MEMBERS of the Greatest Generation - especially those with weak hearts - might want to steer clear of an upcoming PBS documentary that suggests the Allied victory in World War II was "tainted" and questions whether it can even be called a victory.
Moreover, the documentary, titled "The War of the World: A New History of the 20th Century," asserts that the war could only be won by forming an unholy alliance with a dictator - Joseph Stalin, who was as brutal as the one they were fighting, Adolf Hitler - and by adopting the same "pitiless" and "remorseless" tactics practiced by the enemy.
The three-part documentary is a companion to the best-selling book, "The War of the World: Twentieth Century Conflict and the Descent of the West" by Harvard and Oxford historian Niall Ferguson. The one-hour Part One of the documentary premieres Monday night at 10 on Ch. 13. The other two parts air the following two Mondays. World War II is the focus of Part Two.
His thesis: Instead of looking at the 20th century as having been disrupted by two world wars with periods of relative peace before, between and after them, it is more appropriate to view much of the history of the century as a continuous bloody conflict that was interrupted occasionally for a few short, exhausted catnaps of relative calm.
It is an illuminating viewpoint, and Ferguson does an effective job tying all of the century's mass deportations, enslavements, ethnic cleansings and genocides together so that you can't help being won over to his view that the violence of the 20th century was virtually never-ending.
But it is Ferguson's revisionist view of the tactics applied by the Allies in World War II that is likely to raise the hackles of those who have always believed in the "necessity" of bombing German and Japanese civilians, culminating in the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to end a war we did not start.
"I think it's very hard for those who have imbibed the idea of a 'great generation' that what the Allies did to defeat the Axis was in some measure to adopt totalitarian tactics," Ferguson says in a Q&A on PBS's Web site.
"The aim of strategic bombing was . . . in large measure to kill German civilians by destroying the most densely populated parts of the country. And it only really worked when the level of destruction reached apocalyptic levels. It behooves us all to stare this reality in the face, by trying to understand what it was like to be on the receiving end of firestorms like the ones that engulfed Hamburg or Dresden."
And once again, it is demonstrated that nothing is sacred - not even World War II. Why, exactly, is PBS supported with taxpayer money?
#1
So I guess we rounded up all the "undesirables" too and killed them.
Fucking assclowns. It took 1000 bombers dropping hundreds of bombs to take out a large factory. They were lucky if 2% hit the target. Never mind the surrounding area was toast and usually it was safer for the air crews to burn the city down around the factory and it had the added benefit of displacing the workers, soldiers and drained off supplies and material for the war effort. That is why it is called TOTAL WAR. Every aspect of the country is a target. Especially with the technology of the day, it was the best they could do.
Why, exactly, is PBS supported with taxpayer money?
Because the people holding the tax purse strings for it are socialists and will do everything they can to destroy the old ways so you accept their new ways.
#3
My Dad's division took down part of a concentration camp in April 1945. The guards surrendered. The Americans did not take any of them prisoner.
Was that, technically speaking, a "war crime" or "atrocity" or "something bad they shouldn't have done"? Yeah.
Was it wrong? Don't think so. "Law" and "justice" are not inevitably the same.
Am I bothered by it? No.
Was dad bothered by it? Not at the time. Later, I think so; he didn't tell me and I never asked. It upset him to talk about the nasty details of his service, and I didn't want to upset him.
Does that mean it doesn't matter who won World War II because they were all (im)morally equivalent? Hell, no. There is a very great moral difference between the side that built and operated the concentration camps and the side that put them out of business. If you are unable to see that, you must either be rooting for the bad guys (Pat Buchanan) or one of them over-edumacated intellectuals who has forgotten common sense (Niall Ferguson).
Posted by: Mike ||
06/26/2008 17:44 Comments ||
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#4
My dad navigated B-29s. What we did to Japan with incindiaries equalled or surpassed what we did with nukes to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and to the Germans. It was barbaric. Anybody who tells you different hasn't studied it. It was also necessary. And that's the one (and to me only) reason they can be called the Greatest Generation; they did what had to be done and they didn't grumble about it.
It is good for us and our children to see this and understand it. It may come to this again. Soon. And we need to be prepared for it.
If you haven't read The Pity of War, you really haven't thought about the 20th century. So much of that century was set in motion by WWI, a war far too ignored by everyone today. We are about to set in motion a similar set of events, this time encompassing the entire world instead of only the metropoles of the European empires.
#5
Ironically, someday I have long known, WWII will be looked at much like the Napoleonic Wars are today.
