Bullshit Historical Posturing
Today, as I strolled into Duane Reade as I do every morning, to get my morning can of Mountain Dew (I don't drink coffee. Growing up, I was told that I would pick it up as I got older. I'm 24 now, and I still don't drink it. Some people still like to insist that I will eventually become a coffee drinker, but I doubt it. I'm 24, I'm old enough, I don't like coffee, ok? I'm just as happy to feed my caffeine addiction through Pepsi and Mountain Dew, and the occasional Red Bull. But I digress...) , I walked past the newsstand as I always do. And out of the corner of my eye, what do I spy?
A glossy, special edition of Time, trumpeting the 60th anniversary of V-E Day. I stopped to stare at it for a second, and as I turned to head towards the back of the store and towards my much-needed Mountain Dew deliciousness, I became kind of irked. And it's because I feel like we're starting to over do it when it comes to the reverence we have for the so-called "greatest achievement" and what occured sixty years ago.
Don't get me wrong. I obviously think that the waging of World War II and the ending of Hitler's power in Germany was terrific. The fact that I am a Jewish-American obviously leads me to view the ending of the war and the rescue of those lucky enough to escape from the death factories of Nazi Germany as fucking amazing. I don't begrude any veteran of World War II (or any war, for that matter) the respect which they so richly deserve. And what the fighting men and women of all the Allied nations that took part in ending the Nazi war machine did, the hardships they had to endure, is simply staggering.
However, and this might just be the liberal cynic in me, I can't help but feel that these kind of showy tributes are done out of a misplaced sense of nostalgia for a time long gone by. When I see that Time special edition on the newstand, I see it as something akin to the Time editors pleading for faith.
It's almost as if, through those glossy pages, they are screaming "See? At one time, American stood for something, America actually accomplished something. We were respected throughout the world, and our ideals were unquestionable." All of which is true. And certainly, in these days of faulty intelligence and unfound WMDS, that is certainly a comforting thought.
But when I see that cover, I can't help but think that it's meant to deceive. It's meant to make us forget about My Lai, forget about Abu Ghraib, forget about all the roughshod actions taken by our cowboy President. It's meant to inspire faith in America, to reassure us that we haven't in fact become the unpredictable rogue superpower who doesn't care about anyone else's opinions as we play the Coloussus in this, the waning years of our country's empire. It's meant to draw the comparison between those fighting in Germany sixty years ago and those fighting in Iraq today, and saying "They're the same. They are fighting to uphold justice and American ideals. Just as your grandfather was a hero, so too is your son fighting in Iraq." I do not mean to demean the troops currently serving in Iraq, for they are simply carrying out a job assigned to them, many of them realizing the stupidity of the fact that they are in the desert when they should be at home enjoying their lives with their families. I do, however, mean to demean the actions of Bush, Chaney, Rumsfeld, etc., who no doubt will use the 60th anniversary of the wars ending in Germany as a platform from which to issue simply more meaningless drivel about freedom being on the march and missions being accomplished.
Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps I'm not giving Time and its editors enough credit. Perhaps they are subtly trying to draw a comparison between America of the 40's and America of today. Comparing the actions of FDR, a President who unquestionably wanted to get us into war for the right reasons, versus George W. Bush, who has led us into war for all the wrong ones. Perhaps they are subtly trying to say "Look how far we've fallen. We used to be the gold standard for idealism, the last bastion for dreamers and believers. Now we're a bunch of bullies, misguidedly exercising our military muscle in the wrong places." Maybe they're trying to make the same points I'm making here. However, this is the same magazine that ran the much-discussed puff cover story on Ann Coulter last week, so I can't say that Time's credibility is all that high right now.
From the perspective of a history major (with my focus being on military history, and just a general all-things-World-War-II buff to boot) and something of an armchair historian, the continuous lionization of those that fought in Europe bugs me for a completely different reason: It completely forgets that there was another component to WW II, fought on the other side of the Globe.
