← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Sertorius
Thread ID: 18315 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2005-05-20
2005-05-20 14:33 | User Profile
Wednesday, May 18, 2005, 12:00 A.M. Pacific
Bruce Ramsey / Times editorial columnist A little too inspired by the echoes of WW II
In his 1974 book "The Russians," Hedrick Smith wrote that in the Soviet Union it felt as if World War II were only yesterday. Russians seemed to be constantly reliving the Great Patriotic War.
There was a human reason for that, but there was also a political reason. Telling the story served the purposes of the state ââ¬â and the V-E celebrations in Moscow last week showed that it still does.
Here, too. I grew up in the 1960s, watching "Combat" and "Rat Patrol" on TV, and "The Great Escape" and "The Longest Day" at the movies. The culture was saturated in World War II, and still is, considering that the war ended 60 years ago. We honor our octogenarians with movies like "Saving Private Ryan" and the HBO series "Band of Brothers."
I'm a fan of many of these stories. But they do have a political content. They elevate war, and a particular war. Following Studs Terkel's 1984 oral history, we have come to call the world's most-lethal conflict "The Good War." We have taken several lessons from it for application to future wars.
The first is that some political leaders and movements, like Hitler and his National Socialists, are so evil that to try to understand them or deal with them is futile and morally contemptible. Essentially, every time we hear the term "appeasement" ââ¬â Rush Limbaugh said yesterday morning that Europe is "appeasing Iran" ââ¬â we connect to this.
Second is the idea that the United States has responsibility to eradicate such evil, even when it does not directly threaten us.
Third is belief that the need to do this, and our intention to promote democracy afterward, justifies our means.
You could see an echo of this in President Bush's use of the term "axis of evil" and in his statement that Osama bin Laden had attacked us because he hated America for who we are (rather than anything our government had done). You could see it in the campaign that ran in the fall and winter of 2002 to personify Saddam Hussein as Hitler. You could see it in the photos of a leering Pfc. Lynndie England holding an Arab man on a dog leash. This is what people do when they think of their opponents as cast out.
This is not unique to Bush and the Republicans. Clinton also did it. In order to punish Saddam, he kept Iraq under an embargo that raised the death rate among Iraqi children. He ordered a 79-day bombing campaign against Serbia, a country that never attacked us and posed no threat to us. Serbia's ruler, Slobodan Milosevic, was the subject of a Saddam-like propaganda campaign in the American press, including a cover photo on Newsweek with the cover line, "The Face of Evil."
Had we not won World War II and been saturated in its historical and moral lore in the decades since, would we be doing this? I doubt it.
You can see the Germans' view of the war in such movies as "Downfall," "Stalingrad" and "Das Boot." All end in futility and disaster. It should be no surprise that Germany did not join our enterprise in Iraq. When the French refused, we mocked them as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys." Nobody mocked the Germans. They had earned the right to stay out.
Maybe the Germans have a better view of war, a more accurate one, than we. Or the men who knew the machine guns and mustard gas of World War I had a better view. Their view is expressed in "All Quiet on the Western Front."
We forget World War I. It has vanished from our culture as thoroughly as George Washington. The Vietnam War, another bad investment, may fade, or be memorialized in the manner of "We Were Soldiers." The Cold War with the Soviet Union ââ¬â an empire run by totalitarians we learned to deal with ââ¬â also fades. World War II endures.
By all means, let's thank those of the "greatest generation" who were sent, usually as conscripts, to fight in a war in which perhaps 50 million were killed. But it is a mistake to distill too much inspiration from it. When we do that, we may be more like Hedrick Smith's Russians than we care to think.
Bruce Ramsey's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is [email]bramsey@seattletimes.com[/email]
Copyright [url]http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2002278439&zsection_id=268883724&slug=rams18&date=20050518[/url] =======================
[QUOTE]Nobody mocked the Germans. They had earned the right to stay out.[/QUOTE]
He obviously doesn't listen to as much "talk radio" as I do.