Napoleon was once seen as Hitler is now seen. But today, Napoleon is remembered in France as a great French leader. Someday the Germans will remember Hitler in much the same way.
There will be other monsters, as there have been already, though most far less memorable. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Milosevic, Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, etc., etc.
Only squishy fools see America as "imperialistic", neither knowing or caring that the beloved and wonderful "Pax Americana" exists only as long as American might.
Someday the squishy fools will win, ushering in another age of barbarity and genocide, which they will demand the warriors put a stop to. And if the warriors fail, it will be the squishy fools who feel the tyrant's wrath first of all.
Perhaps only then will there be justice, when the squishy fools are given rifles and told to fight or die. And they will die.
#6
Look to the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, and the summary executions, for an example of what 'Total War' is all about and how the 'hate America first' crowd would have loved to court martial those guys today. In fact, since there is no statute of limitations on 'murder', those poor bastards probably, rather than be disgusted by these 'revisionist' historians, should be worried. I bleed for the future we are handing over to our children.
Posted by: Total War ||
06/26/2008 20:40 Comments ||
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#7
There is a revisionist movement pushing this point because for them, if Iraq pans out as a winner, they're painted in history for the clap trap they are. So the new angle is to disparage the success of WWII with the same narrative that they use now - we're no better than our enemy [not that any one of the punks deems it better to live there than here]. WWII is the contemporary gold standard, so the mission is to debase the standard.
#8
Napoleon was once seen as Hitler is now seen. But today, Napoleon is remembered in France as a great French leader. Someday the Germans will remember Hitler in much the same way.
Except Hitler was a dickhead corporal. The german field marshals really did the planning. Back in '91 when I was in the US infantry, we almost unanimously agreed that the German army of '40-'42 was the best the world had ever seen. They did things that would really strain the US military of today. They did this with individual initiative and a professional NCO corps. As the casualties mounted and the German army was stretched thin, the paranoia of Hitler filtered down through the ranks.
Initiative was stifled. NCOs decision making was replaced with a ridged command structure leading straight to the top. If the German army of '41 was facing us on the Normandy bluffs, the battle would have turned out remarkably different. We can thank the Russians and the mental delusions of Hitler for the victory.
THE Victorian Government is outraged at a leaked federal proposal to tax rainwater collected from roofs. The idea was revealed in a leaked email seen by the Sunday Herald Sun. Acting Premier John Thwaites yesterday warned that if water was privatised - as proposed by some federal Liberals - a tax on rainwater in tanks would follow.
The Bracks Government is furious at the mooted tax - it pays rebates on tanks as a water conservation measure.
In the email, National Water Commission chief Ken Matthews says, 'Legally, all water in Australia is vested in governments.'
Continued on Page 49
#3
It's against the law in some counties of California to collect any significant quantity of rain water. In California, water belongs to the government and you don't get any more than what you either have rights to or pay for, no matter where it comes from.
#4
Oh come on now, just tax sex. Make the reporting voluntary. Given how generous liberals are to charities versus conservatives, we can anticipate that the Row Effect will demonstrate who's really getting whoopee.
On Monday the British parliament removed the People's Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK) from the U.K.'s list of banned terrorist organizations. The decision upholds a Court of Appeals' ruling in May that there is no evidence linking the Iranian opposition group to terrorism, and that it should be free to recruit, organize and raise money in Britain. Western and Arab intelligence services have long appreciated the MEK for its sources deep inside Iran. The group was the first to provide evidence of Tehran's secret nuclear project. But the U.S. and Continental Europe shouldn't rush to follow London's move. Although the People's Mujahedeen has won the support of many Western politicians, it is not the force for democratic change it claims to be.
The MEK was founded in 1965 after a split in a Marxist-Leninist movement that had waged a guerrilla war in northern Iran. Its ideology emerged as a mix of Islam and Marxism, with ingredients from the Islamist pamphleteer Ali Shariati, who advocated an "Islam without a clergy." With help from the KGB, the group engaged in a campaign against the former shah of Iran and sent cadres to Cuba, East Germany and Palestinian camps in Lebanon to train as guerrillas. Its hit men assassinated a dozen people, including an Iranian general and five American military and civilian technicians in the 1970s. An operation in 1971 to kidnap the U.S. ambassador to Tehran, Douglas MacArthur III, failed. But it helped the group heighten its profile among anti-shah terrorist outfits.
