- June 6, 2004 marks 60 years since the fabled Allied invasion
known as "D-Day." Lost amid the self-congratulatory orgy is the
minor detail that by the time of the D-Day invasion, the Soviets were engaging
80 percent of the German Army on the Eastern Front. Oops
-
- Alexander Cockburn has called D-Day a "sideshow,"
explaining that WWII had already been won "by the Russians at Stalingrad
and then, a year before D-Day, at the Kursk Salient, where 100 German divisions
were mangled. Compared with those epic struggles, D-Day was a skirmish
... Hitler's generals knew the war was lost, and the task was to keep the
meeting point between the invading Russians and Western armies as far east
as possible."
-
- Of course, this doesn't fit the "good war"
myth (more than just a good war, NBC newsman Tom Brokaw has deemed WWII
"the greatest war the world has seen."), so it's down the memory
hole.
-
- To borrow from the World Bank protestors, I say 60 years
is enough.
-
- Faced with a perpetual war against evil and presidential
election pitting one Yale war criminal against another, the time has never
been better to challenge the "greatest generation" hype. The
next time someone you know speaks of WWII in hallowed tones, remind them
that:
-
- * 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, 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").
-
-
-
- * 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, John Wayne never 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.
-
- American lives weren't sacrificed in a holy war to avenge
Pearl Harbor nor to end the Nazi Holocaust. WWII was about territory, power,
control, money, and imperialism. What we're taught about the years leading
up to the Good War involves the alleged appeasement of the Third Reich.
If only the Allies were stronger in their resolve, the fascists could have
been stopped. Having made that mistake once, the mantra goes, we can't
make it again.
-
- Comparing modern-day tyrants like Saddam Hussein to Adolf
Hitler and invoking the A Word (appeasement) activates the following historical
façade: After whipping the original axis of evil in a noble and
popular war, the U.S. and its allies can now wave the banner of humanitarianism
and intervene with impunity across the globe without their motivations
being severely questioned ... especially when every enemy is likened to
Hitler.
-
- But it wasn't appeasement that took place prior to WWII.
It was, at best, indifference; at worst it was collaboration ... based
on economic greed and more than a little shared ideology.
-
- U.S. investment in Germany accelerated by more than 48%
between 1929 and 1940, while declining sharply everywhere else in Europe.
For many U.S. companies, operations in Germany continued during the war
(even if it meant the use of concentration-camp slave labor) with overt
U.S. government support. For example, American pilots were given instructions
not to hit factories in Germany that were owned by U.S. firms. As a result,
German civilians began using the Ford plant in Cologne as an air raid shelter.
-
- The pursuit of profit long ago transcended national borders
and loyalty. Doing business with Hitler's Germany or Mussolini's Italy
proved no more unsavory to the captains of industry than, say, selling
military hardware to Indonesia does today. What's a little repression when
there's money to be made?
-
- This is where the most relevant similarities between
Hussein and Hitler exist. Despite committing atrocities, both murderers
received overt and covert support from the U.S ... in the name of profit
and capitalism. Make no mistake: The U.S., with its stockpile of lethal
weapons and no shortage of bipartisan leaders dying to use them, has never
been in the business of appeasement.
-
- When President (sic) Bush says, "You are either
with us or against us," he's merely selling old wine in a new bottle.
-
- The first step toward smashing that bottle is to "just
say no" to the myth. The 20th century has been called the century
of genocide, but it was also a century of propaganda (partially to justify
the genocide). Little has changed in the way foreign interventions are
aggressively packaged and sold to a wary public ... except the technology
by which the lies are disseminated.
-
- More than 100 years ago, anarchist Emma Goldman described
the national mood at the beginning of the Spanish-American War: "America
had declared war with Spain. The news was not unexpected. For several months
preceding, press and pulpit were filled with the call to arms in defense
of the victims of Spanish atrocities in Cuba. It did not require much political
wisdom to see that America's concern was a matter of sugar and had nothing
to do with humanitarian feelings. Of course there were plenty of credulous
people, not only in the country at large, but even in the liberal ranks,
who believed in America's claim."
-
- If the working class is kept unaware of what is being
done in their name, rebellion is unlikely. If the average citizen in inundated
with images designed to demonstrate that the U.S. government has always
acted in a benevolent manner, rebellion appears unnecessary. As a result,
justification is crucial for those in power.
-
- Films like Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan are
popular attempts at such justification. Even if war is hell and the good
guys sometimes lose their way, these vehicles teach us that there is still
no reason to question either the morality of the mission or the stature
of that particular generation.
-
- Tom Brokaw's best seller informs those who came of age
during the era of Reagan and Rambo that those who came of age during the
Depression and WWII were indeed "the greatest generation any society
has ever produced."
-
- Thanks to the seductive power of myth, millionaire celebrities
like Brokaw, Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and others gain further wealth and prestige
by playing the role of corporate/military propagandist to an audience deceived
and pacified by jingoistic hysteria and the solace it often provides.
-
- Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels said, "It is not
enough to reconcile people more or less to our regime, to move them towards
a position of neutrality towards us, we want rather to work on people until
they are addicted to us."
-
- Thus, it is our moral obligation to see through our own
propaganda and kick the addictive habit of lazy thinking. We must address
the many uncomfortable truths about WWII by recognizing on the public relations
and media propaganda used by Western corporate states to transform a conflict
between capitalist nations into a holy crusade.
-
- In 1941, revolutionary pacifist A.J. Muste declared,
"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 60 years 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.
-
- Ending this cycle begins with each of us deciding we
will no longer buy what's being sold. Debunk the "Good War" myth
and the tenets behind the "War on Terror" will crumble. As Bob
Marley sang, "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; none but
ourselves can free our minds."
-
- Mickey Z. is the author of four books. For more information,
please visit: www.mickeyz.net.
-
- Copyright © 2002-2004 Press Action.
- http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/mickeyz05292004/
|