Now, maybe in a few months, Time will run another special edition commemorating V-J Day. But that does not take away from the general lack of respect shown to the fighting that went on in Asia by most of this country. Ask most Americans about World War II in Asia, and you'll get two things: Pearl Harbor and the atomic bombings. That's where it begins and ends for most Americans.
No one seems to remember the vicious naval fighting that went on in the Midway, or the absolute ferociousness of the "island-hopping" strategy (which is pretty ridiculous when you think about, seeing as how it was that exact viciousness and the massive predicted death tolls that lead Truman to drop the bomb in the first place). It's almost as if people remember Pearl Harbor for getting us into the war, and they remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki due to the horrific nature of the atomic bomb, but forget that there was a large amount of fighting and death on a massive scale in between those two events. Most Americans (thanks in large part to Stephen E. Ambrose-- dirty plagarist that he is--, Steven Spielberg, and Tom Hanks) recognize the Battle of the Bulge, but few know about the bloody toil on Okinawa. Everyone's seen Saving Private Ryan, but no one's read E.B. Sledge's terrific With The Old Breed At Peleliu and Okinawa, and even a classic like Norman Mailer's The Naked and The Dead gets shunted off.
Maybe we don't hear as much about the war in Asia is because it's not as neat and clean, morally speaking, as the war against fascism. If you're only response to the war in Asia is "Those sneaky fuckin' Japs!" because all you know is Pearl Harbor, it makes things easier. You don't have to contemplate the annihilation of hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians through the use of the most evil weapon ever devised by mankind, because they had it coming. You don't have to think about the appalling treatment of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast by way of internment, or contemplate the truly disgusting propaganda circulated in this country against the Japanese (chronicled in depthly in John W. Dower's War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War) beause gosh darn it, those Japs were sneaky!
You don't have to cloud your mind with any of those complexities, and rather simply sit back and congratulate ourselves on ridding the world of Hitler, Mussolini, and their awful beliefs. You can sleep easy, knowing that the American military is an instrument of good, bringing light where there once was darkness, bringing hope to those who seemingly had run out of it. You can actually stand up and take pride in your nation.
And, if you so choose, you can draw that line straight down from V-E Day to the toppling of the Saddam statue in Iraq, resting comfortably in your belief in America as a instrument of positive change in the world, then as well as now. We are still the nation to be looked up to, to be confided in, to be trusted, to be respected. We saved the world from the Nazis, we ended Communism, and now we're "saving" the Middle East.
Well, I don't buy it.
A glossy, special edition of Time, trumpeting the 60th anniversary of V-E Day. I stopped to stare at it for a second, and as I turned to head towards the back of the store and towards my much-needed Mountain Dew deliciousness, I became kind of irked. And it's because I feel like we're starting to over do it when it comes to the reverence we have for the so-called "greatest achievement" and what occured sixty years ago.
Don't get me wrong. I obviously think that the waging of World War II and the ending of Hitler's power in Germany was terrific. The fact that I am a Jewish-American obviously leads me to view the ending of the war and the rescue of those lucky enough to escape from the death factories of Nazi Germany as fucking amazing. I don't begrude any veteran of World War II (or any war, for that matter) the respect which they so richly deserve. And what the fighting men and women of all the Allied nations that took part in ending the Nazi war machine did, the hardships they had to endure, is simply staggering.
However, and this might just be the liberal cynic in me, I can't help but feel that these kind of showy tributes are done out of a misplaced sense of nostalgia for a time long gone by. When I see that Time special edition on the newstand, I see it as something akin to the Time editors pleading for faith.
It's almost as if, through those glossy pages, they are screaming "See? At one time, American stood for something, America actually accomplished something. We were respected throughout the world, and our ideals were unquestionable." All of which is true. And certainly, in these days of faulty intelligence and unfound WMDS, that is certainly a comforting thought.