Later, the MEK would play a key role in the events that swept Ayatollah Khomeini to power. The break with the mullahs came when the People's Mujahedeen, under its "Supreme Guide" Massoud Rajavi, attempted an armed uprising against the new regime in 1981. Not allowed to field candidates in presidential and parliamentary elections, the MEK sent hit squads to assassinate prominent mullahs and raided several military bases. Khomeini's reaction was savage. More than 15,000 MEK militants and sympathizers were jailed and some 3,000 executed. Mr. Rajavi fled to Paris aboard a jetliner his supporters had hijacked, taking with him Abol-Hassan Banisadr, the first president of the Khomeinist republic. In a second wave of executions in 1988, Khomeini put more than 4,000 MEK members and sympathizers to death.
In Paris, meanwhile, France's Socialist government negotiated a deal in 1982 between the MEK and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, which was then engaged in a war against Iran. Mr. Rajavi frequently visited Baghdad and formed a close relationship with Saddam, who set up camps in Iraq to train MEK militants for sabotage operations against Iran. Even after the 1988 cease-fire between Tehran and Baghdad, Mr. Rajavi, with Saddam's approval, continued a low-intensity war against Iran from Iraqi territory. Mr. Rajavi's relationship with Saddam would get the MEK involved even in genocide. In 1991, the MEK's 10,000-strong force in Iraq helped Saddam in his brutal campaign against the Kurds and Iraqi Shiites, a campaign that left over 100,000 dead. The MEK saw Iraqi Shiites as allies of Iran and thus enemies of itself. This is why the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has opened proceedings against the MEK for "crimes against humanity." In 2003, the U.S.-led coalition extended prisoner-of-war protection to MEK members in Iraq, including some 4,000 combatants, now disarmed, in Camp Ashraf northeast of Baghdad. Mr. Rajavi is under "restricted residence" in Baghdad. Over the years, the MEK has suffered waves of defections, each producing fresh testimonies depicting it as a sect dedicated to the cult of Mr. Rajavi and his estranged wife, Maryam Azedanloo-Qajar. Mr. Rajavi declared her the "President of the Republic of Iran" almost two decades ago.
Does all of this mean that the British decision is morally wrong and perhaps politically counterproductive? Four years ago, my answer would have been an unequivocal yes. Today, I am not so sure. To start with, the group, which has never practiced terrorism on British soil, has not committed any terrorist act since January 2003, when it attacked an Iranian village close to the border with Iraq. Besides, being blacklisted has not forced the MEK to mend its ways. Instead, the leadership has used the fact that it was put on a terror list to portray itself as a wrongly prosecuted community that required secretive modus operandi and Stalinist discipline from its members.
It also is somewhat hypocritical for Europeans to put the MEK on a terrorist list but deal with the Khomeinist regime, the leading sponsor of terror in the world, as if it were a respectable government. What's more, Tehran exploits the MEK's terrorist label to brand all Iranian opposition groups as "terrorists and traitors." Finally, blacklisting the MEK makes it harder for other Iranian opposition groups to establish contact with it, and to isolate its terrorist elements and integrate its rank-and-file into a broader popular movement for a democratic Iran.
Despite its bloody history, the MEK continues to enjoy much support inside Iran and among Iranian exiles. Some sympathize with the sufferings of its members: No other political group has sustained so many losses at the hands of the mullahs. Others see the MEK as a valuable asset in the fight against Tehran because it is the only group considered to be as ruthless as the mullahs themselves. These pragmatists like to cite a Persian proverb: "Only a hound from Mazandaran could catch the fox of the Mazandaran forest." But before Continental Europe and the U.S. take the MEK off their terrorist lists, it needs to reform itself as some other violent groups have. Northern Ireland's Sinn Fein is an example.
To start with, the MEK has to recognize and accept responsibility for its murderous past. A sincere mea culpa could help it out of its moral and political ghetto. Next, the MEK should publicly renounce terror and commit itself to working for a new Iranian system based on pluralism, the rule of law and democratic elections. It is also important that the MEK cooperate with Iraqi justice to shed light on the group's role in the repression of Shiites and Kurds under Saddam. Such cooperation would include handing over MEK figures sought by Iraqi prosecutors. The MEK also has to develop a new leadership for itself through open, transparent and multicandidate elections.
Some Iranians may feel that, given its past crimes, the MEK doesn't deserve a second chance. Nevertheless, there has been a change of generations in the MEK. Many of those who murdered innocent people or betrayed Iran by working for Saddam have died or retired; the rest have dwindled to a small minority. The MEK now faces a stark choice: Reform and become a pluralistic group working for Iranian democracy, or remain an obscure sect undeserving of Western support.
