Uphill struggles
Operation Overlord; Tian-En-Min; the First Crusade. These events had absolutely nothing to do with one another, except that each of them is, or was, very big, and intended to put the world back in order. The world has since again strayed, dirorderward.
True, Nazi Germany, once its defeat was completed, did not revive; but the jury is still out on most other events in history. For instance, the Chinese students’ appeal at the Gate of Heavenly Peace has not yet been decided; it could go either way. My prayer is that Communism will be extinguished in China. Thousands of lives were expended in putting down the risings of 1989; and for a moment, the tanks were stopped on Chang’an Avenue in Peking. The man who stopped them, on international television, was a brave, anonymous hero. He was probably shot just afterwards.
For that matter, we cannot know just yet if the “reconquistas” will succeed, over the three-quarters of Christendom that fell to the VIIth-century Arab-Islamic invasions, and were brutally overrun. (The Sasanian Empire in Persia went down completely.) At the moment, our chances for recovery of these lands and peoples does not look good; the Crusaders are not even trying! And the sword proves mightier even than Joe Biden’s automatic pen.
Ten thousand were killed on the Normandy beaches, during D-Day; about five thousand on each side (Allies versus Germans). This was one of the more economical attempts to reverse the history in which the peace of Europe had somehow slipped away. In other theatres of war, millions of lives were wasted. All credit to Mr Eisenhower’s administrative abilities.
Something of (not unmixed) good comes from all the other attempts to put the world back in order; to make it “violent but mostly peaceful” as the media networks prefer. But in the nature of things, this is an impossible task.
For you see, the heavenly peace is Divine; it cannot be obtained by human enterprise.