But when I see that cover, I can't help but think that it's meant to deceive. It's meant to make us forget about My Lai, forget about Abu Ghraib, forget about all the roughshod actions taken by our cowboy President. It's meant to inspire faith in America, to reassure us that we haven't in fact become the unpredictable rogue superpower who doesn't care about anyone else's opinions as we play the Coloussus in this, the waning years of our country's empire. It's meant to draw the comparison between those fighting in Germany sixty years ago and those fighting in Iraq today, and saying "They're the same. They are fighting to uphold justice and American ideals. Just as your grandfather was a hero, so too is your son fighting in Iraq." I do not mean to demean the troops currently serving in Iraq, for they are simply carrying out a job assigned to them, many of them realizing the stupidity of the fact that they are in the desert when they should be at home enjoying their lives with their families. I do, however, mean to demean the actions of Bush, Chaney, Rumsfeld, etc., who no doubt will use the 60th anniversary of the wars ending in Germany as a platform from which to issue simply more meaningless drivel about freedom being on the march and missions being accomplished.
Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps I'm not giving Time and its editors enough credit. Perhaps they are subtly trying to draw a comparison between America of the 40's and America of today. Comparing the actions of FDR, a President who unquestionably wanted to get us into war for the right reasons, versus George W. Bush, who has led us into war for all the wrong ones. Perhaps they are subtly trying to say "Look how far we've fallen. We used to be the gold standard for idealism, the last bastion for dreamers and believers. Now we're a bunch of bullies, misguidedly exercising our military muscle in the wrong places." Maybe they're trying to make the same points I'm making here. However, this is the same magazine that ran the much-discussed puff cover story on Ann Coulter last week, so I can't say that Time's credibility is all that high right now.
From the perspective of a history major (with my focus being on military history, and just a general all-things-World-War-II buff to boot) and something of an armchair historian, the continuous lionization of those that fought in Europe bugs me for a completely different reason: It completely forgets that there was another component to WW II, fought on the other side of the Globe.
Now, maybe in a few months, Time will run another special edition commemorating V-J Day. But that does not take away from the general lack of respect shown to the fighting that went on in Asia by most of this country. Ask most Americans about World War II in Asia, and you'll get two things: Pearl Harbor and the atomic bombings. That's where it begins and ends for most Americans.
No one seems to remember the vicious naval fighting that went on in the Midway, or the absolute ferociousness of the "island-hopping" strategy (which is pretty ridiculous when you think about, seeing as how it was that exact viciousness and the massive predicted death tolls that lead Truman to drop the bomb in the first place). It's almost as if people remember Pearl Harbor for getting us into the war, and they remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki due to the horrific nature of the atomic bomb, but forget that there was a large amount of fighting and death on a massive scale in between those two events. Most Americans (thanks in large part to Stephen E. Ambrose-- dirty plagarist that he is--, Steven Spielberg, and Tom Hanks) recognize the Battle of the Bulge, but few know about the bloody toil on Okinawa. Everyone's seen Saving Private Ryan, but no one's read E.B. Sledge's terrific With The Old Breed At Peleliu and Okinawa, and even a classic like Norman Mailer's The Naked and The Dead gets shunted off.
Maybe we don't hear as much about the war in Asia is because it's not as neat and clean, morally speaking, as the war against fascism. If you're only response to the war in Asia is "Those sneaky fuckin' Japs!" because all you know is Pearl Harbor, it makes things easier. You don't have to contemplate the annihilation of hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians through the use of the most evil weapon ever devised by mankind, because they had it coming. You don't have to think about the appalling treatment of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast by way of internment, or contemplate the truly disgusting propaganda circulated in this country against the Japanese (chronicled in depthly in John W. Dower's War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War) beause gosh darn it, those Japs were sneaky!
You don't have to cloud your mind with any of those complexities, and rather simply sit back and congratulate ourselves on ridding the world of Hitler, Mussolini, and their awful beliefs. You can sleep easy, knowing that the American military is an instrument of good, bringing light where there once was darkness, bringing hope to those who seemingly had run out of it. You can actually stand up and take pride in your nation.