Posted by: ryuge ||
06/26/2008 05:37 ||
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Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments today on the most glaring double standard among comedians:
Lewis Blacks new book, Me of Little Faith, has a chapter titled, Islam. All Im Saying Is, I Got Nothing to Say. The chapter is three paragraphs long, beginning with the following: I have nothing to say. Nothing. And lets leave it that way. But Black has plenty to say about Orthodox Jews, the Catholic Church and Mormonism. Indeed, his references are replete with vulgarities.
Blacks book was endorsed by George Carlin, who died yesterday. Carlin trashed religion for decades, but like Black he had no stomach for bashing Islam. Indeed, he justified Muslim violence. He readily admitted that when all those beheadings started in Iraq it didnt bother me. In fact, the beheadings were easy to explain: You strap on a gun and go struttin around some other mens country you better be ready for some action Jack. Catholics, however, were never the victims in Carlins playbookthey were always the victimizers.
Bill Maher takes it a step further by understanding the difference between Muslim violence and Islam: I dont think the hate that comes from the Muslim world comes from religion. But dont look for Maher to cut Catholics a break when they act irresponsiblytheir behavior is caused by their religion.
Most sickening of all is the spectacle of pundits congratulating these comedians for pushing the envelope and being countercultural. There is nothing courageous about pushing buttons that everyone knows are safe.
#1
I don't know about the rest of you, but I am on strike. For decades, I've enjoyed good religous humor. Some went too far and was merely vulgar, but most was funny. Now most of the religous humor is way over the top and discrimatory. A vicious attack on a Cathlic or Jew is considered great, while even the gentilest of pokes at Islam is taboo. When we get Islam jokes then I'll listen to and enjoy all religious jokes of about the same intensity. Equal time for the big Mo!
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
06/26/2008 10:52 Comments ||
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#2
Those comedians display the typical bully behavior: pick on those who you know won't fight back.
I stopped listening to Carlin decades ago and wasn't aware he said that. Not surprised, and it just reinforces why I stopped listening. What a bitter nasty piece of work he turned into - which seems a common theme among old "progressives".
#3
To be honest few people, let alone comedians, know enough about Islam to joke about it. And also to be further honest the jokes would tend to be pretty freaking sick. Having said that to continue bashing Christians and Jews is a little messed up in the current climate. A good comedian should be able to come up with someething else during a war.
#4
I saw Lewis Black a few years ago. I went to see Dave Attell and Lewis Black was the headliner. Honestly I didn't really get it. He got into a rant and rave over bottled water. Hello? Bottled water? it just came off as very contrived. Give me booze jokes any day.
Shakespeare warned us about the dangers of thinking too precisely. His poor Danish prince lost the name of action, as he dithered and sighed that conscience does make cowards of us all.
With gas over $4 a gallon, the public is finally waking up to the fact that for decades the United States has not been developing known petroleum reserves in Alaska, in our coastal waters, or off the continental shelf. Jittery Hamlets apparently forgot that gas comes from oil and that before you can fill your tank, you must take risks to fill a tanker.
Building things is a good indication of the relative confidence of a society. But the last American gasoline refinery was built almost three decades ago. As cowards of our conscience, weve come up with countless mitigating reasons not to build new ones. Our inaction has meant that our nations gasoline facilities have grown old, out of date, and dangerous.
Maybe Americans can instead substitute plug-in, next-generation electric cars that can be charged at night on the nations grid powered by nuclear power plants? Wrong again. We havent issued a single new license that actually led to the building of a nuclear power plant in over 30 years.
Shakespeares Hamlet again would warn second-guessing Americans that, A thought, which, quarterd, hath but one part wisdom/And ever three parts coward.
But the problem of inaction extends far beyond the present energy crisis.
Whatever one thinks about the wisdom of a border fence with Mexico, President George W. Bush signed into law a bill passed by both houses of Congress authorizing over 700 miles of fencing at key junctures. This was back in 2006.
Environmentalists and private property owners tried to legally challenge the fence. And the Mexican government the same government that publishes comic books instructing its citizens on how to sneak across illegally into the United States cried foul. As a result, nearly two years later, the fence is barely half finished.
We are nearing the seventh anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Center. Its replacement the Freedom Tower should have been a sign of our determination and grit right after September 11.
But it is only now reaching street level. Owners, renters, builders, and government have all fought endlessly over the design, the cost, and the liability.