[QUOTE]We forget World War I. It has vanished from our culture as thoroughly as George Washington. The Vietnam War, another bad investment, may fade, or be memorialized in the manner of "We Were Soldiers." The Cold War with the Soviet Union ââ¬â an empire run by totalitarians we learned to deal with ââ¬â also fades. World War II endures.[/QUOTE] Isn't that the truth? Very few people remember the Argonne, Belleau Woods or Cantigny unlike D-Day, Pearl Harbour and the "Battle of the Bulge". As for the "Greatest Generation", I get sick of hearing about this from people who know absolutely nothing about the Second World War. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that all this "remembrance" is brought about for the most cynical reasons by those who haven't who made it a point to avoid military service, whether it be in Viet Nam or afterwards. This thought of mine in no way does disservice to the valour of those who fought in WW II.
If there is such a thing as a "Greatest Generation" in the 20th Century I would award the title to those who fought in WW I for they learned from the stupid and criminal mistakes, war profiteering and pie in the sky Internationalism shown by the likes of Woodrow Wilson. A lot of these vets would later become part of the America First movement to keep the US out of the disaster known as WW II.
Despite the effort of talk radio propagandists and Neocon whores like David Frum and Richard Perle with books like An End to Evil Bush's War has very little resemblance to WW II and attempts to link the two does a disservice to the living and the dead of both wars.
2005-05-20 15:03 | User Profile
[I]Sertorius:[/I] [QUOTE]Despite the effort of talk radio propagandists and Neocon whores like David Frum and Richard Perle with books like An End to Evil Bush's War has very little resemblance to WW II and attempts to link the two does a disservice to the living and the dead of both wars.[/QUOTE]
Absolutely correct. My father is proud of his service in the AAF, and will talk about his Flying Fortress as if he just stepped off it. Only once did I ever hear him talk about the effects of their payloads, though. It was painful to watch his face as he talked about the cities below. I know it haunts him and I know he wonders whether it was right, even though he would probably never admit it.
Ramsey makes some excellent points; anyone with a minimum of education in history knows that WWII was made inevitable by WWI, even as U.S. participation in the "Great War" was anything but inevitable. Somehow this country found itself in another European war.
Lindbergh fingered the culprits, but no one listened.
2005-05-20 23:25 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius-Bruce Ramsey] We have taken several lessons from it (the movies ???) for application to future wars.
The first is that some political leaders and movements, like Hitler and his National Socialists, are so evil that to try to understand them.... is futile and morally contemptible.[/QUOTE]
HAHAHA... That quote made my day~
:clown:
2005-05-22 13:21 | User Profile
Just a few observations:
WW II came about for several reasons, having little to do with WW I itself. The terms of the Versailles Treaty created the economic havoc in Germany which led to the emotional climate enabling Hitler's rise to power. Our involvement against Hitler stemmed mostly from our historical ties with England and France.
For Japan, it was an economic need for raw materials (coupled with their racism and the political power of the Bushido crowd) that led to that part of the conflict. Many in the US foresaw this in the 1920s.
JFK came up with the idea of spreading Democracy with his "Pay any price..." Regardless of views of the right-or-wrong of "America's Duty" or "White Man's Burden" or any of that, you can't take such an idea out of the context of the Cold War and the need to contain the USSR's efforts at world domination. So, yeah, movies keep reminding us of the past, revised or not as the case may be. But that seems to be the only way of reminding people that there is such a thing as HISTORY :).
As far as Al Qaida and the Arab or Moslem world and "hating the US way of life", you only have to go back a short while, to 1980 and Iran's yawping about The Great Satan. Western culture is allegedly the cause of All That's Bad in the mideast. As much as we talk about freedom and democracy and the rights of the individual in the West, it's easy to see how mullahs and thugocrats can view us in that manner...
Seems to me that the larger question is how much does any country owe to any other as to support against the rise of or the existence of an "Evil Regime". Nothing? Some support? A lot? Should "meddling in the internal affairs of another country" always be verboten? Should meddling be limited to cold-blooded pragmatism, to realpolitik?
While I personally tend toward Isolationism, the example of the USSR keeps me from cherishing that notion to any great degree...
As ya'll can tell, I'm a little short of firm answers.
:), 'Rat