Veteran's Day open thread: The Temple of Janus

Head of Janus, Vatican Museum, Rome, by Loudon Dodd, CC BY-SA 3.0

In ancient Rome, the doors to the Temple of Janus were left open when the Republic, and later the Empire, was at war. The Gates of Janus, as they were called, were usually open.

Yesterday, this amazing factoid crossed my Twitter feed:

the united states is, for the first time in twenty years, not involved in any substantial combat operations anywhere on earth and it has more or less gone unremarked

— national program director of the CHOAM group (@Theophite) November 10, 2021

For most of its history, the US military has been involved in one action or another. Once the US began to expand across this continent, it was in an almost perpetual state of war with the native populations. During the early 20th century, it intervened militarily in various Central American republics. And after World War II, it often enforced its foreign policy goals militarily. 

But let that tweet hit you. For the first time in twenty years, America's military is not involved in any large shooting wars. It's not occupying foreign lands. It's not leading campaigns of regime change. Yes, it still has troops deployed as advisors. But for the first time in twenty years, the Gates of Janus are shut.

As human beings, we yearn for peace. But our recorded history has been one of almost-constant strife. All of the great religions hold peace as the greatest good. But we honor peace, as the poet said, more in the breach than the observance. Peace is just over the horizon, but first we have to secure ourselves. 

As I've written before, sometimes conflict is unavoidable. Hitler wasn't going to respond to sternly worded diplomatic cables. But war, especially with our world-ending weapons, should be the last resort. War, with our world-destroying weapons, is almost unthinkable between major powers. And yet, we continue to prepare for it, to spend trillions of dollars the world over to fund it.

All that treasure spent, all the lives lost, for the art of destruction. If humans took the tenets of their religions seriously, they'd see God in every fellow human; they'd see God in nature; they'd see God in the universe. That they don't indicates that they see their faiths as tribal exercises, not calls to honor others as creations of God.

President Joe Biden did what few American presidents have done: Ended a war. He pulled the scab off of a failure. Twenty more years wouldn't have secured a stable Afghanistan. If anything, our being there was preventing Afghans from sorting out their differences, using our presence as a focal point for rage. Afghanistan today is not the same Afghanistan from 2001, and the Taliban may find they have a harder go of it imposing their will.

It's time for humanity to grow out of its adolescence, to leave behind its desire to settle disputes through violence. We have to become the species we think we can be. All the golden dreams we have of our future can't come to fruition with us continuing to kill each other. It's time to put away childish things and childish thoughts.