slogans

Everywhere we go we see or hear slogans. Slogans for products, slogans for sports teams, slogans for political campaigns. And history is filled with slogans for wars. Yes, it is not enough to plan and execute military campaigns, we must have slogans to motivate people to support the actions our country takes. In the Revolution it was "give me liberty or give me death", after 9-11 it was "never forget", and in between there have been loads of others. I'd like to examine 3 briefly , and explain why we should be wary of slogans.

The first is 'Remember the Alamo". It was a battle cry in the war for Texas independence and it was very successful. The problem is people need to remember that the battles that were fought were all on Mexican soil, not American. The settlers of Texas were American southerners who took slaves into Mexico when they came. The Republic of Mexico had won its independence from Spain in 1821 and in 1829 outlawed slavery, but the settlers defied that and it led to the Alamo and other battles which ultimately led to an independent Texas Republic and later the admission of the State of Texas into the Union and later the secession of Texas as part of the establishment of the Confederacy. It is nothing to be celebrated.

The second is "Remember the Maine". The Maine was a US Navy ship that was sent to Havana Harbor to "protect US interests" in Cuba during the Cuban war for independence from Spain. It was sunk by an explosion and about three quarters of the crew died. The US blamed the Spanish, saying a mine blew it up, and response to it fed the flames of war. The US fought the overmatched Spanish , gaining control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the very far off Philippine Islands. We also ended up fighting the native Filipinos for decades and only gave them independence after WWII. In retrospect the explosion was most likely internal and not due to hostilities, but often truth loses to sloganeering.

Thirdly there is "Remember Pearl Harbor". Yes, I know that was used well to rally the people to support a very needed national defense and a true response to an attack on the country. But in the midst of that we also need to remember that we as a country were a little late to the battle. By the time we entered the war in December of 1941 Asia and Europe had been at war for over 2 years. Paris had fallen in June of 1940, France was occupied, Britain had suffered numerous bombing attacks, Korea was occupied, China attacked , and our "allies" had been pushed out of their colonies.All because we did not have a global outlook and put our head in the sand. We learned a hard lesson.

Slogans can prove useful, but our decision making needs to be built on well thought out and fully informed processes, not knee jerk reactions. Our minds must be engaged, and passion carefully used to support well developed efforts. And any look at history should look past the slogans to see what really happened.