Have you been following Ken Burns' The War on PBS? Have you been thinking about Iraq as you do?
The War is Burns' epic new documentary on America, its people, and the effort the country put into winning World War Two. It is all but impossible not to compare and contrast World War Two and Iraq as you watch. Especially since George W. Bush and his associates wrap themselves in the flag and toss out World War Two analogies at every possible opportunity.
There is the sheer scope and scale of the respective war efforts. In World War Two, everyone pitched in. Burns shows us a Michigan bomber factory that turned out a B-17 every 63 minutes. We see housewives saving bacon fat "for the war." And ration cards. And paper and tin drives. And bond drives to help fund the effort.
In George W. Bush's desert folly, on the other hand, nobody back home sacrifices, except for the families and friends of the men and women fighting the war. There are no war plants because we don't manufacture anything any more. We don't pay additional taxes to support the war. Any war bond drive takes place in Red China, not on Main Street.
In World War Two, Life magazine published images of dead American soldiers. Everyone knew someone who'd been killed or some family who had lost a loved one. Different classes shared the risk. President Roosevelt's oldest son fought in the jungles of the South Pacific. Another son served on board a Navy ship in the South Pacific as well.
In George W. Bush's war, the dead come home in the dark of night. The burden falls on the National Guard and poor and working class kids. Evidently, death and war wounds, like Leona Helmsley's taxes, are for, "little people." Meanwhile people who have sacrificed nothing and who have never heard a shot fired in anger talk blithely about what "we" should do in Iraq.
What "we," rich guy?" The brave, tired, noble, selfless troops fighting for soldier's pay? The ones you're above joining? Or the legions of $100,000-a-year security contractors we're paying with money we borrowed overseas?
"... it makes me angry ..." one guy emailed me yesterday. "...I see how the whole nation went to war 60 years ago. (Now) We the people are supposed to care about a war fought by the hired help? Would Blackwater ever get to Berlin?"
The images of World War Two are not new to us. They've been shown and re-shown to us from the Greatest Generation, through the Baby Boom, Generations X, Y, and whatever the hell we're calling the kids these days.
What is new, and shocking, in The War is the realization of just how far we have strayed from our fundamental "Americaness" -- from the essential spirit of the nation we inherited
That, and a nagging sense that something is very, very wrong.
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