In the midst of our current, perpetual war against evil, America is yet
again reflecting upon the "good war." If Clint Eastwood is allowed to
recycle those images in ³Flags of Our Fathers,² as the author of an
alternative history of WWII, why shouldn't I state my case yet again?
The U.S. fought that war against racism with a segregated army.
It fought that war to end atrocities by participating in the shooting of
surrendering soldiers, the starvation of POWs, the deliberate bombing of
civilians, wiping out hospitals, strafing lifeboats, and in the Pacific
boiling flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts.
FDR, the leader of this anti-racist, anti-atrocity force, signed Executive
Order 9066, interning over 100,000 Japanese-Americans without due process.
Thus, a war fought in the name of taking on the architects of German prison camps became
the architect of American prison camps.
Before, during, and after the Good War, the American business class traded
with the enemy. Among the U.S. corporations that invested in the Nazis were
Ford, GE, Standard Oil, Texaco, ITT, IBM, and GM (top man William Knudsen
called Nazi Germany "the miracle of the 20th century").
And while the U.S. regularly turned away Jewish refugees to face certain
death in Europe, another group of refugees was welcomed with open arms after
the war: fleeing Nazi war criminals who were used to help create the CIA and
advance America's nuclear program.
The enduring Good War fable goes well beyond Memorial Day barbecues and
flickering black-and-white movies on late night TV. WWII is America's most
popular war. According to accepted history, it was an inevitable war forced
upon a peaceful people thanks to a surprise attack by a sneaky enemy. This
war, then and now, has been carefully and consciously sold to us as a
life-and-death battle against pure evil. For most Americans, WWII was
nothing less than good and bad going toe-to-toe in khaki fatigues.
But, Hollywood aside, neither Ryan Phillippe nor John Wayne ever set foot on
Iwo Jima. Despite the former president's dim recollections, Ronald Reagan
did not liberate any concentration camps. And, contrary to popular belief,
FDR never actually got around to sending our boys "over there" to take on
Hitler's Germany until after the Nazis had already declared war on the U.S.
first.
Films like "Flags of Our Fathers" and Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private
Ryan" teach us that even if war is hell and the good guys sometimes lose
their way, there is still no reason to question either the morality of the
mission or the stature of that particular generation.
Revolutionary pacifist A.J. Muste said in 1941, "The problem after war is
with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who
will now teach him a lesson?" Precisely how and when such a lesson will be
taught is not known, but it can be safely assumed that this lesson will
never be learned from a standard college textbook, an insipid bestseller, or
a manipulative box office smash. The past six decades have also shown that
without such a lesson, there will be many more wars and many more lies told
to obscure the truth about them.
For many years I have heard that FDR knew the Japanese were going to invade Pearl Harbor, that he said the American people would never go along with a war unless we were provoked by some other country. So he wanted the war and he had his reason with Pearl Harbor. Of course, those of us that were living then were mad as hell and ready to fight. We thought this was a just war, just like some people now think this is a just war in Iraq. The only just war would be if we were invaded by another war-self defence. This was a very interesting article.
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October 31, 2006
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