And, if you so choose, you can draw that line straight down from V-E Day to the toppling of the Saddam statue in Iraq, resting comfortably in your belief in America as a instrument of positive change in the world, then as well as now. We are still the nation to be looked up to, to be confided in, to be trusted, to be respected. We saved the world from the Nazis, we ended Communism, and now we're "saving" the Middle East.
Well, I don't buy it.
posted by Black Charles at 7:05 PM
8 Comments:
Great essay, Dan.
Conventional wisdom says that Japan would have kept the war going for another year had not Truman dropped the bomb, but Eisenhower thought that was bullshit, according to his son and grandaughter (who appear in the documentary Why We Fight). The fact is that Japan had been trying to negotiate a surrender for months, but Truman wouldn't let them, he wanted to drop the bomb(s) so he could flex his muscle for Stalin, and Eisenhower evidently hated Truman for it. There is, as you say, much admirable about the spirit of the men and women who fought in WWII. But their heroism does not depend on the hagiography of their leadership and distortions of history, as Time would have you believe, and that's what makes the hijacking so objectionable.
alper's blog rules
A comment about the coffee. As someone quite familiar with Dan....having shared lives for 14+ months, I can sincerely vouch for the fact that he WILL NEVER become a coffee drinker. If I couldn't convert him to the coffee - no one can :). As for the political rant, well, personally, I haven't had enough coffee today to comment on that, but I'll be back.
Beth, is that you? There's no reason to hide behind anonymity, let your freak flag fly baby!
Right on dog, I totally agree with you. Another example of the media has squeezed into the dim-witted minds of the religiously fanatical, gun toting, truck driving, drunk-ass American Public a feeling of righteous indignation fueled by the belief that we are a nation of peaceful philanthropists rather than war mongering oil junkies. Let’s not let The United Nations and the International Criminal Justice System stop us from destroying the only sense of international community left in the world. What, you gonna stop us Kofi? What!? What!? I didn’t think so! This is America bitch, land of f-ing freedom! Grab a Budweiser and chill your ass out, we’re saving the world here.
thing is, regardless of whether the japanese would have negotiated a surrender or the loss of life would not have been as large as expected, there were compelling reasons to drop the bomb. Truman had a choice of soft playing the Japanese and going diplomacy, but he wasn't sure that American boys wouldn't keep dying. He knew for a fact that once the bomb was dropped the war with Japan was over. The atomic bomb is nothing less than a certainty, a sure thing, and nearing the end of a costly war Truman decided to trump. I know the other stuff about flexing muscle and the project taking on a life of its own are valid points, but if we were offered Truman's choice, with the information he had and the position he was in, would we have chosen differently? I don't know, so I won't judge Truman the bad guy in this case, just someone who didn't have all the information, or realize the full consequences and everlasting repercussions his actions would cause. Holla
Matt,
Truman did not know for a fact that when he dropped the atomic bomb the war would be over. Even though there were tests done, no one knew what exactly the bomb would do or what the consequences would be. And hell, even after Nagasaki, the ultra nationalists in the military wanted to keep fighting, before being finally reigned in by the Emperor.
And let me go on record as saying this: I don't think Truman was the bad guy. Faced with the prospect of 500,000+ American lives lost versus the same or higher in Japanese civilians, Truman made the decision any Commandeer in Chief would (Don't forget, Truman volunteered for World War I and led men in that battle, so he was naturally sympathetic to the hardships of fighting men--props to David McCullough, whos bio is extremely long but quite good).
And, again for the record: I wasn't putting President Truman on blast. I was putting President Bush the second on blast, as well as the general ignorance of most Americans.
if we were offered Truman's choice, with the information he had and the position he was in, would we have chosen differently?
Eisenhower wouldn't have. He had all the facts regarding the Japanese at the time and was hardly a raging liberal.
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