remembrance or apocalypse no!

As European nations are preparing for solemn ceremonies to commemorate the upcoming centennial that marks the beginning of the outbreak of the Great War, each in their own way and surely the conflict was not spontaneous and the reach-back to the chronology is as important to understanding and reconciliation, though such horrors, falling from living memory evade the senses and imagination, another quite different war, half as old, is being remembered in a muted fashion.

War-mongers are always outdoing their forebears and at a fast clip of course came the second World War, no lessons learnt yet something more captivating due to its accessible and vast documentation and clearer sense of responsibility and ownership, and in its ashes came battles that ran hot and cold. Though the tragedy of the American offensive in Southeast Asia lasted decades and it is impossible to name one decisive moment in such proxy wars, where populations are pawns for ideologues, a turning-point came fifty years ago in 1963 when the US-backed leader of democratic South Vietnam was ousted and executed by the Vietcong, dismissed as a capitalist puppet. 
American engagement grew in response and after an alleged attack (which many historians agree was either an outright fabrication or so-called Tonkin Ghosts, false radar images, and a pretext to escalate action courtesy of the No-Such Agency) on its patrol ships, all out war with North Vietnam broke out. The causes of World War I are no less abstract, a backlash against imperialism led to the rise of fascism. History is written by the victors, though there are no real winners in war, and while the character of these enmities may be different, limited by the irrefutable bounds that there is no difference in suffering and loss nor in pride and greed neither, the bitter old specter of propaganda that turns patriots to rebels, depending on which side one is on, still haunts.