeguard our nation and preserve our way of life, I found myself asking an unsettling question: Don’t we, who gained by their sacrifices, have a matching obligation to preserve the way of life for which they fought? Soldiers fight for a cause, and it makes no sense to honor the fallen soldiers if we dishonor their cause.

Think about the origin of Veteran’s Day for just a few moments, and it becomes clear that my question is a tricky one. The holiday was originally known as Armistice Day, set on November 11 because on that date the armistice took effect that ended the hideous bloodshed of World War I. (Notice that the armistice did not follow a peace accord; that came later.) How can we honor the “cause” of World War I veterans, when, more than a century after the guns went silent, the cause(s) of World War I still remain unclear?

We can praise the patriotism that prompted so many young men to fight and die—or to fight and live the rest of their days bearing the scars of war. Patriotism in itself is a virtue. But World War I was an ugly and thoroughly avoidable conflict, fought without a just cause, involving a level of bloodshed grossly disproportionate to the ends sought by the warring parties.

Moreover the only proper reason for fighting a just war is to secure a just peace, and the peace treaty after World War I—coming after that Armistice—was itself unjust. The victors imposed crushing punitive burdens on Germany, giving rise to resentments there that helped create the conditions that allowed for Hitler’s rise to power. They carved up the maps of the Middle East and Africa, artificially creating new countries with borders that ignored ancient tribal conflicts—and thus assured that the bloody conflicts would continue. And the ascendant power of the Soviet Union—also aided by the war—enslaved millions of people in Eastern Europe. Nearly all the bloodshed of the later 20th century, and much of the fighting of the early 21st, can be traced, directly or indirectly, to the fatally flawed peace after World War I.

So the “war to end all wars” was actually a proximate cause of many subsequent wars. It was an unmitigated disaster for humanity: a spasm of carnage that was unjust and unnecessary. For us Americans, it is a puzzlement that our country joined in the European madness. President Woodrow Wilson, who had earlier sought neutrality, explained: “Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable when the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its people.” But “the peace of the world” is by definition always involved whenever war breaks out anywhere, and similarly “the freedom of its people” can be invoked as a reason for intervention in nearly any conflict. Thus Wilson’s war message was the first public appearance of the notion that Uncle Sam should serve as the world’s policeman, making the planet safe for democracy.

Whatever European tensions were responsible for the outbreak of the Great War, the Wilsonian quest for a League of Nations was not in the thoughts of the original warring parties. My point here is that sometimes, in the heat of battle, nations can forget both their reasons for staying out of a war and their reasons for plunging into it. The cause for which soldiers fight one year may not be the cause that their country pursues the next. The war might be won, and the original cause lost. If so, those brave men we honor on Veteran’s Day are not to blame.

But if World War I was a messy, unjust, incomprehensible conflict, World War II was a very different case. The cause—the defeat of an aggressive and inhuman Nazi ideology—was just; the argument for American involvement was straightforward. So it is understandable that we hold World War II veterans—both our own and our allies’—in a special place of honor. They saved the West, and perhaps the whole world, from a real threat of tyranny.

Yet now, as that “greatest generation” departs from the scene, is the cause of freedom more secure? Having turned over the leadership in world affairs to their children, the self-absorbed generation of the Baby Boom, could the World War II veterans rest assured that their efforts had preserved the way of life they cherished?

This year on Memorial Day a short viral video was circulating online: a British television interview with a decorated 100-year-old veteran of World War II who, when asked to reflect on the war effort, answered bluntly that “the sacrifice wasn’t worth the result.” Looking back on the deaths of so many of his friends in battle, and then on the turmoil in British society today, he said with obvious emotion: “What we fought for was our freedom. Even now it’s a darn sight worse than it was when I fought for it.”

Needless to say, this was not the response that the TV hostess expected. Quickly reassuring the old warrior that the people honored his sacrifice, she proclaimed that many British people would work to restore and protect the society that he loved. But she did not give the old man an opportunity to expound on what troubled him about British society today.

Had “Alec” been thinking about the growing campaign to suppress free speech? Or about the rape gangs that prey on young girls, while police look the other way to avoid ethnic conflicts? Or the government’s stern refusal to recognize the dangers posed by unchecked immigration? Television viewers could only guess.

No doubt the interview had been arranged in a genuine bid to honor a World War II veteran. But how can we honor the man without honoring the cause for which he fought? And how can we honor the cause without allowing him to express it? And if he does have a chance to express it—even in a sentence or two—how can we avoid judging our own generation for the failure to preserve the freedoms that he and his contemporaries sacrificed so much to preserve?