By contrast, in the midst of the Great Depression, our far poorer grandparents built the Empire State Building in 410 days not a perfect design, but one good enough to withstand a fuel-laden World War II-era bomber that once crashed into it.
Despite unsophisticated 19th-century architectural and engineering science, not to mention legions of snooty French art critics, the Eiffel Tower in Paris was finished in a little over two years and is as popular as ever well over a century later.
In my home state of California, we spent a decade arguing over the replacement for portions of the aging and earthquake-susceptible San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Now that the design has finally been agreed to, it will be several years before it is finished. Thats quite a contrast to the original bridge that was completed in just over three years.
California is also in yet another predictable drought and ensuing water shortage. Despite strict conservation and new water-saving technology, we simply dont have enough water for households, recreation, industry, and agriculture. Building new dams, reservoirs, and canals, you see, would apparently be considered unimaginative and relics of the 20th century.
The causes of this paralysis are clear. Action entails risks and consequences. Mere thinking doesnt. In our litigious society, as soon as someone finally does something, someone else can become wealthy by finding some fault in it. Meanwhile, a less fussy and more confident world abroad drills and builds nuclear plants, refineries, dams, and canals to feed and fuel millions who want what we take for granted.
In our present comfort, Americans dont seem to understand nature. We believe that our climate-controlled homes, comfortable offices, and easy air and car travel are just like grass or trees; apparently they should sprout up on their own for our benefit.
Americans also harp about the faults of prior generations. We would never make their blunders even as we dont seem to mind using the power plants, bridges, and buildings that they handed down to us.
Finally, high technology and the good life have turned us into utopians, fussy perfectionists who demand heaven on earth. Anytime a sound proposal seems short of perfect, we consider it not good, rather than good enough.
Hamlet asked, To be, or not to be: that is the question. In our growing shortages of infrastructure, food, fuel, and water, weve already answered that: Not to be!
Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them.
Our choice in November to bear it or to oppose it. Are you mad? Really, really mad? That is what gets Americans to the polls.
#2
I think this is more a boomer problem than an American problem. And Obama is also the real boomer candidate. That is why he will probably be elected and things will go to hell and the whole boomer narrative will be utterly repudiated and the Xers and millenials will come in to cvlean things up, re-establishing America as we new it, or a new and improved version, much as the post civil war and post WWII America were very different from pre. And McCain is looney enough that things might not turn out a whole lot differently if he is elected.
#4
OK Victor. For 7.5 years Bush could-do the identification of and suppression of the Wahabi global threat, and its local component in the 80% of US mosques that are under Saudi subsidy. Bush did nothing. In fact, in face of brazen Saudi finance of terror, he delivered slavish praise on the Saudi royal family, and was photograped kissing Pig one of same, on the lips.
The Left alliance with the Islamofascists is depraved. But don't pretend that Bush isn't in bed with the Royalist version. VDH has proven that he is a tunnel-visionary, void of a capacity to produce an objective, critical fact on the 7.5 years of Bush wheel spinning that could deliver Iraq to Iran. If that happens, point one finger at slavish boot lickers like VDH. Hopefully, VDH will do a Rod Parsley on this California goof.
The city in which I live has just spent $460,000 to install a "green roof" on a portion of City Hall. The impact it will have on anything is nil. Part of the cost went to necessary roof repairs, and I don't begrudge them that, but I imagine that the cost of building a fargin' lawn on top of a 19th century structure was greater than simply patching leaks. No one expects it to accomplish anything, global-warmingly wise; use your Google, Luke, and find City Hall, then zoom out to the rest of Minnesota, and you will see that the state is hella green. Think "pinhead on a football field" and you have the proportions about right. But! It's intended to raise awareness of such things, and raise awareness of Minneapolis' greeniousity, and make other mayors in other cities crumple papers in their fist and shout Damn Their Eyes, They've Stolen the Moral High Ground. A City Hall with a green roof! A mayor who drives a Prius and leads a national effort against bottled water! Those clever fiends outflank us at every turn!
I would like to claim half the roof as my own. Seriously. I'm looking at my property tax bill, and if I stay here for the rest of my 30 year mortgage and many years beyond, all the money I pay the city will go for the green roof on City Hall. Every cent. Can I get a plaque? A bench?
No. But I can look at it through a window if I go downtown. Perhaps I'll do that next week. Imagine the look on the security guard's face if I insist I paid for that lawn. Sure you did, pal. Sure you did.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/26/2008 05:45 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
